Dylan Burnette

I am excited to finally be able to share with you our work reporting the first Extracellular Vesicle with a personality! This video does not show a cell, it is a Blebbisome! #CellBiology nature.com/articles/s4155…

@Pablosquest Not an animation or AI. This is a time-lapse from a confocal microscope where a DNA binding protein, an actin binding protein, and a mitochondrial protein were fused to fluorescent proteins. Of course, each original grayscale channel was pseudo-colored to make this overlay.

@MAG2ART Animation

A cell videoed through a microscope. DNA in the nucleus (cyan), mitochondria (yellow), and the actin filament cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown. #CellBiology

@hermetictrader1 The mitochondria are moved. Molecular motors walking on microtubules and actin filaments (e.g., kinesin and myosin, respectfully) pull on the mitochondria to move them around the cell.

@MAG2ART Every time that you shows the mitochondria's performance moving like little slugs... It seems like self-induction dynamics. Do they move on their own or are they moved?

A cell going through cell division to create two daughter cells videoed through a spinning disk confocal microscope. DNA (red), Golgi apparatus (green), actin filaments (blue) are shown. #CellBiology

@cohenlaboratory Thank you!

@MAG2ART felixcampelo.wixsite.com/membranetraffi…

Are there still Zoom-based scientific seminar series? As I plan for a promotion cycle that expects ~10 invited talks/year. I love giving talks and talking with interesting scientists, just not the travel part. I study the growth and function of the heart and large EVs.

A cancer cell videoed through a microscope. It has 3 nuclei (magenta). The powerhouse/overlords of the cell, mitochondria, are also shown (green). #CellBiology

Two cells isolated from a fish scale videoed through a DIC microscope. The cells are cool but now all I see are extracellular vesicles floating by in the media and stuck to the substrate....... #CellBiology

This is not a dispute over nomenclature. The authors of the zombosome paper misrepresented our published data to justify introducing a new name. Whether intentional or unintentional, this misrepresentation should have not made it past peer review. nature.com/articles/s4155…

They renamed blebbisomes. The authors claimed erroneously in their paper that blebbisomes are found only in cancer cells, whereas we clearly demonstrated that blebbisomes are produced by normal cells. The structures described here are simply blebbisomes generated by astrocytes.

@Tabdanov I think certain micropatterns would inspire the cells to produce more blebbisomes. It also did not take us long to find a blebbisome being created by a cell within a 3D collagen gel, although we never quantified formation rate. So I would say "probably" to both questions.

@MAG2ART Will these cells generate even more blebbisomes on complex surfaces (micropatterns, nano textures)? In 3D matrices?

Our Blebbisome paper has been out for a year and has 50 citations! To celebrate, here is Video 5 from the paper: fibroblasts (green arrows) and their blebbisomes (magenta arrowheads) hanging out. #CellBiology #microscopy See the paper here: nature.com/articles/s4155…

CELL BODY MICROTUBULES Among other things, microtubules are the tracks used by cells to traffic membranes (e.g., next to the nucleus where the #Golgi resides). It takes super-resolution microscopy to resolve and study this complex microtubule-network (image). #CellBiology

"The microtubule GTP-tubulin cap size is modulated during cell division" is now available on @biorxivpreprint! This video by Anna Cassidy shows the tips of growing microtubules (EB1) and DNA (histone 2B) during metaphase. #Cellbiology biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Has anyone else had problems with Proposal Central's "Non-Scientist Summary"? The goal is to not write sentences that are above a 12th grade reading level, which is a good rule of thumb for science communication. However, every sentence I write is apparently above a 12th grade reading level. For example, "This project supports the American Heart Association’s mission to improve heart health and help people live longer, healthier lives." Really? This is above a 12th grade reading level? Am I missing something?

Dying colon cancer cells videoed through a microscope. #CellBiology

The three elements needed to be a biologist. And yes, you need all three. You don't see the third and most crucial element? Look at the cat. If you know, you know. If you don't know, you need to figure it out. #CellBiology

Does anyone have suggestions as to what AI I should use to aid in the development of protocols for cell culture experiments? ChatGPT is not the answer. My ChatGPT account was disabled for "Weapons". What was I doing? Asking what small molecules can be used to permanently inhibit translation (e.g., making proteins from mRNA) in cell culture; beyond cyclohexamide, which is reversible. It kept saying that the answer could be used to "benefit or harm humans". I could not figure out why my queries kept triggering this block. Inhibiting the translation is a common technique used in cell biological research. My appeal was "carefully" reviewed within a few minutes and they upheld my account being disabled with no further explanation. AI companies keep claiming that they are going to advance science but they clearly do not have working scientists making the guardrails. My experience using ChatGPT is that these guardrails are more or less arbitrary. #CellBiology requires perturbations of cellular processes and some if not most of the chemicals we use would be poisonous to a human if ingested. That does not make them "weapons". After ChatGPT would not answer several times, I tested it out by asking it to list the small molecules that could be used to modulate actin filaments. It listed all of them. And, yes. All of them are poisonous. Arbitrary. My prediction is that we are going to hear more about AI Slop in science over the next few years than we are going to hear about AI advancing science. What do these AI companies think AI is going to be used for? Hypothesis generation? Nope. AI does not function well at the edge of knowledge and tends to make stuff up when confronted with questions whose answers are not yet known. It does not generate new hypotheses well, especially in the biological sciences. This problem is not going to go away because the data needed to train a model to function as an experienced scientist are not and never will be available. Scientists and Artists have that in common. One can not create something new by simply rehashing something old. Even if you could create something new from something old, this would require that the scientific literature be composed entirely of reproducible data. It is not. If you are wondering, here is a list of small molecules that you can use to stop translation provided by Google AI: 1. Eukaryotic Translation Inhibitors (Selective & General) PF-06446846 (PF846): A selective inhibitor that induces the 80S ribosome to stall at specific codons (e.g., PCSK9) during elongation, particularly when a specific nascent chain is present in the ribosome exit tunnel. Cycloheximide (CHX): A widely used laboratory reagent that blocks the elongation phase in eukaryotes by inhibiting eEF2-mediated translocation. Rocaglates (e.g., Silvestrol): Inhibit translation initiation by targeting the DEAD-box RNA helicase eIF4A. Didemnin B: Binds to the ribosome/eEF-1 complexes and blocks eEF-2 binding. Anisomycin: Inhibits translation by targeting the peptidyl transferase center. Verrucarin A: Inhibits elongation, specifically effective on reinitiating ribosomes. LMI-070 (Branaplam): Induces ribosome stalling and has been used to modulate translation of specific transcripts. I think most of these are reversible, at least the ones I know about. In the end we will probably stick with Cycloheximide and just keep it in for the duration of the experiment. After some digging on Google, I think the most likely explanation for my account being disabled is that "ricin" must have come up in ChatGPT's "thinking". It inhibits protein synthesis and it has been developed as a weapon. It could also be something else, I will likely never know. @OpenAI @ChatGPTapp

A Tale Two Cells, or A Tale of Two Large Oncosomes, or A Tale of Two Blebbisomes.... Two cells, each with a large oncosome-like extracellular vesicle on it, are joined by two blebbisomes. #CellBiology Read about blebisomes here: nature.com/articles/s4155…