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William J Nicolas

@wjnicol.bsky.social

98 followers 160 following 81 posts

Senior scientist @ Exelixis | Cryo-EM facility lead -- PhD @ CNRS | LBM-Bayer lab Postdoc @ Jensen/Meyerowitz lab Caltech Cryo-EM facility manager @ Gonen lab HHMI -- Website: www.wjnicolas.com Twitter handle: @WiwiSFC

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Mar 27

Happy to share the latest work from the Gonen lab! A collective effort to solve the structure of the lens membrane protein central to keeping our lenses transparent!
Fluorescent targeted FIB milling, LCP and microED made this possible!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Structure of the lens MP20 mediated adhesive junction - Nature Communications

Human lens clarity and function depends on well-organized cell junctions. Here, the authors used MicroED to reveal the 3.5 Å structure of MP20, showing that MP20 tetramers form adhesive junctions esse...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by William J Nicolas

Oli Clarke @olibclarke.bsky.social · Sep 26

Initial attempt at replicating in relion (parameters in next post). This is for Aca2-RNA, using a 100k subset of the 2D-classified particles (no prior 3D cleanup).

A 1-class ab initio in relion, then local refinement in relion (1.8deg searches+blush) gives a nominally 3.3Å map; 3.5 Å w/out blush.

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Sep 24

Lattices is an optimal way of packing so perhaps it just packs this way to cram as many as possible on the membrane in a stable way....Anyways, always impressed with the Engel lab papers! In-situ structure work is the best kind of in-situ

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Reposted by William J Nicolas

Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · Sep 20

A molecular-resolution look into the near-native architecture of the spinach chloroplast🌱. This one was a long time in the oven, but we're happy to finally share our "version of record". What long-standing debates did we settle? Check back for a short thread🧵 on Monday. #TeamTomo #PlantScience 🧪🧶🧬🔬🌾

eLife @elife.bsky.social · Sep 20

🌱 Using ‘compelling’ methods, including #CryoET, researchers mapped spinach thylakoid membranes at single-molecule precision, revealing how photosynthetic complexes are organised and settling long-standing debates on chloroplast architecture.
buff.ly/j3TSIkn

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Sep 21

Very impressive tomograms. Those lattices on the thylakoid membranes...could almost do 2D xtallography...Beautiful work!

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Sep 21

It has also worked for us for a small protein without using any scaffolding. Although we are careful with the model, we are quite impressed by the map quality achieved as we were able to dock it a refine it pretty well. With that said, we are cautious and eager to hear the whole story :)

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Sep 21

Absolutely!

Alister Burt @alisterburt.bsky.social · Sep 21

PSA: 9 billion USD in research funds stolen by publishers over a 5 year period for open access fees - this takes away from your ability to pay your people what they are worth. Preprints forever.

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Sep 13

Very interesting. Thanks

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Aug 24

Love the drawing!

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Reposted by William J Nicolas

Sven Klumpe @svenklumpe.bsky.social · Aug 23

If you are thinking about the future of structural biology, we are too! Our two cents (Jürgen Plitzko and I) just got published online here: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

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Reposted by William J Nicolas

SBGrid Consortium @sbgrid.bsky.social · Aug 12

New Title Alert: AITom- an open-source platform for AI driven cellular electron cryo-tomography analysis.

Learn more here: buff.ly/LLGhjvY

#SBGrid #SBGridSoftware #StructuralBiology

Research

Xu Lab of Computational Biology

buff.ly

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 30

I tried that but what worked the best was to germinate on agar germinating medium, then resuspend them gently and pipette them on grid. Not trivial but doable.

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 29

Also, I made a poster about this unpublished data: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

(PDF) Cryo-electron tomography methods applied to plant science

PDF | FIB milling application on whole plant cells | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 29

Congratulations!

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Reposted by William J Nicolas

Marcel Dickmanns | 🌿❄️🔬 @madic.bsky.social · Jul 26

New preprint: In situ Architecture of #Plasmodesmata.

Using #cryoET, #AlphaFold & proteomics, we uncover the native organization of plant intercellular nanopores.

🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🧪🧵1/n
#teamtomo #PlantScience #Physcomitrium #Arabidopsis #cryoEM

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Reposted by William J Nicolas

Marcel Dickmanns | 🌿❄️🔬 @madic.bsky.social · Feb 19

Our methods paper made it to bioRxiv:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Full #cryoET workflows for #plant tissues. Plus some general tricks and tweaks on serial Lift-Out and cryo-FLM. 🧪🧵1/5

#teamtomo #PlantScience #Physcomitrium #Arabidopsis #cryoEM #CLEM

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 29

Great news ! Will give it a look. The tomograms look very nice!

I will release the data on the CZI public tomography portal

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 24

'cux good data don't wait!

Reposted by William J Nicolas

Alexis Rohou @alexisrohou.bsky.social · Jul 17

Outstanding work from Christine, Stan and the whole team on this beautiful story. Wow.

Stan Yatskevich @stanislauy.bsky.social · Jul 15

Happy to share our latest work on the structure and assembly of holocentric kinetochores! Huge thanks to Ines for a very fruitful collaboration, Claudio for all the support, and congratulations to Christine and all co-authors!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 16

Reminds me of the South Park episode where Randy tries to do the biggest poop in the world

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 16

C'est a Arcachon ça ? Sur la promenade ? J'ai aussi cru a une vrai baleine. Mais vu les couleurs quand je me suis rapproché....

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 14

Big incel power tripping vibs right here. Dangerous when those kinds of people hold that kind of power.

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 13

Yup. Have been saying this since Trump started overstepping. Where are all the wannabe heroes doing CQB training on weekends to prepare against the evil government? Prob no where because they are on the good side of the fence...for now...

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 13

When I was at UCLA, I started a similar project on hex1 bio crystals in fungus to solve by fib milling microED. Code name of the project was also IncelED 😂 odd coincidence!!

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 13

The maturity of a 5yo basically. Arrested development?

William J Nicolas @wjnicol.bsky.social · Jul 10

They are paid crap salary to do gestapo work too. They must really love the hunt.

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