Alexey Amunts
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amunts.bsky.social
Alexey Amunts
@amunts.bsky.social
structural biologist
Slower focused search beats rushing. Taxi drivers who drive slower pick up more passengers. Attention > speed. Brilliant work!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
November 4, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Science in the spotlight! Buildings in Shenzhen lit with research themes, and scientists Xue Qikun and Nieng Yan carrying the torch for the national games. So refreshing to see science celebrated. Congrats to both on the relay!
November 3, 2025 at 10:19 AM
What a gem from @dudinlab.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social @centriolelab.bsky.social in Cell! Expansion microscopy atlas of >200 eukaryotes comparing cytoskeletal architectures revealing structures not seen before. Stunning visualisation! Exactly the kind of transformative cell biology we need.
October 31, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Sweden: celebrating structural biology & protein synthesis! Saluting Anders Liljas & Måns Ehrenberg for years of shaping discoveries and service to the Nobel committee. Friends and colleagues gathering to discuss transformative advances and how to push the boundaries next.
October 30, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Warm congratulations to the young scientists recipients of the 2025 Nordic Photosynthesis community prizes: Jannis Straube (Copenhagen), Vesa Havurinne (Aveiro), Laura Laihonen & Pablo Ortega Martínez (Turku @utu.fi)👏
Kudos to all participants🎉
See you in Umeå next time!
October 25, 2025 at 7:08 AM
White beaked dolphins breach beside our boat in the North Atlantic as snowcapped peaks of Arctic fjords rise into clouds.
October 24, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Today, @rcsbpdb.bsky.social introduces Q-score in EM validation reports. Q-score assesses model-map fit. A new percentile slider will compare an entry’s average Q-score to the full archive and a resolution-matched subset. This would help judge whether the fit is typical for the reported resolution.
Introducing the first 3DEM Model-Map percentile slider to the wwPDB validation report
Introducing the latest wwPDB Percentile slider based on the Q-score model-map validation metric
www.rcsb.org
October 1, 2025 at 12:25 AM
In Cambridge celebrating 25 years of ribosome structure studies. Wonderful to reconnect with friends, pioneers of the field, and engage with brilliant young scientists. Proud to be part of this community. Thank you @mrclmb.bsky.social for the amazing event! Great photos by Song, Nenad and Shaoxia
September 23, 2025 at 2:26 AM
1973: Max Perutz explains the solution of hemoglobin. 53 years later, we’re still waiting for someone to solve the missing pointer
September 9, 2025 at 11:42 PM
A dramatic blood moon is lighting up the sky above Churchill College as Venki @mrclmb.bsky.social delivers the plenary on ribosome synthesis, a memorable alignment of breakthrough in structural biology and the cosmos tonight.
September 7, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Speak up before more is lost. UCLA lost $600M in federal research grants, freezing work on cancer, neurodegeneration, pediatrics & more. Entire labs, careers, and patients remain in limbo. A devastating blow to US science. Trainees are hardest hit, the community must speak up before more is lost.
Frozen Grants, Canceled Futures: The Human Toll of UCLA’s Research Suspension
A frozen grant is more than halted experiments and lost data; it is a career derailed for many of the trainees dependent on this research support.
www.the-scientist.com
September 5, 2025 at 12:05 AM
The scent of silence! Cool research in Cell @cellpress.bsky.social to brighten up your day🌹. The mystery of why some roses are fragrant and others aren't has an answer. It's called SCREP: a rose-specific gene that evolved from non-coding DNA 16.8 million years ago 👇
September 3, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Stunning cryo-ET from Peijun Zhang lab: Direct visualization of HIV-1 nuclear import!
Hundreds of viral cores captured entering the nucleus. The NPC dilates to let the capsid through. A masterclass in correlative microscopy that makes it quantitative. A leap for structural virology! @emboreports.org
August 29, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Mitochondrial transfer is a fascinating phenomenon where cells shuttle mitos. The therapeutic potential is compelling and observational science is solid but the mechanism is a black box.
Excellent Viewpoint in @naturemetabolism.bsky.social breaks down one of cell biology’s biggest emerging mysteries
August 29, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Fantastic studies presented by young scientists today: @noodlyscientist.bsky.social, @aliciakmichael.bsky.social, @sramundo.bsky.social, @florentwaltz.bsky.social.
Beautifully orchestrated by @cellarchlab.com
What a treat here in Münster @uni-muenster.de!
August 28, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Emmanuel Levy @elevylab.bsky.social has joined BlueSky 🌟 with a fantastic Cell paper with Shu-ou Shan, showing the interactome of the TOM complex and how cotranslational mito import prioritizes large globular domains. Beautiful science!
Give him a warm welcome 🎉
link: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Principles of cotranslational mitochondrial protein import
Selective ribosome profiling reveals that nearly 20% of mitochondrial proteins in human cells are imported during translation on cytosolic ribosomes. Cotranslational import requires an N-terminal pres...
www.cell.com
August 22, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Delighted to be appointed Honorary Visiting Chair Professor at Wuhan Agricultural University. This recognises our work in bioenergetics and opens exciting opportunities for international cryo-EM collaboration and joint supervision of PhD students.
August 20, 2025 at 4:10 AM
Dedicated my talk at the opening evening of Biophysical Society proton meeting to Karen Davies.
Karen's work shaped the field of bioenergetics from solving the horizontal subunit-a of ATP synthase to the structures of photosynthetic CI and more. She was a brilliant scientist, mentor and communicator
August 4, 2025 at 11:55 PM
Your sleep pressure is powered by your mitochondria! Sleep, energy, and ageing are all connected through mitochondrial bioenergetics in neurons. Brilliant work from Gero Miesenböck’s lab, just out in Nature @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
July 16, 2025 at 10:57 PM
ACA 2025 Starter Pack for attendees of the 75th Annual Meeting.
Tried to include everyone, feel free to tag yourself or others missed. Connecting the community at #ACA2025!
@acastructuralsci.bsky.social @rcsbpdb.bsky.social
🔗 go.bsky.app/JAmraSp
July 14, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Science builds bridges🇮🇷🤝🇮🇱
Join me in welcoming our new postdoc Vida who brings PhD in plant sciences and will contribute to new bioenergetic studies. Vida is from Tabriz where her family's lives were disrupted by war. Thankfully no casualties, but career delays to her siblings and psychological toll
July 11, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Our new preprint: how photoprotection is spatially coordinated with energy metabolism. Photosystem I is major source of radicals. We report EM structure of PSI in complex with superoxide dismutase SOD: direct link between energy conversion & oxidative stress defence
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
July 7, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Speak up to prevent a major loss for the field. CASP, which helped shaping structural biology including AlphaFold is on the verge of shutting down. NIH funding has lapsed, UC Davis support ends and the core team is being let go. Painfully shortsighted.
Exclusive: Famed protein structure competition nears end as NIH grant money runs out
Agency silent on funding renewal for contest that inspired creation of AIs that predicted how proteins would fold
www.science.org
July 4, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Excited to contribute to the Mitoribosome collaborative study led by @wredenberglab.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com🎉 "The mitochondrial methylation potential gates mitoribosome assembly"
The assembly starts before the completion of the rRNA gene cluster processing🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
June 30, 2025 at 4:22 AM
Running Phenix and stuck?
Now you can ask the new Phenix chatbot anything from the 600-page tutorial about how to run any program.
Big thanks to Tom Willinger for making this happen!
Try it out: phenix-online.org/version_docs...
June 23, 2025 at 5:15 AM