Roger Castells
@rcastellsg.bsky.social
💼 Junior Group Leader at CNIO @cniostopcancer.bsky.social
🔬Designing proteins and studying their structure
#cryoEM #proteindesign #ai #ml
🎓 Alumni @ UCLA, John Innes Centre, UAB
🌍 Lab website: https://www.rcglab.com
🔬Designing proteins and studying their structure
#cryoEM #proteindesign #ai #ml
🎓 Alumni @ UCLA, John Innes Centre, UAB
🌍 Lab website: https://www.rcglab.com
Reposted by Roger Castells
The resolution of microscopes has increased over 10,000 fold over the last 200 years.
It's allowed scientists to examine not only cells, but bacteria, then viruses, their protein structure, and, eventually, the individual atoms that comprise them.
It's allowed scientists to examine not only cells, but bacteria, then viruses, their protein structure, and, eventually, the individual atoms that comprise them.
January 7, 2026 at 4:42 PM
The resolution of microscopes has increased over 10,000 fold over the last 200 years.
It's allowed scientists to examine not only cells, but bacteria, then viruses, their protein structure, and, eventually, the individual atoms that comprise them.
It's allowed scientists to examine not only cells, but bacteria, then viruses, their protein structure, and, eventually, the individual atoms that comprise them.
Reposted by Roger Castells
Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social from #CNIOStopCancer about the challenge of funding his own lab: "t is deeply fulfilling to watch young researchers develop their talent. But it implies dealing with bureaucracy, and this takes patience and resilience"
Roger Castells: “There is still so much to discover!"
Roger Castells-Graells joined the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in 2025 to establish and lead the Biomolecular Design and Structural Nanomedicine Group, dedicated to creating protein nanoparticles to detect cancer and accelerate the development of better drugs. After five years at some of the world’s leading research centers, the program Construyendo la Generación IA (part […]
bit.ly
December 17, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social from #CNIOStopCancer about the challenge of funding his own lab: "t is deeply fulfilling to watch young researchers develop their talent. But it implies dealing with bureaucracy, and this takes patience and resilience"
Reposted by Roger Castells
Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social, de #CNIOStopCancer, sobre el reto de montar su propio laboratorio : "es muy gratificante ver cómo nuevos investigadores desarrollan su talento. Pero exige lidiar con la burocracia, y tener paciencia y resiliencia",
https://bit.ly/4s02qjt
https://bit.ly/4s02qjt
December 17, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social, de #CNIOStopCancer, sobre el reto de montar su propio laboratorio : "es muy gratificante ver cómo nuevos investigadores desarrollan su talento. Pero exige lidiar con la burocracia, y tener paciencia y resiliencia",
https://bit.ly/4s02qjt
https://bit.ly/4s02qjt
Reposted by Roger Castells
I just published: In praise of experts: distinguishing sense from nonsense in the age of AI
Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more
than ever.
medium.com/p/in-praise-...
Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more
than ever.
medium.com/p/in-praise-...
In praise of experts: distinguishing sense from nonsense in the age of AI
Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more than ever.
medium.com
December 15, 2025 at 4:10 PM
I just published: In praise of experts: distinguishing sense from nonsense in the age of AI
Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more
than ever.
medium.com/p/in-praise-...
Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more
than ever.
medium.com/p/in-praise-...
I’m very happy (and grateful!) to share that I’m featured in a Nature Cancer Viewpoint about starting my lab at CNIO.
In the Lab (www.rcglab.com) we’re combining AI, protein design and structural biology to study protein structures and design novel protein therapeutics for cancer. 🔬
In the Lab (www.rcglab.com) we’re combining AI, protein design and structural biology to study protein structures and design novel protein therapeutics for cancer. 🔬
December 14, 2025 at 6:31 PM
I’m very happy (and grateful!) to share that I’m featured in a Nature Cancer Viewpoint about starting my lab at CNIO.
In the Lab (www.rcglab.com) we’re combining AI, protein design and structural biology to study protein structures and design novel protein therapeutics for cancer. 🔬
In the Lab (www.rcglab.com) we’re combining AI, protein design and structural biology to study protein structures and design novel protein therapeutics for cancer. 🔬
Reposted by Roger Castells
Thank you Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social for the shoutout! 🙏
Love seeing the next gen of cancer biologists getting started 💥
#CelebratingAlumni
doi.org/10.1038/s430...
Love seeing the next gen of cancer biologists getting started 💥
#CelebratingAlumni
doi.org/10.1038/s430...
December 10, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Thank you Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social for the shoutout! 🙏
Love seeing the next gen of cancer biologists getting started 💥
#CelebratingAlumni
doi.org/10.1038/s430...
Love seeing the next gen of cancer biologists getting started 💥
#CelebratingAlumni
doi.org/10.1038/s430...
Reposted by Roger Castells
Pay careful attention to the SHAPES of the scales on this saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus).
See how they're regular on the neck & back, but irregular polygons on the face/head? Why do you think that is?
