mcalbyrne
Dr Matthew Calthorpe-Byrne

Founder & Director, mcalbyrne Ltd

Matthew Calthorpe‑Byrne

Dr Matthew Calthorpe-Byrne is a structural biologist and enzymologist who solves protein structures by cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography. He founded mcalbyrne Ltd in 2025 to build the software he wanted as a scientist — and the games he wanted to play.

Founder & Director · 2025 mcalbyrne Ltd Scientific software and games, Oxfordshire. Creator CryomaskR WYSIWYG Cryo-EM Mask Generation. Founder Overtwo The games label of mcalbyrne Ltd.

Research

Currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Siebold Group at the Division of Structural Biology (STRUBI), University of Oxford, which studies how Hedgehog and BMP morphogen signals are initiated, modulated and transduced at the cell surface.

Publications
16
Span
2013–25
Selected venues
Cell · Nature Comms · JACS · ACS Nano

Career

2011 — Present
  1. 2026

    Postdoctoral Research Associate

    Siebold Group, Division of Structural Biology (STRUBI), University of Oxford

    Current
  2. 2025

    Founder & Director

    mcalbyrne Ltd

    Current
  3. 2025

    EM Staff Scientist

    eBIC, Diamond Light Source

  4. 2023

    Senior Scientist

    Exscientia

  5. 2021

    EM Staff Scientist

    eBIC, Diamond Light Source

  6. 2016

    Postdoctoral Researcher

    University of Leeds

  7. 2011

    PhD

    University of Bristol

Publications

16 of 16
  1. 2025 Computational design of therapeutic antibodies with improved developability mAbs
  2. 2025 Dynamic assembly of pentamer-based protein nanotubes ACS Nano
  3. 2024 The cryoEM structure of the Hendra henipavirus nucleoprotein Scientific Reports
  4. 2024 Structure of the plant plastid-encoded RNA polymerase Cell
  5. 2023 CryoEM and stability analysis of virus-like particles of potyvirus and ipomovirus Communications Biology
  6. 2021 Cryo-EM structures of an insecticidal Bt toxin reveal its mechanism of action Nature Communications
  7. 2021 The structure of a plant-specific partitivirus capsid Communications Biology
  8. 2021 A replicating viral vector greatly enhances accumulation of helical virus-like particles Viruses
  9. 2020 Nek7 conformational flexibility and inhibitor binding probed through protein engineering Biochemical Journal
  10. 2020 Structure and mechanism of a dehydratase/decarboxylase enzyme couple Scientific Reports
  11. 2019 Combining transient expression and cryo-EM to obtain high-resolution structures of luteovirid particles Structure
  12. 2019 A natural Diels–Alder biocatalyst enables efficient [4+2] cycloaddition ChemCatChem
  13. 2019 An esterase-like lyase catalyzes acetate elimination in spirotetronate biosynthesis Angewandte Chemie
  14. 2019 Affimer reagents as tools in diagnosing plant virus diseases Scientific Reports
  15. 2016 The catalytic mechanism of a natural Diels–Alderase revealed in molecular detail JACS
  16. 2013 Improving the success rate of protein crystallization by random microseed matrix screening JoVE

Links open the publisher's page, where full author lists are given.

From the bench

CryomaskR

The mask-building tool that came out of this work — now mcalbyrne's first scientific software product.

See CryomaskR