The Villa Lab develops tools to observe macromolecular complexes in their natural environment, the cell. Our ultimate goal is to unveil the structural dynamics of these complexes while they go about their everyday life. We combine cell biology and electron microscopy to generate data, and we use image processing and physical modeling to understand these data.
Vinson’s chapter
Vinson’s chapter titled “Practical Approaches for Cryo-FIB Milling and Applications for Cellular Cryo-Electron Tomography” is published as part of the cryoEM. Methods in Molecular Biology book edited by Tamir Gonen and Brent Nannenga. It has a lot of useful tips and we hope it will help #democratizecryoET.
TDP43 paper
Our collaboration with the lab of Don Cleveland describing how TDP-43 and HSP70 phase separate into anisotropic, intranuclear liquid spherical annuli is now published after peer review in Science (see preprint here). We’re happy to have contributed to this exciting work. Congratulations Digvijay on capturing these phase separated compartments in the nucleus using cryo-ET!
Elizabeth tenure
Elizabeth gives her tenure talk. It has been a challenging year, but we are grateful for the opportunity to do great science in a wonderful environment.
Josh EMBO
Josh is awarded an EMBO long-term fellowship. Congratulations!
matt candidacy
Matt has advanced to candidacy! Congratulations on the great progress in your high-risk projects!