Kaitlyn Kiernan

Figure 1. Cryo-EM of abundant protein complexes in native membranes.

Figure 2. Cryo-EM of membrane proteins in vesicles.

Figure 3. 3D reconstruction of V-ATPase in native synaptic vesicle membranes.

Figure 4. Generation of membrane vesicles for structure determination of proteins in their native lipid bilayer.

I've written a review on what I think is an extremely exciting direction in cryo-EM:

Cryo-EM of endogenous membrane proteins in their native lipid bilayer

Open access in Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics:
doi.org/10.1017/S003...

New paper from my team detailing a greatly expanded genomic database of Asgard archaea revealing of high energy metabolism those related to eukaryotes! Led by @katyappler.bsky.social lots of help from @jameslingford.bsky.social @valdeanda.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Max Fels @mfels.bsky.social from our lab discovers giant DNA viruses that infect amoeba encode eIF4E and the entire suite of 4F complex proteins to control mRNA translation, including beautiful crystal structures of viral 4E bound to modified mRNA 5' caps:

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Euler Hunt Can you find the Euler angles of a cryo-EM projection?

I had Claude make this as a mini-game for Relay's disconnect screen (like Chrome's dinosaur), but then pivoted to stand-alone. In this game, you have to find Euler angles matching the target projection, i.e. cosplay RELION. It can be pretty hard. Works on mobile too! warpem.github.io/euler-hunt/

🧪🧬New preprint We present cryo-EM structures of reconstituted CTCF–nucleosome complexes, showing CTCF dimerization drives nucleosome oligomerization into defined higher-order assemblies. Disrupting CTCF–CTCF interfaces in mESCs reduces looping and impairs differentiation. tinyurl.com/CTCF-nucleos...

🌀 How do spirochete bacteria swim through thick fluids like champions?

We solved T. denticola flagella structure - asymmetric proteins expand one side, compress the other for perfect corkscrew motion!

@debnathghosal.bsky.social

🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202...

#StructuralBiology #CryoEM #Microbiology

Formation & function of #MembranelessOrganelles! #CryoET structures of #proteasome storage granules inside cells!
Read our paper @cp-cell.bsky.social!

❕Publication: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
❕Press Release: www.biochem.mpg.de/en/pressroom

@uoftmedicine.bsky.social
@erc.europa.eu #UPSmeetMet

Excited to share our latest work on dissecting the mechanism of processive telomeric DNA synthesis by telomerase. Led by amazing PhD student Sebastian Balch in collaboration with lab members,@automnenine.bsky.social @rachael-kretsch.bsky.social,@rdaslab.bsky.social.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A nowhere-to-hide mechanism ensures complete piRNA-directed DNA methylation - Nature In mice, a SPOCD1–TPR-dependent ‘nowhere-to-hide’ mechanism is required for complete non-stochastic piRNA-directed LINE1 DNA methylation by preventing transposons from escaping surveillance within heterochromatin.

Nature research paper: A nowhere-to-hide mechanism ensures complete piRNA-directed DNA methylation

go.nature.com/4pDVgPq

Happy to finally share the amazing results of our long-term collaboration with Karin Reinisch’s lab on how bridge lipid-transfer proteins (BLTPs) cooperate with partner proteins to orchestrate lipid delivery. A quick thread (1/7)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This figure captures how challenging the #cryoEM analysis was, but it doesn't capture the challenges we had to solve in molecular biology, biochemistry, purification, and functional testing. Every step was hard! So glad to see it available.

When RNA Degradation 🤝 meets 🤝 Protein Degradation! tinyurl.com/E3TDMD In a collaboration of @bartellab.bsky.social and Schulman lab, we show that, in target-directed microRNA degradation (TDMD), 2-RNA-factors recruit an E3 ligase and induce the degradation of not only a protein but also RNA (1/5).

Chromatin buffers torsional stress during transcription During eukaryotic transcription, Pol II must overcome nucleosome obstacles and, because of DNA’s helical structure, must also rotate relative to DNA, generating torsional stress. However, there is lim...

@science.org Chromatin buffers torsional stress during transcription | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Blender rendering of TLR4 in membrane and TIRAP fibrils at the plamsma membrane.

Blender rendering of TLR4 in membrane and TIRAP fibrils at the plamsma membrane. View from the cytosol.

