Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧
Interested in likelihood-based methods for structural biology. Contributor to Phenix, CCP4 and CCP-EM.
Based at CIMR, University of Cambridge.
Posts usually about science.
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧At a time when the UK should be capitalising on its global reputation as a great place to do science, this is an enormous own goal. I am so sorry for all those who jobs are going to be impacted.
- Both MRC and BBSRC responsive modes now withdrawn until further notice. Existing applications unlikely to succeed (late 2025 round expecting 1-5% success rate). Listen, I get that UKRI wants to pivot. But killing both at once is devastating. Let's hope at least one opens by summer... #AcademicSky
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Finally comms from UKRI - on a Sunday evening. No mention of the hundreds of ECRs who will see their careers ended by these decisions and notably no explanation for MRC retrospectively applying cuts and wasting all the work that went into writing, reviewing and scoring applications - £millions
- Today, we're sharing an open letter from our Chief Executive, Professor Sir Ian Chapman, outlining changes to UKRI investment approach, and addressing concerns about research funding and the financial position of STFC. Read his letter here: www.ukri.org/news/open-le...
- Missed it, thanks for pointing it out!
- this was published this week, in case you haven’t seen it: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧My hero!!! An amazing scientist and a wonderful person!
- Jane Richardson was born #OTD in 1941 + Developed the Richardson (ribbon) diagram to represent proteins' 3D structure (becoming a standard representation for protein structures) + MacArthur Fellow, 1985 + Elected, Nat'l Academy of Sciences, 1991 + President, Biophysical Society, 2012 #WomenInSTEM
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Has the MRC research funding ‘pause’ been covered by any major news network? It feels like it should be a major news story
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧She continues to be a lively presence at structural biology meetings. And for my money has the deepest, most intuitive understanding of protein geometry. A treasure.
- By the way, this is by the @alisiafadini.bsky.social behind ROCKET!
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧This appeared today: www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/...
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- Hope to see you there!
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- This is a classic of the genre!
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧From Sameer Velankar & colleagues in @narjournal.bsky.social #NARDatabaseIssue | PDBe: enhanced structural data exploration to facilitate discovery | #Bioinformatics #Database #OpenScience #Proteomics #PDB 🧬 🖥️🧪🔓 ⬇️ academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧BBC News - Top UK scientist says research visa restrictions endanger economy www.bbc.com/news/article...
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- It’s great to see people thinking about tracking errors in Fourier terms! EM_placement tries to infer effects of orientation bias from half maps, but it would be far better to do this directly in the reconstruction process. No surprise it’s people like ZO and Dominika doing this work!
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Giles and Burnley: Ten years of the CCP-EM Spring Symposium #Cryoem #ElectronCryoMicroscopy #CCPEM ... #IUCr journals.iucr.org/paper?S2059798325010496
- I really like the new summary representation Airlie has come up with for the self rotation function!
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧🚨Attention prospective PhD students🚨 Are you interested in molecular mechanisms, RNA viruses, structural biology or biophysics? 🧬🦠🧪 We have THREE fully-funded PhD projects available for October 2026 entry: www.findaphd.com/phds/?Keywor... Please share/repost, and get in touch if you're interested
- Great collaborative environment with lots of exciting work!
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Our November issue is available at journals.iucr.org/d/issues/202... On the cover: recent studies demonstrate that the range of samples suitable for cryo-EM single-particle analysis is expanding towards increasingly more native samples. Read the review at shorturl.at/mitjg
- I’m biased, but it’s well worth an hour or so of your time! #cryoEM #crystallography 🧪
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧OpenFold3-preview (OF3p) is out: a sneak peek of our AF3-based structure prediction model. Our aim for OF3 is full AF3-parity for every modality. We now believe we have a clear path towards this goal and are releasing OF3p to enable building in the OF3 ecosystem. More👇
- There are some great new results!
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- This is reminiscent of the subset of bacterial toxins that hijack retrograde translocation and the ERAD machinery to get into the cytosol. Their active, translocated subunits are also lysine deserts!
- The proteasome-substrate-shuttle protein UBQLN2 contains—like other quality control system proteins—a long region devoid of lysine (a lysine desert) Martin Grønbæk-Thygesen (from @rhp-lab.bsky.social) et al show that introducing K here causes ubiquitylation and degradation doi.org/10.1101/2025...
