News

Nikita joins the lab as a rotation student to work on cryo-ET processing.

The lab would like to thank the Smith Family Foundation for their continued support of our research. Thank you!

The lab is delighted to be hosting three new rotation students - Serena Harden, Peter Ren, and Jeremy Bennett, who will be working on various cilia-related projects.

Following our successful collaboration on SPACA9, Johanna Höög (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) will be joining the lab as a sabbatical visitor to learn single-particle analysis cryo-EM. We look forward to hosting you for the next 6 months!

Congratulations to Jacob who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis. Jacob now returns to medical school to finish his M.D., and will be greatly missed in the lab.

Sven was awarded a Sara Elizabeth O'Brien Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship! 

Congratulations to Matt on being awarded the 2023 Merck Company Foundation Fellowship. 

Two papers in Cell demonstrate the complexity of sperm doublet microtubules, including the first corresponding author paper from our previous postdoc Miao Gui. 

Travis and Miao's structures of axonemes are now online at Nature. This was a heroic multi-year effort enhanced by our wonderful collaborators Tom Burgoyne and Hannah Mitchison. The work is summarized in a Research Briefing. 

We're happy to contribute to the development of ModelAngelo - a transformative tool for automated model building and the identification of proteins in cryo-EM maps. Read the preprint here. 

The lab is delighted to welcome Luochen Liu for a Ph.D. rotation project. Luochen will be working on IFT and hopes to learn cryo-EM processing.

Thanks to the hard work of members of the Brown lab, past and present, Alan has been promoted to Associate Professor

Our paper on the structure and polymerization mechanism of a native IFT-A complex was published today in Cell. It was a pleasure to go back-to-back with Anthony Robert's paper on recombinant human IFT-A, and for the work to be previewed by Max Nachury. Congrats to all authors involved.

Today we said an emotional goodbye to the irreplaceable Miao Gui. Miao leaves to start his own lab in China (more details to follow). We wish him the best of luck and look forward to the amazing science that his team will produce in the future. 

Our latest work on human ciliary microtubules has been published in PNAS. We determined cryoEM structures of human respiratory doublet microtubules isolated from 2D organoids, and the singlet microtubules of the sperm endpiece revealing the presence of SPACA9 in both. This was a wonderful international collaboration with Tom Burgoyne (UCL, England) and Johanna Höög (University of Gothenburg, Sweden). 

Today the lab welcomes Sven Lange to the team. Sven joins from the MRC PPU in Dundee where he worked with Yogesh Kulathu on ubiquitin signaling.

Awesome to see our model of the Chlamy doublet microtubule on the cover of the Chlamydomonas sourcebook

Jacob and Jing's work features on the cover of this month's edition of Blood

The lab is delighted to welcome Matt Doran as a new postdoc. Matt joins from the Boston University School of Medicine, where he studied the mechanisms of cardiac muscle contraction and the structural causes of muscle disorders such as cardiomyopathies.

Congratulations to Jacob on the publication of his paper describing how VWF tubules form. This was a wonderful collaboration with Jing Li and Tim Springer. 

Congratulations to Jin who has been awarded a BCMP Christopher Walsh Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Today we welcome Nick Shaw to the lab for a 10-week summer placement. Nick is an undergraduate from the University of Cincinnati and is participating in the BCMP Summer Scholars program.

Our new collaborative study with Susan Dutcher and Rui Zhang reporting the structure of the Chlamydomonas central apparatus is now online at NSMB. Thanks to Elena Zehr and Antonina Roll-Mecak for their News and Views article. 

We're looking forward to having Raymond in the lab more often over the summer thanks to a Harvard College Research Program Fellowship.

Congratulations to Miao on his promotion to Instructor

Congratulations Jacob on being awarded an F30 training grant from the NIH/NHLBI!

Today was Sandeep's last day. He was the first postdoc to join the lab, so his leaving marks the end of an era. He goes on to join St. Jude's as a Staff Scientist. We wish him the best of luck!

Thanks to NSMB for highlighting our work on mammalian doublet microtubules.

Haixia's paper on the structure of CRL2^_Lrr1, an E3 ubiquitin ligase required for the termination of replication in eukaryotes is now online. This was a wonderful collaboration with Manal Zaher from Johannes Walter's lab.

Congratulations to Miao who was named our department's outstanding postdoc for 2021! 

Congratulations to Miao, Jacob, Josie, Shimi, and Sandeep for their contributions to our new paper in Cell. 

The lab thanks the Charles E.W. Grinnell Trust for Medical Research for funding our research. 

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!