In our new preprint, we show how fibril-dynamics of signaling component TIRAP supports sensitive & fast sensing of endotoxin LPS. Congrats to co-lead @arthurfelker.bsky.social. @piehlerlab.bsky.social @arnemoeller.bsky.social #TLR #cryoEM #blender doi.org/10.64898/202...

✨New preprint!

🧵1/4 Excited to share our work on AI-guided design of minimal RNA-guided nucleases. Amazing work by @petrskopintsev.bsky.social @isabelesain.bsky.social @evandeturk.bsky.social et al!
Multi-lab collaboration @banfieldlab.bsky.social @jhdcate.bsky.social @jacobsenucla.bsky.social🧬

🔗👇

CryoET of microbes inside an animal organ? Yes it’s possible! Check out our new preprint showing how we did it! What an amazing collaboration with amazing scientists who made this possible!

Brand new preprint from my lab, showing that TnpB, the ancestor of Cas12, acts as a gene drive in plasmids! And it turns out in conjugative plasmids that it acts as a primitive anti-self defense system, providing a potential link between its transposon effect and becoming CRISPR!

Excited to share our new preprint in collaboration with Ahmet Yildiz's lab. Check out how our team uncovers a novel binding footprint and motor regulation mechanism for MAP9 Congrats to Burak Cetin and @aryantaheri.bsky.social

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

MISO: microfluidic protein isolation enables single-particle cryo-EM structure determination from a single cell colony.

Or from a single dish of HEK cell culture in the case of two membrane proteins.

Out in Nature Methods now! lnkd.in/gpyBSceg

Wonderful collaboration with the Efremov lab.

Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases Although metagenomic sequencing has revealed a rich microbial biodiversity in the mammalian gut, methods to genetically alter specific species in the microbiome are highly limited. Here, we introduce ...

1/9 Metagenomics lets us read microbiomes in nature without cultivation, but writing (editing) them in their native context is still a major challenge.

Meet MetaEdit: a platform for pathway-scale metagenomic editing inside the gut microbiome. science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments

Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors!

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

Wilkinson Lab We discover and study reverse transcriptases

The Wilkinson Lab is open for science! @mskcancercenter.bsky.social

🧬We'll be finding funky new RNA biology, mainly by looking at reverse transcriptases (i.e. the Best Enzymes In The World)🧬

annnd: I'm hiring - come join! Especially postdocs and PhD students - please get in touch (NYC is great)

Tenure-based Research Staff Scientist Position in Computational Structural Biology ISTA (www.ista.ac.at) is seeking a highly skilled Staff Scientist in Computational Structural Biology to support and advance the Institute’s structural biology research through the development and imp...

ISTA @istaresearch.bsky.social is hiring a tenure-track staff scientist in Computational Structural Biology, to develop tools for cryo-EM, cryo-ET, structural prediction methods and protein interaction analysis!

Please spread the word!

ista.ac.at/en/job/tenur...

Nickel-NTA lipid-monolayer affinity grids allow for high-resolution structure determination by cryo-EM pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41083086/ #cryoEM

How do SMC complexes load onto DNA to get ready for loop extrusion?

@roisnehamelinf.bsky.social & co discovered that Wadjet, an SMC complex involved in bacterial DNA immunity, performs some impressive molecular gymnastics 🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️.

Check out the new paper: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

De novo design of RNA and nucleoprotein complexes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.01.679929v1

We're hosting the 8th Austrian CryoEM symposium at ISTA Nov 11-12 @istaresearch.bsky.social this year - you don't want to miss! We have a fantastic lineup of invited speakers + selected talks from abstracts #cryoEM
Deadline for abstracts Oct 15
Final deadline Oct 31
cryoem-symposium.pages.ist.ac.at

How the twin-arginine translocase (Tat) system manages to transport folded proteins across membranes without any leaks? To answer this fundamental question we solved the first structure of TatB3C3 complex with bound cargo. Please check out new preprint!
t.co/962Kj9pt6F

Join us for the Austrian Cryo-EM Symposium Nov 11–12 at @istaresearch.bsky.social!

Top speakers, cutting-edge cryo-EM, and a chance to explore Vienna & the ISTA campus.

Register now 👉 cryoem-symposium.pages.ist.ac.at #cryoEM #teamtomo

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