Happy to share that the bulk of my PhD work is now on bioRxiv! We followed SsdA, the A. nidulans ortholog of yeast RNA-binding protein Ssd1, and found it forms motile mRNP puncta in hyphae. [1/7] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Rob Abrisch did the foundational work on US3 kinase. Farhaz Shaikh took interest in TNTs and developed the THP-1 system. Alex Flaherty helped bring it all across the finish line. So much of what’s in this paper traces back to each of them. Thank you all.
This work wouldn’t exist without an incredible group of collaborators. I’m so grateful to all 14 co-authors! Especially Siyu Chen, who has been a true partner in crime, and Elizabeth Villa, who opened her lab to me and offered her mentorship generously.
Using cryo-CLEM/ET across two disease models (viral kinase US3 & daunorubicin-treated leukemia cells), we show TNTs aren't simple tubes , they're surprisingly complex!
Inside TNTs we find actin, microtubules, intermediate filaments, active ribosomes, lysosomes, MVBs, autophagosomes & more 🤯
And the microtubules? They are dynamic and have mixed polarity! Meaning BOTH connected cells actively build these bridges together. This architecture is conserved across both systems, pointing to a shared cellular TNT-genesis program rather than a context-specific response 🤝
Video
New preprint alert! Ever wonder if cells can talk to each other? Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) are tiny bridges between cells used to pass organelles, nucleic acids, proteins & even viruses but we've never seen inside them clearly. Until now! 👇🧵
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728322v1
Being in @samreckpeterson.bsky.social’s lab has been the greatest privilege of my training. I can only hope to be half the mentor she is. Her curiosity about TNTs was sparked while serving on a PhD thesis committee for a student in Stephanie Cherqui’s lab at UCSD-planting the seed for this project
tl;dr: MissAlignment learns to score misalignment then wiggles your alignments around to reduce that misalignment -> no more misalignment = high res STA 🌟
Watching @martenchaillet.bsky.social chip away at this was a real privilege! I’m excited to see this out and what you all will do with it 🙃
Domenico Modaffari
Eva Karasmanis
Eva Karasmanis
Eva Karasmanis
Eva Karasmanis
Eva Karasmanis
The molecular architecture of tunneling nanotubes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728322v1
Eva Karasmanis
Congratulations to lead author Noor Alam, and present/past lab members: TJ Holt, AndY Schaefer, Franklin Mayca-Pozo, Sarath Reghunathan, Sarah Butts, Priyanka Bhakt, and Iliana Kesisova, who've worked on this since 2019 🎉
Read the preprint 👇
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.06.723191v1
