Fletcher Lab

Lab: Why aren't we on Twitter? Dan: Umm. I don't follow Twitter. Lab: But the rest of the world does. Scientists too. Dan: I see. What's your point? Lab: We should be on Twitter. And join scientific discussions. Dan: I'm more the silent type. Lab: We'll run it. Dan: Go for it!

Happy #internationalwomensday to all of the incredible women, especially those from our lab (past and present). Your curiosity, creativity and determination continue to shape our science and community.

The NTDscope is a portable brightfield, darkfield, and fluorescence microscope used for diagnosing neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). This video shows S. mansoni miracidia. Check out our most recent publication: journals.plos.org/globalpubliche…

Check out our latest preprint: LUCas! A direct light control of Cas13 trans-cleavage activity. Congrats to all the authors: Carlos (@NG04), Deepak (@deepak_me90), Andres (@adextre521), and Aymeric. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Preprint out! Cell surfaces are crowded with tall proteins that block immune recognition. We discovered tall binding proteins create “stepping stones” that help short receptors engage, even in dense crowds. In memory of Phillip L. Geissler biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

How does a macrophage decide to eat or simply nibble? Check out our latest paper! You can also read this nice review. Congrats @CaitlinCornell6 for leading this amazing work! nature.com/articles/s4155… nature.com/articles/s4155…

Macrophages can engulf targets whole (phagocytosis) or nibble them in small fragments (trogocytosis), a decision controlled by cortical tension in the targets (high tension favors former, low latter) nature.com/articles/s4155… nature.com/articles/s4155… @NatureCellBio @UCBerkeley

If you are going to #ASCB2025, check out some great talks and posters from our lab members

Happy Thanksgiving! Gratitude today for everyone pushing the frontiers of science in their different roles.

Check out our latest published manuscript: SurFlex microscopy, a new technique to measure molecular flexibility. Congrats to Aymeric, Sid (@SidAg92), Lena (@lfblackmon) and Andrés (@adextre521)! pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

Congrats Dan!

Our team is developing portable digital microscopes that harness AI to automatically detect parasitic infections. This shows great potential to help public health programs expand access to affordable disease screening in low-resource settings. Link: tinyurl.com/4bazch67

Check out Siddhansh (@SidAg92) presentation at the 4th Physics of Life Symposium hosted by the #CZBiohubSF. youtu.be/b7G5wyE6iyo?fe…

Happy Postdoc Appreciation Week to all of our postdocs! #PostdocAppreciationWeek

Congrats Kira for passing your qualifying exam!

The deadline to register for MBL's fall course, Light Microscopy Bootcamp, is this Friday, August 15!🔬 The course is engineered to empower graduate students to use light microscopy in their own research. Read more: bit.ly/4e5QA0y 📷 Mark Lessard

Take a look at our newest published article in PLOS NTD: doi.org/10.1371/journa… #schistosomiasis #ML #diagnostics

Simple and elegant, another one of those stories, I wish I had done. Fresh from the Fletcher lab: Cell surface crowding is a tunable energetic barrier to cell-cell fusion. rdcu.be/ezCOF

Check out our most recent published paper in @NatureComms about the effects of cell surface crowding in cell-cell fusion: rdcu.be/ezCOF

Check out this talk by one of our amazing postdocs, Deepak (@deepak_me90)!

Had fun at the MBL Physiology Course in Woods Hole. Chunzi, Elizabeth & Kira led creative rotations: • Trogocytosis is a mi(gh)t-y way to transfer • Sync(ytium) or Swim: Which fusogen will reign supreme? • Mucin Impossible: Eat up or get lost