As of 2012, we have an answer! A special process guides scale formation on the head.
See how they're regular on the neck & back, but irregular polygons on the face/head? Why do you think that is?
As of 2012, we have an answer! A special process guides scale formation on the head.
December 3, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Pay careful attention to the SHAPES of the scales on this saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus).
See how they're regular on the neck & back, but irregular polygons on the face/head? Why do you think that is?
As of 2012, we have an answer! A special process guides scale formation on the head.
See how they're regular on the neck & back, but irregular polygons on the face/head? Why do you think that is?
As of 2012, we have an answer! A special process guides scale formation on the head.
Reposted by Roger Castells
A few py2Dmol updates 🧬
py2dmol.solab.org
Integration with AlphaFoldDB (will auto fetch results). Drag and drop results from AF3-server or ColabFold for interactive experience! (1/4)
py2dmol.solab.org
Integration with AlphaFoldDB (will auto fetch results). Drag and drop results from AF3-server or ColabFold for interactive experience! (1/4)
November 19, 2025 at 8:15 AM
A few py2Dmol updates 🧬
py2dmol.solab.org
Integration with AlphaFoldDB (will auto fetch results). Drag and drop results from AF3-server or ColabFold for interactive experience! (1/4)
py2dmol.solab.org
Integration with AlphaFoldDB (will auto fetch results). Drag and drop results from AF3-server or ColabFold for interactive experience! (1/4)
Reposted by Roger Castells
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.
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.
November 14, 2025 at 6:38 PM
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.
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.
Reposted by Roger Castells
🎉Congratulations to @victorsmh6.bsky.social at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social who received the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social PhD Award for his thesis “Leveraging evolutionary diversity to discover new autophagy mechanisms in plants”.
More about Victor here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
More about Victor here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
November 10, 2025 at 2:59 PM
🎉Congratulations to @victorsmh6.bsky.social at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social who received the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social PhD Award for his thesis “Leveraging evolutionary diversity to discover new autophagy mechanisms in plants”.
More about Victor here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
More about Victor here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
Reposted by Roger Castells
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...
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...
November 7, 2025 at 10:44 AM
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...
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...
Reposted by Roger Castells
Glad to see our antibody design paper finally out in
@nature.com
(and congrats to lead authors and everyone involved )!
At Xaira we are excited about pushing antibody design further to bind harder targets and make drugs for unmet medical needs.
Paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@nature.com
(and congrats to lead authors and everyone involved )!
At Xaira we are excited about pushing antibody design further to bind harder targets and make drugs for unmet medical needs.
Paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 5, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Glad to see our antibody design paper finally out in
@nature.com
(and congrats to lead authors and everyone involved )!
At Xaira we are excited about pushing antibody design further to bind harder targets and make drugs for unmet medical needs.
Paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@nature.com
(and congrats to lead authors and everyone involved )!
At Xaira we are excited about pushing antibody design further to bind harder targets and make drugs for unmet medical needs.
Paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Roger Castells
New lab / new life 🌱
The Julian Lab is now open at the Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (IMPB), BOKU University 🇦🇹
We explore how plants defend their vacuoles and how vacuoles defend them! 🛡️
Excited to collaborate with @angegross.bsky.social’s lab.
#PlantBiology #Vacuole #VQC #BOKU #IMPB
The Julian Lab is now open at the Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (IMPB), BOKU University 🇦🇹
We explore how plants defend their vacuoles and how vacuoles defend them! 🛡️
Excited to collaborate with @angegross.bsky.social’s lab.
#PlantBiology #Vacuole #VQC #BOKU #IMPB
October 29, 2025 at 2:46 PM
New lab / new life 🌱
The Julian Lab is now open at the Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (IMPB), BOKU University 🇦🇹
We explore how plants defend their vacuoles and how vacuoles defend them! 🛡️
Excited to collaborate with @angegross.bsky.social’s lab.
#PlantBiology #Vacuole #VQC #BOKU #IMPB
The Julian Lab is now open at the Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (IMPB), BOKU University 🇦🇹
We explore how plants defend their vacuoles and how vacuoles defend them! 🛡️
Excited to collaborate with @angegross.bsky.social’s lab.
#PlantBiology #Vacuole #VQC #BOKU #IMPB
Reposted by Roger Castells
In @nature.com: Using AI and other cutting-edge techniques, the Klinge lab has captured the first near-continuous "molecular movie" of ribosome formation—revealing, frame by frame, how cells build the protein factories that make life possible.
More here: https://bit.ly/3LbHTaF
More here: https://bit.ly/3LbHTaF
October 29, 2025 at 5:22 PM
In @nature.com: Using AI and other cutting-edge techniques, the Klinge lab has captured the first near-continuous "molecular movie" of ribosome formation—revealing, frame by frame, how cells build the protein factories that make life possible.
