So I connected all the dots and told him that I am absolutely very pretty much at least 50% sure that the structures he found were the elusive prohibitin rings. Turns out they were, and...here we are 🤩 (3/3)

I knew about the distribution and location of prohibitins from, at that time, some unpublished work, and I'd heard from others that these proteins were supposed (!) to assemble in a ring shape in the mitochondrial membrane. (2/3)

Storytime:
One of the things I like about my job is that I can poke my nose in everywhere, so I can get a broad overview of everything that is going on. One day my colleague called me in and showed me some strange ring-like structures in his EM data of mitochondrial cristae. (1/3)

That was the inspiration btw ;)

Fun fact: At that time I had no idea about boolean operations and so I animated the cutting through the cristae by setting keyframes to the clipping distance of the camera...well...It did the trick 😅

Unfortunately, this clip did not make it into the paper. If you are interested in the science behind these data, you can find the paper here: "Mic60 exhibits a coordinated clustered distribution along and across yeast and mammalian mitochondria" doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

I did my Diploma thesis working with Chlamys and I really miss Erlenmayer flasks with a bright green suspension dancing on an illuminated table shaker 😍 was always fun to watch 😊

Thanks 🤗

In love with this shading 😍...and the protein is cool too 😋