Group Leader and Lecturer in cryo-electron tomography at the University of Leeds. Previously Postdoc with Gaia Pigino @ Human Technopole and PhD student with Andrew Carter @ MRC-LMB.
Helen Foster
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A big thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement, especially @carter-lab.bsky.social and @gaiapigino.bsky.social for their mentorship, and @takashiochi.bsky.social for nominating me!!
Many congratulations to Girish R Mali (@dyneinassembly.bsky.social) and team, awarded the 2025 Ian & Barbara Gibbons Award for their work on the regulation of axonemal dynein motors that power ciliary beating!
The award recognises groundbreaking advances in the Dynein field every four years.
Helen Foster
Time to get signed up for the Symposium on Structural Proteomics! This time at @humantechnopole.bsky.social in Milan 6th-8th October Full speaker lineup announced. Thanks to @thermofishersci.bsky.social @brukercorporation.bsky.social, Affipro and MSVision for support
Info
ssp2025.squarespace.com
Overall, the multi-step assembly process ensures coordinated emergence of structural integrity and motility. Functional modularity appears to be in-built, meaning assembly can easily be modulated to generate the diverse cilia-based structures we see across life.
Very happy to say that our work on how axonemes are generated is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... - if you’ve ever wondered how the incredibly beautiful, complex structures within motile #cilia are constructed then this is for you!
Congrats to the @biochemsoc.bsky.social 2027 Award winners, including @helenfoster.bsky.social who has won an Early Career Research Award.
Helen was a PhD student in Andrew Carter’s group in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, and is now a Group Leader at the University of Leeds.
#LMBalumni
There was so much to unpack with this data, we teamed up with the marvellous @margotriggi.bsky.social to help explain what we think is going on. (Please also check out our model of central apparatus assembly here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...)
By imaging the tips of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii motile cilia by #cryo-ET, we captured the intermediate steps in axoneme assembly and uncovered a host of unexpected structures along the way.
I am delighted to be among this years winners awards from the Biochemical Society! The Early Career Award recognises the work I did during my PhD and postdoc, and hopefully signals a bright start for my new lab within the @astbury-bsl.bsky.social at the University of Leeds 💫