More here: https://bit.ly/3LbHTaF
More here: https://bit.ly/3LbHTaF
Reposted by Roger Castells
For obvious reasons, I've become fascinated with retrotransposons. So we ( @alexwhiteley.bsky.social and I) wrote an article now out in Neuron @cellpress.bsky.social on how we think retrotransposons influence brain function and health! kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
October 20, 2025 at 8:00 PM
For obvious reasons, I've become fascinated with retrotransposons. So we ( @alexwhiteley.bsky.social and I) wrote an article now out in Neuron @cellpress.bsky.social on how we think retrotransposons influence brain function and health! kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
Reposted by Roger Castells
Check out our latest work on the discovery and engineering of PiggyBac transposases! 🧵
Discovery and protein language model-guided design of hyperactive transposases - @marcguellc.bsky.social @upf.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social @crg.eu go.nature.com/4gXLGEw
Discovery and protein language model-guided design of hyperactive transposases - Nature Biotechnology
Phylogenetic mining and protein language models uncover improved PiggyBac transposase sequences.
go.nature.com
October 2, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Check out our latest work on the discovery and engineering of PiggyBac transposases! 🧵
We’re looking for an enthusiastic postdoc to join our team. 😊
The project focuses on protein design and cryo-EM applied to cancer research. 🔬🧪
The position is fully funded for 3 years.
Please share 🙏
Job description and application details (deadline: October 11th): www.cnio.es/en/empleo/po...
The project focuses on protein design and cryo-EM applied to cancer research. 🔬🧪
The position is fully funded for 3 years.
Please share 🙏
Job description and application details (deadline: October 11th): www.cnio.es/en/empleo/po...
Postdoctoral Research Assistant for the Biomolecular Design and Structural Nanomedicine Group
DescriptionWe are looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join Roger Castells-Graells’ lab at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO). The successful candidate will work on innovative biom...
www.cnio.es
October 5, 2025 at 2:32 PM
We’re looking for an enthusiastic postdoc to join our team. 😊
The project focuses on protein design and cryo-EM applied to cancer research. 🔬🧪
The position is fully funded for 3 years.
Please share 🙏
Job description and application details (deadline: October 11th): www.cnio.es/en/empleo/po...
The project focuses on protein design and cryo-EM applied to cancer research. 🔬🧪
The position is fully funded for 3 years.
Please share 🙏
Job description and application details (deadline: October 11th): www.cnio.es/en/empleo/po...
Reposted by Roger Castells
If you’re applying to your dream lab for an internship/PhD/postdoc, always send a second email 1-2 weeks after the first one if you don’t hear back.
I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support
I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support
October 4, 2025 at 5:47 AM
If you’re applying to your dream lab for an internship/PhD/postdoc, always send a second email 1-2 weeks after the first one if you don’t hear back.
I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support
I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support
Reposted by Roger Castells
Test the activity of 300+ natural enzymes against 100+ substrates, discover 200+ new enzymatic reactions, and train machine learning models to predict which enzymes can do which reactions.
@aepaton.bsky.social @gabegomes.bsky.social @alisonnarayan.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@aepaton.bsky.social @gabegomes.bsky.social @alisonnarayan.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 2, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Test the activity of 300+ natural enzymes against 100+ substrates, discover 200+ new enzymatic reactions, and train machine learning models to predict which enzymes can do which reactions.
@aepaton.bsky.social @gabegomes.bsky.social @alisonnarayan.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@aepaton.bsky.social @gabegomes.bsky.social @alisonnarayan.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Wow! So cool to see new mysterious protein complexes 🤩 so much to discover 🔬
I am excited to share our new preprint on the CAGE complex, a mysterious hollow protein complex that I first saw years ago while surveying Tetrahymena ciliary lysate www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #cilia #protistsonsky 🧬🧪
September 23, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Wow! So cool to see new mysterious protein complexes 🤩 so much to discover 🔬
Reposted by Roger Castells
🥳Congrats to Prof. David Eisenberg, who has been awarded the 2026 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences! www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/david-e...
September 23, 2025 at 9:34 PM
🥳Congrats to Prof. David Eisenberg, who has been awarded the 2026 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences! www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/david-e...
This is super cool and great investigative work! Thanks Oli and co! #smallparticles #cryoEM
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
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 9:30 PM
This is super cool and great investigative work! Thanks Oli and co! #smallparticles #cryoEM
Reposted by Roger Castells
Look at this crazy thing!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature
In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...
www.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Look at this crazy thing!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Roger Castells
Reposted by Roger Castells
Verano de bachillerato en el laboratorio: Aitana Soler y Jan Magem viven la realidad de la investigación científica en #CNIOStopCancer con el programa ‘Jóvenes y ciencia’ de la Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera. Han trabajado un mes junto a @rcastellsg.bsky.social, que también participó en el programa
July 30, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Verano de bachillerato en el laboratorio: Aitana Soler y Jan Magem viven la realidad de la investigación científica en #CNIOStopCancer con el programa ‘Jóvenes y ciencia’ de la Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera. Han trabajado un mes junto a @rcastellsg.bsky.social, que también participó en el programa