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klausenhauser.bsky.social
Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
@klausenhauser.bsky.social
2.1K followers 2K following 900 posts
🇨🇦🇭🇰 @EPFL_en protein production + structure facility 🇨🇭| ex @ubc @uwaterloo @unige_en | here for #proteins #structuralbiology #xray #cryoem #plants #mountains #politics #transit #urbanism 🐱🐈 staying for the #hottakes | My views here🧪🧬🌱🔬🏳️‍🌈
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Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
hansonmark.bsky.social
For-profit journals are supposed to improve research quality, yet they're perversely incentivized to churn out whatever they can monetize. This was happening before AI (see Strain: bit.ly/43gJPUM), and AI will make it worse.

It's insane that we volunteer our time to help them do so.

4/n
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. 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. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Good end to a week with a good batch of 🧬✂️
November 13, 2025 at 4:36 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Want @cytiva.bsky.social please make a Gradient Supedex www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Band broadening in pore size gradient size exclusion chromatography columns
Pore size gradient size exclusion chromatography (SEC) columns have been proposed as an alternative to conventional uniform-pore and serially coupled …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 10, 2025 at 7:03 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Saw this over on LI. Very slick and rasy to use mask generator. No more tinkering around needed like before. mcalbyrne.com/cryomaskr.html

Video: www.linkedin.com/posts/mcalby...
CryomaskR - Matthew Byrne
mcalbyrne.com
November 6, 2025 at 7:22 AM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Cleaning an office and this is my absolute nightmare circa 2008. Thank goodness most people have moved beyond word files and sequences… but not all 😌
November 5, 2025 at 8:43 AM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
developer.nvidia.com/blog/introdu...

Will this finally be a codon optimizer that works? Still haven’t ever used a magic bullet but I do know not only the codons but the whole sequence play a big role
Introducing the CodonFM Open Model for RNA Design and Analysis | NVIDIA Technical Blog
Open research is critical for driving innovation, and many breakthroughs in AI and science are achieved through open collaboration. In the field of digital biology research, NVIDIA Clara supports this...
developer.nvidia.com
October 30, 2025 at 7:14 AM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
chang-c-liu.bsky.social
I am delighted to share this work, led by Miguel Alcantar and done in collaboration with Amgen, on the OrthoRep-driven evolution of computationally designed minibinders. Here, we focus not only on getting high affinity, but also on mapping sequence-affinity landscapes of diverse outcomes.
October 28, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
anton-bushuiev.bsky.social
We train machine learning models on millions of proteins. But when it comes to making predictions, do we need them to understand all proteins at once? Often, we need an accurate model for the specific protein we are studying or designing. We address this with ProteinTTT arxiv.org/abs/2411.02109 1/🧵
October 23, 2025 at 1:08 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Just did my multiple choice get to know the country 🇨🇭 naturalization test. Now time for some sauna.. wait that’s the wrong country 🇫🇮 .
October 22, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
kakape.bsky.social
I am fascinated by how viruses evolve - and not just since #SARSCoV2 has shown us at the global stage how consequential virus evolution can be for us.
In my new story in @science.org I got to explore how researchers are probing deeper into the past with old RNA virus genome.
So a 🧪 thread…
On an Arctic archipelago, frozen soil may preserve a hidden history of viruses
Scientists are hunting for ancient RNA in Svalbard’s permafrost, hoping to shed light on the evolution of viral diseases
www.science.org
October 18, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
yehlincho.bsky.social
Thrilled to announce our new preprint, “Protein Hunter: Exploiting Structure Hallucination within Diffusion for Protein Design,” in collaboration with @Griffin, @GBhardwaj8 and @sokrypton.org

🧬Code and notebooks will be released by the end of this week.
🎧Golden- Kpop Demon Hunters
October 13, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
klanglab.bsky.social
🚨Our paper is out! 🥳
Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for efficient genetic code expansion.
Many congrats to everyone involved - a multi-year effort led by @taruniype.bsky.social @maxfottner.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

it all started years ago with a failed experiment
🧵👇 1/9
Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for genetic code expansion - Nature
Bacterial ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters can be utilized and engineered to transport non-canonical amino acids into Escherichia coli for highly efficient synthesis of proteins with novel func...
www.nature.com
October 16, 2025 at 2:06 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Any structural biologists who want some fun? Try building mirror folds. When you’re building them you seriously innately feel like this is “off” but they do exist! When I looked at some of these datasets and deciding which way to turn in Coot it was so offsetting www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 13, 2025 at 5:05 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
After the conference comes the weekend :) Strasbourg and Basel + region what a nice combo. Strasbourg Munster or Roche towers? ⛪️🏢
October 12, 2025 at 4:52 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Finished an exciting 38th Rhine Knee Structural 🧫💎🔬biology meeting lnkd.in/eYse4giF !

See you back in Switzerland in 2026!
October 10, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
gruberlab.bsky.social
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...
October 9, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
mitsenkov.bsky.social
The latest #AlphaFold DB update is out!

We synchronised with UniProt release 2025_03, predicted protein isoforms across all species, and provide MSAs used to generate each prediction.

Proud of the team at the PDBe for the hard work that went into this. Grateful to play my part in it!
ebi.embl.org EMBL-EBI @ebi.embl.org · Oct 7
We’re renewing our collaboration with Google DeepMind!

We'll keep developing the AlphaFold Database to support protein science worldwide 🎉

To mark the moment we’ve synchronised the database with UniProtKB release 2025_03.

www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t...

🖥️🧬 #AlphaFold
@pdbeurope.bsky.social
October 7, 2025 at 2:40 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Hmmm a library of protein designs all assessed for binding on the same platform. All with sequences, both positive and negative data. Makes for much better comparison than those made via paper claims.

proteinbase.com
Proteinbase
The home of protein design data
proteinbase.com
October 6, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
conradhackett.bsky.social
NEW: In 2025, 43% of young American adults regularly get their news from TikTok.
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
A bar chart showing that TikTok is increasingly a place for news, especially among young U.S. adults. Adults ages 30 to 49 have also increasingly been getting news on TikTok: A quarter now say they do so regularly, up from just 2% five years ago. Much smaller shares of adults ages 50 to 64 and 65 and older say they regularly get news there (10% and 3%, respectively, as of this year).
September 25, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
mclellanlab.bsky.social
Our latest preprint is now available doi.org/10.1101/2025...! Led by my postdoc, Luqiang Guo @luqiang.bsky.social, we determined a ~2.4 A resolution structure of the hantavirus glycoprotein tetramer on the surface of VLPs. Also determined structures of dimers of tetramers and Fab-bound tetramers.
June 18, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
computingcaitie.bsky.social
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 5:08 PM
Reposted by Kelvin Lau @klausenhauser on 🙅‍♂️🐘🪡
dudinlab.bsky.social
Be our neighbour !
centriolelab.bsky.social Paul & Virginie - Centriole Lab @centriolelab.bsky.social · Sep 15
Be our new colleague! 🎉
The Dept of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Geneva is hiring an Assistant Professor or Associate Professor.

👉 More details here: lnkd.in/e8Z9eAm4
👉 Our department: mocel.unige.ch

Please feel free to share this opportunity with your network.
September 24, 2025 at 6:52 AM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Rejected for nationality because I make noise after hours. 😭
September 23, 2025 at 9:07 PM
klausenhauser.bsky.social
Long weekend dump. Torn between going to the 🏔️ or my garden. What did I choose?….
Tomatoes the size of my full extended palm Salsa batch #2 of the year A bouquet of dahlias View of dahlia plot
September 22, 2025 at 8:16 AM