Liz Conibear
lizconibear.bsky.social
Liz Conibear
@lizconibear.bsky.social
Cell biologist, Professor at the University of British Columbia. My lab studies membrane contact sites and vesicle trafficking in yeast and human cells
Reposted by Liz Conibear
Proud to share a preprint of our paper on how bridge-like lipid transport protein VPS13C senses lysosomal membrane tension in anticipation of membrane lesions to initiate net ER-to-lysosome lipid transfer for efficient lysosomal repair www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
VPS13C/PARK23 initiates lipid transfer and membrane remodeling for efficient lysosomal repair
Perturbations in lysosome integrity are tightly linked to neurological disorders and ageing, but the underlying pathogenic mechanisms are incompletely understood. Using an unbiased proteomic approach,...
www.biorxiv.org
October 25, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
"Our LPD-3 complex structural data reveal protein–lipid interactions that suggest a model for how the native LPD-3 complex mediates bulk lipid transport and provides a foundation for mechanistic studies of bridge-like lipid transport proteins (BLTPs)." 🤯🤯😍

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Structural basis of lipid transfer by a bridge-like lipid-transfer protein - Nature
The LPD-3 complex structure reveals protein–lipid interactions that suggest a model for how the native LPD-3 complex mediates bulk lipid transport and provides a foundation for mechanistic studies of ...
www.nature.com
April 25, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
Groundbreaking study in Cell from @leventallab.bsky.social: phospholipid asymmetry is a defining feature of the plasma membrane and cholesterol fills the holes — major implications for how this membrane works. A #lipidtime must-read! www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
Cell membranes sustain phospholipid imbalance via cholesterol asymmetry
This work challenges a major assumption in cell biology by showing that lipid bilayers can have drastically different phospholipid abundances between their two leaflets. This lipid abundance asymmetry...
www.cell.com
April 3, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
An advanced toolset to manipulate and monitor subcellular phosphatidylinositol 3,5-bisphosphate. New study from Joshua Pemberton, John Burke, Tamas Balla (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) and colleagues: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#Biochemistry #CellSignaling #lipid
April 2, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
What's happening to academia in the US is straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and happening at breakneck speed.

The link by @chrischirp.bsky.social brilliantly summarises this and the need to fight back 💪

open.substack.com/pub/christin...
Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities
I have mapped 35 of the Trump administration's attacks on science and universities to the authoritarian playbook - and consider what it means for attacks still to come
open.substack.com
March 10, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
New work from the @lpjacksonlab.bsky.social uses a combination of biochemical, biophysical and computational modeling techniques to investigate endosomal trafficking players. Congrats to 1st author @mintuju.bsky.social!
bit.ly/4hYry4o
@vubasicsciences.bsky.social @vandybiomed.bsky.social
Greater than the sum of its parts: the role of VARP-SNX27 binding in endosomal “supercomplex” formation
In cells, multi-subunit coat protein complexes are responsible for coordinating the transport of transmembrane proteins and lipid cargo between membranes. At the endosome, cargo trafficking is medi…
www.vanderbilt.edu
February 14, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
Soooo excited to share this, just published. www.nature.com/articles/s41.... It started as a crazy ‘Friday afternoon’ experiment and just… worked. And kept on working. We fused a #nanobody to a #thioesterase. This delivers the thioesterase to a target and specifically depalmitoylates this protein
Nanobody-thioesterase chimeras to specifically target protein palmitoylation - Nature Communications
Reversible palmitoylation regulates the activity and localisation of numerous proteins. Here, Kuo et al develop nanobody-based reagents to specifically target palmitoylation of individual proteins, us...
www.nature.com
February 7, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
Arp2/3 nucleates bidirectional linear actin filaments when activated by SPIN90 !!! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Arp2/3-mediated bidirectional actin assembly by SPIN90 dimers in metazoans
Branched actin networks nucleated by the Arp2/3 complex play critical roles in various cellular processes, from cell migration to intracellular transport. However, when activated by WISH/DIP/SPIN90 fa...
www.biorxiv.org
January 31, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
Congratulations. Just beautiful!
November 17, 2024 at 1:25 AM
Reposted by Liz Conibear
Can colleagues amplify this appeal to journals and journal editors to open accounts on Bluesky, please? @MicrobioSoc @TrendsMicrobiol @CellCellPress @JBacteriology @jbiolchem @Nature @ScienceMagazine @PNASNews @MolMicroEditors @NAR_Open @NatureMicrobiol @NatureComms @ASMicrobiology 🙏
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November 10, 2024 at 1:13 PM