Pranav NM Shah
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proteincapsid.bsky.social
Pranav NM Shah
@proteincapsid.bsky.social
Postdoc at STRUBI. Using cryo-EM to see viruses better.
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
It’s been a while since I put together the Structural Virology starter pack, and I’m sure some new folks have joined Bluesky since then. There’s still plenty of space to fill, so if you’d like to be added to the list just let me know.

#virology #cryoEM

go.bsky.app/Qxv95BL
November 25, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
ProteinCHAOS runs entirely in the browser and lets you choose how to visualize your protein structures.
It supports PDB files from the PDB and AlphaFold servers and offers several visual themes so you can "paint" abstract art with protein traces. I hope it helps you create some interesting images!
November 23, 2025 at 11:18 PM
10 days and 4 Uni’s later, happy to be back in Oxford with a head full of ideas! Thanks once again @danielhurdiss.bsky.social, Panagiotis Kastritis, @schurlab.bsky.social and Pradyumna Paranjape for hosting me! Enjoyed discussing science with you and your colleagues and lab members!
November 24, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Spent my childhood in my G’Pa’s chem lab, loved birds then photography and the photography of viruses. Been capturing virus images since 2010 and across 3 continents.
What’s the lore behind choosing your career path ?
November 23, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Scientific journals: we don’t want you using generative AI because it makes shit up.

Same journal: here is an AI summary or evaluation of this paper. This might be more useful than the actual abstract or paper that the authors freaking wrote

Same journal: AI cover art which makes no sense? Oooh!
November 23, 2025 at 1:51 AM
Insightful!
Why IDPs Are Poor Candidates for Homotypic LLPS

🧵👇A thread
November 21, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Our lab is seeking a Postdoctoral Fellow. The position is intentionally broad, as we are looking for outstanding researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds to advance our understanding of cilia and ciliopathies: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15526
HMS - Postdoctoral Fellow in BCMP, Brown Lab
We invite applicants for a postdoctoral fellow position in the Brown lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. The Brown lab uses structural, biophysical, and biochemical approaches to d...
academicpositions.harvard.edu
November 18, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Thank you for hosting me @danielhurdiss.bsky.social at @utrechtvirology.bsky.social! It was wonderful to visit and spend time with the members of the group. Until next time!
Had a great time hosting @proteincapsid.bsky.social over the past few days. Thanks for the exciting lecture and for sharing your tomography expertise. Until next time!
November 15, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
MPI–Weizmann Postdoc (4-year, co-mentored)
Together with Ori Avinoam (Weizmann), we’re recruiting a postdoc to uncover membrane remodelling mechanisms in muscle development using cryo-EM of recombinant proteins, and cell imaging/CLEM. Apply here by 21.11.25 forms.gle/ZtDWUjcTBu4d...
MPI-WIS postdoc application
Max-Planck–Weizmann Postdoc (4-year, co-mentored) Together with Ori Avinoam (Weizmann), we’re recruiting a postdoc to uncover membrane remodelling mechanisms in muscle development using recombinant pr...
forms.gle
November 13, 2025 at 4:31 PM
"The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized."
arxiv.org/pdf/2511.04820
Will the real scientists please stand up?
arxiv.org
November 12, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
I'm pleased to announce 🍦 Icecream 🍨 v0.3!

New features include:
* Training on multiple tomograms (same training time, with linear increase in RAM) 🚀
* Logging and plotting of the loss function 📉
* The --scale option is now called --eq-weight for clarity 😉

We'd love to hear your feedback! 🙏🏽
November 5, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Our new preprint is out 🥳🥳🥳

Henipaviruses, like Nipah and Hendra, package their genomes inside helical shells built by thousands of nucleoproteins. These nucleocapsids are essential to protect the viral RNA, but how do they ever let the polymerase in to read the sequence?

👇
November 3, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Jeremy is an excellent scientist and leader. Highly recommended!
warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa...

I am advertising for a PhD position in my group. We'll be investigating how pathogenic RNA viruses replicate in the nucleus. The project will teach cryoEM/ET, virus culture, and in vitro assays.

If you're interested reach out and I'd be happy to have a chat.
Dr Jeremy Keown
Dr Jeremy Keown
warwick.ac.uk
October 29, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
We are looking for a computational postdoc to work with us on new optimisation algorithms to make #RELION even better. Join our bubbly team at the @mrclmb.bsky.social in Cambridge, UK. 🤗 RTs appreciated.

mrc.tal.net/vx/appcentre...
Quick Check Needed
mrc.tal.net
October 29, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa...

I am advertising for a PhD position in my group. We'll be investigating how pathogenic RNA viruses replicate in the nucleus. The project will teach cryoEM/ET, virus culture, and in vitro assays.

If you're interested reach out and I'd be happy to have a chat.
Dr Jeremy Keown
Dr Jeremy Keown
warwick.ac.uk
October 24, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Really excited to have our work out in the world. CCHFV has a 450kDa L-Protein, about twice the size of L-Proteins from other segmented RNA viruses. We have used cryoEM and functional assays to begin to understand it this massive multifunctional protein works.
Structural and functional characterisation of the Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus RNA Dependent RNA Polymerase
Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV) is found across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East where it can cause Haemorrhagic outbreaks with high case fatality rates. Central to the viral life cycl...
www.biorxiv.org
October 22, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
End-to-end protein design in the browser through evedesign. Generate and interactively explore designs in 2D/3D and export them as codon-optimized DNA. The underlying open source framework (released soon) is build to easily add new methods, more on that soon.
🌐 evedesign.bio
October 22, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Neat!
Ever wondered how to position organelles in bacteria? Wonder no more!
Happy to have contributed to this fantastic story from @cellforganized.bsky.social' lab.

The avenues this opens in the synthetic biology space are enormous!

Movie: Carboxysomes positioned in E. coli!

Preprint: shorturl.at/D6xVg
September 23, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Nice one Flo @schurlab.bsky.social !
Cryo-ET visualization of HTT bound to F-actin, highlighted in the yellow square on the left.
On the right, a detailed zoom-in view of the molecular model of the HTT/F-actin complex is shown.
September 22, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Our aim was to create a kit to produce in-house 1.2 holey carbon cryoEM grids, in three simple steps, at less than half of the prize, and without due times. I think we are there. Academic teams that want to know more, receive training or order a kit, please contact [email protected].
August 18, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Confidence-guided cryo-EM map optimisation with LocScale-2.0 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.11.674726v1 #cryoem
September 15, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
We finally wrote up the paper for LocScale-2.0.

edu.nl/pvhxv

Please try it out. LocScale is evolving & we are actively building in new features and improvements. Your feedback will help us shape the next steps.

Code: cryotud.github.io/locscale/

Work by @alok-bharadwaj.bsky.social and Reinier.
We are happy to release LocScale2.0: a tool for context-aware, confidence-weighted cryoEM map optimisation.

Taking two half maps as input, LcoScale-2.0 produces feature-enhanced maps along with a robust confidence score that guides objective map interpretation.

cryotud.github.io/locscale/
September 15, 2025 at 7:39 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
This one is a bit of a departure from the usual and definitely a work in progress!

We found that by using ab initio reconstruction at very high res, in very small steps, we could crack some small structures that had eluded us - e.g. 39kDa iPKAc (EMPIAR-10252), below.

Read on for details... 1/x
September 13, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Pranav NM Shah
Ben Vollmer and Kay Grunewald & team @cssbhamburg.bsky.social and the beautiful structure along important insights for herpesvirus entry and membrane fusion.
September 4, 2025 at 7:36 AM