paulschanda
Passionate for integrated structural biology, including NMR and many more. Particularly interested in protein dynamics, and therefore chaperones, enzymes and mitochondrial protein import.
Fortunate to lead a great research team at IST Austria.
- Very nice preprint that shows that protein crystallographic structures can be used to reveal the entropy of ligand binding. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- A recent podcast by Stephanie Wankowicz and James @fraserlab.com picked up our work (with Alex Bronstein & coworkers) on Guiding AlphaFold3 with experimental data (cryoEM, X-ray, NMR) to generate protein ensembles. (Thanks for the kind words 🙂) 👉 creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/... (from 35:50)
- 📢 Check out Ben Tatman's talk in the Magnetic Resonance Seminar series online (see details below). He will talk about methods to probe protein dynamics by magic-angle spinning #NMR. Friday, Jan 23, noon CET.
- Ben will talk about his recent work on relaxation-dispersion MAS NMR, including published work )https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.5c09057) and some new ideas on analysis of relaxation-dispersion NMR to probe microsecond dynamics.
- 📢 New preprint alert! How do proteins enter mitochondria? We uncovered a surprising mechanism at the mitochondrial entry gate—using #NMR, in vivo single-particle tracking, yeast experiments, and MD simulations to crack the code. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #StructuralBiology #Mitochondria 🧵 1/8
- Almost all mitochondrial proteins are imported through the TOM complex: a beta-barrel pore and “receptor proteins” on the cytosolic side. The “central receptor” protein, Tom22, has remained enigmatic. In cryoEM structures, Tom22 was mostly unresolved, or in contradictory conformations. 🧵2/8
- We found that the cytosolic domain of Tom22— traditionally called a “receptor” — is mostly unfolded, with a short transient helix. MD simulations show the range of states. But how does a receptor interact with the incoming precursor proteins? And is this preprotein-bining even its actual role? 🧵3/8
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View full threadThanx & congrats @ivasucec.bsky.social Undina Guillerm, Jakob Schneider for a heroic effort. (No doubt: this is the paper with the biggest NMR set from our lab) And Francois Dehez for lots of MD simulations, Nils Wiedemann’s lab for yeast work and Karin Busch’s lab for single-molecule tracking. 🧵8/8
- 📢 Join us at the first Austrian #NMR meeting. Organised by a fantastic group of young international NMR researchers, this meeting is great opportunity for postdocs and students to contribute their science with a talk or poster. And to see great invited speakers. austrian-nmr-meeting.pages.ist.ac.at
- The PhD call at @istaresearch.bsky.social is open. Get a glimpse on the work of Jakob, a PhD student in our group www.instagram.com/reel/DSjvCo4... Applications: phd.pages.ista.ac.at/phd-applicat...
- There are many opportunities in many groups. Check the research on the ISTA web site ista.ac.at In our group we specifically look for candidates with a strong interest in structural biology and NMR. Experience in protein production, and/or NMR, possibly also in ML and EM, are particularly welcome.
- #NMR spectroscopists in and around Austria: join us for this meeting. A few great keynote speakers, and lots of space for contributed talks from students and postdocs. Taking place at ISTA @istaresearch.bsky.social in February 2026
- So excited to announce the first 🧲 Next Austrian NMR Meeting 🧲, happening @ ISTA, Feb 26–27, 2026! Plus a satellite workshop, 💊 “ #NMR in #DrugDiscovery” 🧭 on Feb 25! 📅 Registration: Dec 1, 2025 🌐 Program, venue: austrian-nmr-meeting.pages.ist.ac.at #NMRchat #Austria 1/4
- Reposted by paulschandaSo excited to announce the first 🧲 Next Austrian NMR Meeting 🧲, happening @ ISTA, Feb 26–27, 2026! Plus a satellite workshop, 💊 “ #NMR in #DrugDiscovery” 🧭 on Feb 25! 📅 Registration: Dec 1, 2025 🌐 Program, venue: austrian-nmr-meeting.pages.ist.ac.at #NMRchat #Austria 1/4
- Wichtig für Klosterneuburg. Und auch für alle am @istaresearch.bsky.social Bitte hier unterzeichnen: mein.aufstehn.at/petitions/ra...
- I had the pleasure to work with amazing students at @istaresearch.bsky.social on a nice "side project": Understanding the travel-related carbon emissions of our institute, and how much planes pollute (compared to trains) -- and then applying all this to analyze the footprint of #NMR conferences. ->🧵
- “In-person meetings have a quality that online conferences simply cannot provide,” says ISTA professor @paulschanda.bsky.social. But can we make conference travel more sustainable? Read more: ista.ac.at/en/news/carb...
- In brief: 1) yes, carbon emissions due to conference travel are substantial (can be tens of tons of CO2 per year for some colleagues -- >10-fold more than the per-person "budget" to stay within a 2°C warming "goal", which in itself leads already to massive changes to our daily lives.
