News

We celebrated everything good that had happened despite the pandemic, and the lab's 4-year anniversary, and documented it with an unflattering photo.

We are excited to welcome Raymond Huang, a Harvard undergrad, to the lab. This is Raymond's very first experience of wet lab work!

Congratulations to Miao on being awarded a Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship!

Today we welcome Jin Dai to the lab after his long drive from Georgia. Jin arrives from Karl Lechtreck's lab with a wealth of experience in Chlamy genetics and live-cell imaging, and a desire to learn structural biology.

We are excited to welcome Adrian Coscia to the lab for the start of his Ph.D. rotation project.

A few beers to kickstart the brainstorming.

Congratulations to Haixia who has been awarded a BCMP-Merck Postdoctoral Fellowship!

Pleased we could contribute to this story from Rui Zhang's lab on identifying the microtubule inner proteins of the cortical microtubules of Toxoplasma gondii.

Thank you to NIGMS for kindly funding our work on the structure and function of the radial spoke complexes for the next five years.

Congratulations to Sandeep on the birth of his beautiful baby boy!

We're looking for a new colleague. Interested? More details here.

Huge congratulations to Jacob, who passed his Preliminary Qualifying Examination (PQE) today – a major milestone towards his Ph.D. Celebrations will follow.

Our collaboration with Gerhard Wagner's lab on the structure of an activated GPCR-G-protein complex in lipid nanodiscs was published today in Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. This is the lab's first ever membrane protein structure! We're particularly excited as the Wagner lab will soon become our new lab neighbors.

Travis and Hao's paper on the structure of a triple-headed ODA is now published. 

Our atomic model of a doublet microtubule appears on the cover of the 9th Edition of Lodish Molecular Cell Biology.

Our work on the structure of the radial spoke is featured on the cover of NSMB! Rustic.

Alan and Rui Zhang have written a short dispatch describing the remarkable work of Gaia Pigino using cryo-ET to reveal the structure of primary cilia. Read for free here.

Lauren's rotation in the lab has come to an end, but we loved having her with us even for a short time. Good luck with your future rotations!

Our new collaborative paper on the structure of radial spokes and associated complexes has been published in Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. This was a huge effort led by Miao Gui who continued a project started by Adrian Koh when he was a postdoc in the lab. We're especially indebted to Erica Sze-Tu, a co-op undergraduate, who did a tremendous job perfecting flagella purification. The paper can be read for free here: https://rdcu.be/ccbVa.

Today we welcome Lauren to the lab for her first in-person rotation since arriving at Harvard from the University of Minnesota. Lauren will be working closely with Haixia Zhou and hopes to learn some EM.

Science resumes!

Jacob Anderson becomes the lab's very first Ph.D. student. He will be studying the structural basis of ciliopathies. 

The Brown lab will be shut down for at least 6 weeks in response to COVID-19.

SBGrid profiles the Brown lab in their latest Member Tale

Thanks to Narcis Petriman and Esben Lorentzen for profiling Sandeep's recent BBSome paper in an Insight Article for eLife. 

HMS has put together a video showcasing the use of cryo-EM in biomedical research. Watch it here.

Thanks to Alexey Amunts for recommending our recent BBSome paper on F1000.

Sandeep's paper is now published in eLife.

Matthew has joined the lab for 6 months as part of his undergraduate course at Northeastern University.

Today was the last day of Josie's time with us in the lab. She now plans to retreat to the wilderness of Vermont to write up her master's thesis.

Today we say goodbye to Shahad Taqi who has been in the lab for 6 months as part of her bachelor's program at Northeastern Univerisity. We wish Shahad all the best for the future.

Sandeep's paper on the structure of the mammalian native BBSome is now online as a preprint.

Our latest research has been profiled on the HMS website and recommended on F1000.

Our latest paper on the structure of native doublet microtubules from cilia has just been published in Cell. This was a wonderful collaboration with Rui Zhang and Susan Dutcher. Please check out the video abstract on YouTube, which was made for us by Veronica Falconieri.

The lab is delighted to welcome Haixia Zhou as a new postdoctoral fellow from Prof. Xinquan Wang's lab at Tsinghua University. 

Hao Wu joins the lab after a productive time as a grad student at Tsinghua University working on chromatin remodelers. He will be applying his cryo-EM skills to understand the machinery that underpins cilia function.

A big congratulations to Miao Gui, who was today awarded a Merck-BCMP Postdoctoral Fellowship. A very well deserved achievement. 

Today we say goodbye to Erica who returns to continue her degree at Northeastern University. Erica has had a big impact on the lab and will be missed by everyone.

We're very pleased that the Pew Charitable Trust has agreed to fund our research into the formation of cilium-dependent signaling pathways.

Josephine Botsch has joined the lab for 6 months from the University of Tuebingen, Germany for her master's thesis. Josie is familiar with using X-ray crystallography for protein structure elucidation and is now excited to learn more about cryo-EM.

We are delighted to welcome Travis Walton to the lab. Travis joins from Jack Szostak's lab at MGH, where he uncovered a novel chemical mechanism for nonenzymatic RNA polymerization. 

Today we say a sad goodbye to Adrian, who leaves for a great opportunity to work on developing the next generation of electron microscopes at Thermo Fisher. We wish him all the best. 

Our lab welcomes Shimi, who joins as a research associate.

A collaborative effort examining the evolution of the mitochondrial ribosome was published today in Molecular Biology & Evolution. The paper also made the cover with some beautiful artwork by Beata Mierzwa. 

Today we say farewell to Joshua David. Josh was the first member of the group and was instrumental in establishing the lab. We wish him the best of luck as he joins the Schwartz lab at MIT.

Delighted that Miao Gui has joined our lab from Tsinghua University where he studied viral surface proteins by cryo-EM.

Erica Sze-Tu joins the lab for 6 months from Northeastern Univerisity.  

Our News & Views piece on MicroED has been published in Nature. 

Sad to say goodbye to Griffin Rademacher, who returns to Northeastern University. During his time in the lab, Griffin made huge contributions to both wet and dry projects and will be sorely missed. We wish him all the best. 

Our paper with the Shao lab has been published in eLife.