Labbot

A new Labbot is officially up and running in Sina Wittmann’s lab at the University of Mainz! 🎉 Earlier this year, we hosted our second “Win a Labbot” competition at the EMBL symposium on Cellular Mechanisms Driven by Phase Separation in Heidelberg. Sina's ambitious proposal to use Labbot to explore the role of intrinsically disordered regions in DNA-binding transcription factors won. We’re thrilled to announce that Sina’s Labbot is now installed, and her group can start their exciting experiments. Here’s a glimpse of Sina’s winning proposal: “My research heavily relies on in vitro testing of different protein variants using phase separation assays, binding assays, and buffer screens. Previously, I used 384-well plates, meaning each condition needed to be pipetted individually, which was extremely tedious and time-consuming, limiting the number of mutants we could test (~4 per protein). The Labbot seems designed exactly for our needs. It allows us to quickly and easily draw phase diagrams at varying temperatures, pH, and salt concentrations, all of which critically affect the condensation of TFs. With Labbot’s titration capabilities, we’ll get more precise phase diagrams in less time. For my group, this will be a game changer—enabling us to screen many more mutants (~20 per protein) and different TFs, helping us understand TF condensation in much greater detail than with our 384-well approach.”

A Labbot has officially crossed the Atlantic! 🇺🇸 We’re excited to announce that, as of last week, a Labbot has found its new home at Priyanka Joshi's lab at Georgetown University. Priyanka’s group is diving into the role of metabolites in phase separation, utilizing both in-vitro studies and in-vivo C. elegans models. We’re proud that Labbot was the first instrument she chose for her new lab, following the recommendation of our close collaborator, Alexander K. Buell. Having a Labbot up and running in the US is a significant milestone for us, and we’re definitely celebrating. If you’re based in the States and want to see Labbot in action, Priyanka is open to showcasing it at her lab in Georgetown, Washington, DC. We’re looking forward to following and supporting her exciting research!

Hello, Labbot community! We’re back from our holidays, feeling refreshed and ready to dive into the exciting world of biophysics once again. This year, Maximilian enjoyed his first long holiday in years, with the highlight being the beautiful wedding of two dear friends in Portugal—a much-needed break filled with joy and celebration. Thom took some time away on the Greek island of Rhodes with his partner. The distance from everyday life brought him fresh inspiration and new ideas, a perfect reset for the months ahead. Meanwhile, Mattias has enjoyed some relaxing time with family, exploring the countryside of Skåne, Öland, and Närke, with cray-fishing, paddling, geocaching, and a lot of nice walks – creating lasting memories in the heart of nature. It’s great to be back, and we’re eager to continue our journey with all of you. We hope you’re feeling just as recharged!

Holiday work. Dedicated team.

Glad midsommar from all of us at Labbot! 🌸🌞 Midsommar, one of Sweden's most beloved holidays, is a celebration of the summer solstice. It’s a time for friends and family to come together, enjoy traditional foods like pickled herring and fresh strawberries, dance around the maypole, and soak in the long daylight hours. Wishing everyone a joyful and sunny Midsommar!

The hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease has proven to be long and challenging. However, there is growing hope, much thanks to the ever-increasing understanding of the complex molecular mechanisms that underly the disease. In the paper 'An aggregation inhibitor specific to oligomeric intermediates of Aβ42 derived from phage display libraries of stable, small proteins' from 2022, Sara Linse and co-authors used phage display to fish out and identify sequences that selectively bind the oligomeric form of amyloid beta. In follow-up experiments, the most promising candidates were isolated and tested against ongoing amyloid aggregation reactions. With a clever combination of Labbot FRET measurements, combined with ThT kinetics and molecular sizing, they could test the effectiveness of the binders throughout the amyloid formation process. The best inhibitors proved to be most active in samples collected from the steepest part of the aggregation curve, corresponding to the time window were toxic oligomers, generated by secondary nucleation, are most abundant. This study provides a very promising approach to identify promising molecules to inhibit the most damaging aspects of amyloid formation, and we are proud of the role that Labbot played in this important work. Link to the paper: https://lnkd.in/ehMmYv58

A big thank you to Janosch Hennig for inviting us to the University of Bayreuth for a demo. It’s been a great day filled with experiments, discussions on phase separation, and a tour of the incredibly cosy campus. Today’s demo focused heavily on titrations. We experimented with adding RNA to various proteins, inducing binding, phase separation, and in one surprising case, reversing phase separation. It’s always exciting when our quick, improvised demo experiments can provide new insights or open up new research avenues for the lab. Thanks again, Bayreuth!

We had a fantastic visit to Paolo Arosio’s group on the beautiful ETH Hönggerberg campus in Zürich 🇨🇭 This time, we had the chance to test Labbot’s limits and explore the low-concentration regime of condensate formation. We also tried out a wide range of other phase-separating samples and collected some beautiful FRET spectra. Thank you to Paolo for the invitation, Florence Stoffel for helping with the organization, and everyone who attended the demo and provided samples. Between the great demo and the beautiful city, our visit to Zurich has been amazing. Now we are getting ready to board a train bound for Bayreuth, Germany. 🇩🇪

Congratulations to Lei Ortigosa Pascual for successfully defending his thesis on amyloid oligomers! With our very own Thom Leiding supervising Lei’s work alongside Peter Jönsson and Sara Snogerup Linse, we’ve had the privilege of closely following his journey. It’s been fascinating to see how Lei has refined methods and pushed the boundaries to tackle the crucial questions of how these elusive species fit into the picture of amyloid aggregation and disease. Fantastic presentation and truly impressive work, Lei!

We have a new Labbot hero to present—meet Magnus Kjærgaard: an Expert on the Biophysics of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins 👨🔬 Magnus leads his own research group and the “Biophysics and Biochemistry Core Facility” at Aarhus University. He is involved in a diverse array of projects that require advanced biophysical instrumentation, making significant contributions to the field. Why did he decide to invest in a Labbot? "There is no experimental readout that works for all proteins. We prefer to have as many options in our hands as possible when we have to set up assays for a new protein. Having Absorbance, Fluorescence, and Light scattering packed into a single instrument gives us more flexibility when designing assays."