- 2) Trains do emit much less CO2 than planes per km and person, also when considering all the infrastructure. The savings can be an order of magnitude (and in most cases 3-4x, depending on the travel start/destination) 3) Per-person CO2 emissions to travel to a #EUROMAR #NMR conference is above 1 ton
- The course results were not only presented in our Institute Colloquium, but we worked on a detailed analysis of NMR conferences and published the results mr.copernicus.org/articles/6/2... See also: ista.ac.at/en/news/carb...
- Looking forward to hosting Kresten Lindorff-Larsen's talk tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing ISTA's main lecture hall of full, and hearing the latest developments of tools to predict, design and study intrinsically disordered proteins. @istaresearch.bsky.social
- Reposted by paulschandahere is the correct link: ista.ac.at/en/job/tenur...
- 📢 New preprint: Experiment-guided AlphaFold3 resolves accurate protein ensembles. doi.org/10.1101/2025... AlphaFold3 is incredible, but has crucial limitations: it typically collapses to a single conformation, ignoring the inherent dynamics of proteins. And it can be wrong. Here's a solution. 🧵👇
- We present a new framework that treats AlphaFold3 as a powerful sequence-conditioned prior. By modifying the reverse diffusion steps of AF3, we inject a gradient-based guidance term derived from measured experimental data. This "steering" generates protein ensembles consistent with observations. 2/n
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View full threadPreprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Data doi.org/10.7910/DVN/... Code github.com/sai-advaith/... 8/8
- Reposted by paulschandaISTA @istaresearch.bsky.social is hiring a tenure-track staff scientist in Computational Structural Biology, to develop tools for cryo-EM, cryo-ET, structural prediction methods and protein interaction analysis! Please spread the word! ista.ac.at/en/job/tenur...
- Today, teaching again our sustainability course at @istaresearch.bsky.social, we discussed about the "addiction" of humanity to fossil fuels. The promise of carbon capture and storage ("we'll solve it later") is so convenient, and who cares today that it probably won't ever work ...?
- This is exactly what scientists have been saying for years: oilprice.com/Energy/Energ...
- 🌟 Huge congrats to Darja Rohden for winning the L’Oréal For Women in Science Award 2025! 🎓 Darja works in our group @istaresearch.bsky.social and at @univie.ac.at, funded by @fwf-at.bsky.social on chemical synthesis of amino acids and protein #nmr. 👉 Get more details in the thread. 1/n
- 4 Forscherinnen erhalten den L'Oréal-@unesco.org Förderpreis "For Women in #Science" 2025, 2 davon von der #univie: Nida Ali der Fakultät für Psychologie und Darja Rohden vom Institut für Biologische Chemie! 🥳 Herzliche Gratulation an die Preisträgerinnen! Mehr dazu 👉 www.ots.at/presseaussen...
- Check the last paper, equally pushed forward by Darja and @iomichiamofede.bsky.social in our lab @istaresearch.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... The "L'Oreal For Women In Science" award will help Darja complete the final piece. #NMR #Research #LOrealAward #FWF @fwf-at.bsky.social
- Reposted by paulschandaJoin us for the Austrian Cryo-EM Symposium Nov 11–12 at @istaresearch.bsky.social! Top speakers, cutting-edge cryo-EM, and a chance to explore Vienna & the ISTA campus. Register now 👉 cryoem-symposium.pages.ist.ac.at #cryoEM #teamtomo
- ISTA's Science Experience Center opens with a nice festival. If you are in the Vienna area, come and enjoy.
- Keynote “In defense of wonder - science communication in an age of misinformation” by @michaeljohngorman.bsky.social of the @mit.edu museum about current challenges in science communication.
- 📢 New paper: a combination of a new isotope labelling with solution-NMR, allowing to assign methyl groups even in large proteins -- we've tested it with our favourite ~130 kDa enzyme and a 70 kDa receptor. ->see thread 1/n @istaresearch.bsky.social @univie.ac.at www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Methyl-TROSY NMR is powerful to probe interactions, dynamics and structure in large molecule, but a significant bottleneck is the assignment of NMR signals to individual methyls. We leverage a new isotope labeling scheme and a tailored NMR experiment to connect methyls of Leu and Val (->pic). 2/n
- The specific pattern of 13C spins and deuteration allows connecting the two methyls to the backbone. With this information and chemical-shift predictions many methyls can be assigned in a straightforward manner -- such as in our Tom70 receptor of mitochondria and a 134 kDa large dehydrogenase. 3/n
- This will accelerate #nmr studies of large proteins. Thanks particularly to Robert Konrat and Roman Lichtenecker, Giorgia Toscano, Sonja Knödelsdorfer, Aleksandra Ptaszek @univie.ac.at , and @iomichiamofede.bsky.social and Jakob Schneider @istaresearch.bsky.social for this great collaboration. 4/4
- Reposted by paulschandaThe VISTA Science Experience Center Opening Festival offers a free, diverse program for science, art & music lovers. Several activities, incl. exhibition tours, keynotes, and panel discussions, will also be accessible with sign language interpretation. Join us from Oct 3-5! bit.ly/4mnJ3Ne
- Check out these thoughts about reviewing preprints. I agree, a change in the culture and practices would be very welcome.