- Christopher did a great job on this cover!
- I’ve frequently posted the version revised in response to referee comments to bioRxiv, on the assumption that anything up to and including the author accepted version is allowed, though not to Nature family. I wonder if @ritastrack.bsky.social could comment?
- Well deserved! I’ve always been deeply impressed by David’s insights into a wide variety of areas!
- This looks really impressive!
- These are fantastic courses in an amazing location!
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Dear scientific community, I am looking for two postdoctoral structural biologists to join my group at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
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- This is well worth your time! Alisia and Minhuan are both rising stars!
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- I have two fond memories of Rolf. In the late 1980s, when I was just becoming independent, he asked for a copy of my program, SIGMAA. I said sure, send me a mag tape, and he said no, I have a budget for this (Hoechst era) and offered several thousand dollars. Travel budget sorted for a couple years!
- Pipe stems (Dutch)
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Blind structure prediction experiments like CASP and CAPRI are catalysts of new developments
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧A small reminder to all structural biologists around working on biomolecular complexes: please consider sharing your complexes as targets for CAPRI - AI has not solved all structure prediction problems and there are still challenges! See www.capri-docking.org/contribute/
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- Wow, that brings back old memories from my PhD!
- The first 3D protein structure determined in Canada, S. griseus protease B, was solved by Louis Delbaere and Michael James in 1974. Shown is the re-refined structure of the protease complexed with the third domain of the ovomucoid inhibitor www.rcsb.org/structu...
- In case you tried the first link, here’s one that works!
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- Fantastic news!
- NEW from me at STAT: We've learned that DeepMind is going to fund CASP, the protein structure competition that brought Google DeepMind's #AlphaFold to prominence (and a Nobel Prize), as its NIH funding runs out. More @statnews.com: www.statnews.com/2025/07/21/c... 🖥️🩺🧪🧬 #bioML
- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Recently I learnt that EMBL-EBI has a free online course about AlphaFold — how it works, strengths and limitations, how to use it — and it's very good! There are also little quizzes and interactives. www.ebi.ac.uk/training/onl...
- If you’re attending #ACA2025 in Chicago, check out the talk by the amazing @alisiafadini.bsky.social. She’ll present new results on using experimental data (X-ray or #CryoEM) to guide AlphaFold even with very low resolution data! Session 2.1.3 at 11:10 on Sunday.
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- More arguments for choosing society journals, where any profits are ploughed back into science! For structural biology, please consider @actacrystd.iucr.org, @actacrystf.iucr.org and @iucrj.iucr.org!
- Where is the money going? In the case of for-profit publishers it's very clear: Your open access fees fund corporate profit margins. Profit margins for large academic publishers can far exceed those of household names like Amazon and Apple. chart source: bit.ly/4leULKi #scipub #academicsky
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- It was great fun talking to Kiarash about his work, and I picked up a lot from Jonas’s questions! As anyone who knows Kiarash will imagine, it didn’t take long to reach a decision on the outcome!
- Many congratulations to Dr Kiarash Jamali @kjamali.bsky.social for successfully defending his PhD thesis today! 🥳 Also many thanks to Jonas Adler and Randy Read for examining him. I expect great things from Dr Jamali in his career, so do keep an eye on him. #ModelAngelo
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Speak up to prevent a major loss for the field. CASP, which helped shaping structural biology including AlphaFold is on the verge of shutting down. NIH funding has lapsed, UC Davis support ends and the core team is being let go. Painfully shortsighted.
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- If this is true, it’s abysmally shortsighted for #NIH. The new tools nurtured by the long series of #CASP challenges probably contribute far more in one year to the scientific and industrial economies than the entire funds that have supported it.
- Exclusive: An international scientific competition widely credited with spurring the development of artificial intelligence for biology appears to be on its deathbed. scim.ag/44ukS90
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- Congratulations!
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- Reposted by Randy Read 🇨🇦🇬🇧Edited by Tom Burnley, Paula da Fonseca, Vicki Gold and Stephen Muench, this Structural Biology – Acta Cryst. D virtual issue collects articles from the 2023 CCP-EM Spring Symposium, showcasing recent advances in cryo-EM and structural biology methods. tinyurl.com/22evpux5
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