🎉 First Gold Sponsor confirmed for the 5th Molecular Biosystems Conference — our 10-year anniversary edition! Sponsorship slots are limited and going fast. If your company wants to connect with Latin America's premier event on gene regulation & functional genomics reach out now! molbiosystems.com

"Here we describe a systematic effort (‘Codebook’) to determine the sequence specificity of 332 putative and poorly characterized human TFs." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An expanded codebook of human transcription factor DNA-binding specificity - Nature

Results from a panel of assays that analyse different aspects of DNA sequence specificity reveal more than 100 new motifs to aid the characterization of putative human transcription factors.

nature.com

"I advise students to keep tabs on AI, to be aware. It takes discipline to resist seductive tools that promise ease and efficiency, and to ask instead what we risk losing when creating gets easy. To me, that is the real question: how to remain intentional". www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

‘Good design takes mastery’: scientific illustrators sketch out AI’s future

Nature talks to five artists about their approaches to communicating science visually.

nature.com

Right...

A new issue of CSH Protocols is out! @cshlpress.bsky.social The cover image highlights the work by Pierce, Hostetler, & @erinsparks.bsky.social, who describe a protocol for quantifying individual root mechanics in maize using a three-point bend test 🌽 ⬇️Links below

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Monday to Friday: read other people's papers. Weekends: write my own! And I might need to pick up a pipette again 😱. Stay tuned

On August 1, 1931, Harriet Creighton and Barbara McClintock published the first experimental proof that genes are physically located on chromosomes—a discovery that transformed genetics. 1/3🧵

"Here we apply DNA Typewriter, a prime editing-based recorder that writes stochastic symbolic insertions to an engineered genomic TAPE in strictly sequential order, to trace mouse development from zygote (E0) to late organogenesis (E13.5)" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In vivo reconstruction of the cell lineage history of a developing mouse with DNA Typewriter, from zygote to late organogenesis

The complete cell lineage of C. elegans, mapped over four decades ago, was tractable because the animal is small, transparent, and lineage invariant. Most animals are none of these, having orders of m...

biorxiv.org

A "defining characteristic of editorial work is responsibilities rarely disappear....new integrity measures don't replace tasks; they're added. [Staff] are expected to investigate image[s], evaluate disclosures, verify identities, respond to allegation[s]" scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/07/29/t...

The Hidden Cost of Trust - The Scholarly Kitchen

Research integrity demands stronger safeguards in order to protect the scholarly record. But for editors, when new integrity measures are introduced, they do not replace existing tasks; they are added...

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

"If protecting trust remains one of scholarly publishing’s highest priorities, then investing in the people who sustain that trust should become one as well" scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/07/29/t...

The Hidden Cost of Trust - The Scholarly Kitchen

Research integrity demands stronger safeguards in order to protect the scholarly record. But for editors, when new integrity measures are introduced, they do not replace existing tasks; they are added...

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

"These findings provide a framework for understanding the role of (...) secreted miRNAs in inter-organ communication." www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Brown fat-specific RNA labelling reveals a network of inter-organ communication by secreted microRNAs - Nature Metabolism

This study uses in vivo, 4TU-based, tissue-specific miRNA labelling to highlight the endocrine role of BAT-derived miRNAs that are taken up by tissues like the muscle, liver and hypothalamus, and demo...

nature.com

Precisely. Which may be unrelated to academia.

Richard Sever@richardsever.bsky.social · last wk.

Baric at #ASV2926: the most important job of faculty is to give young people the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

What feed is associated with using 🧪 in posts?

Which, in the end, is an issue because of incentives. An aspect that lies within academia. “AI is an accelerant, not the kindling,” says Ivan Oransky, cofounder of Retraction Watch. “The kindling is publish or perish.” cen.acs.org/policy/publi...

Can we stop AI from flooding scientific journals?

AI detectors may never beat fraud. Changing how science rewards its researchers might be the only fix that does

cen.acs.org

You know I'm gonna eat the whole bag. So just give me the nutrition info of the entire bag, not of just 3 pieces. Not that I care, either way.

If you don't like a paper, it is obviously totally fine to point out the issues. But please do NOT make egregious and unpleasant comments about the first author's qualifications. A first author who is usually a trainee. Beyond inappropriate and unprofessional.

I'm sorry, daily what now? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · last wk.

Hey 🧪! I was just reminiscing with a friend about the time a very senior academic called a mid-career guy's work "completely meaningless" at a meeting and now I want to hear your best (public, academic) disses

"But [Dylan] Storan stresses that the rise in integrity specialists is the result of “significant investment” from publishers, which means that publishing costs rise. “It’s expensive,” he says. “[The money has] got to come from somewhere.” www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-euro...

‘Everything we catch is a huge win’: the rise of integrity specialists - Research Professional News

Publishers have massively expanded their research integrity teams to combat fraud. Will it work?

researchprofessionalnews.com

Exactly, as most Diamond OA journals do. It's not a sustainable or scalable approach as currently implemented. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-afri...

After 10 years, spatially resolved transcriptomic technologies continue to enhance understanding of development and disease through a feedback loop involving academia and industry www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Ten years of mapping gene expression in tissues

Spatially resolved transcriptomic technologies continue to enhance understanding of development and disease through a feedback loop involving academia and industry.

nature.com

"This trimodal platform enables a comprehensive understanding of the relationships among gene expression, morphological diversity, and functional properties of single neurons" www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Multimodal imaging of gene expression, morphology, and activity of the same neuron

This study establishes an imaging-based multimodal characterization (IMC) platform to link in vivo activity, whole-brain morphology, and spatial gene expression in the same cortical projection neurons...

cell.com

"We show here that the protein sequence is insufficient for the biogenesis of fully active IDR-containing transcriptional regulators in cells, suggesting that mRNA 3′ UTRs control their activity by preventing co-translational misfolding" doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Gold (APC-based) OA has been great for science.

James McLeod@jamespmcleod.ca · 2w ago

It's safe to assume that all major LLMs are scraping Bluesky data to train future models. As an open protocol, Bluesky is one of the few sources of fresh human-generated content that anybody can gobble up. So all this is probably going in the models. There are submarines in the Great Lakes.

I'll just say one thing about this paper: #mbiosys27 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Promoter strength and position govern promoter competition through transcript-dependent insulation - Nature Genetics

By inserting diverse promoters at the mouse Sox2 locus, Koska et al. show that promoter strength, position and transcript length tune promoter competition through transcription-dependent insulation, i...

nature.com

"These findings indicate that melanoma in these brown bullheads represents the fourth documented type of naturally occurring transmissible cancer in animals, after dogs, Tasmanian devils, and several bivalve species" doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Brown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer - Nature

Whole-genome sequencing analysis of tumour and matched non-tumour host tissues of the brown bullhead catfish reveals a type of naturally occurring transmissible cancer.

doi.org

"Here we show, in a large post-publication peer review database, that research assessment is driven more by differences between evaluators than by difference in the evaluated research. " arxiv.org/abs/2607.09783

Judges matter more than papers in post-publication research assessment

Research assessment relies on expert evaluations, yet human judgement is noisy, and it is unclear whether differences in assessment arise primarily from differences in genuine research quality or from...

arxiv.org

Not a single mention of the role that *academics themselves* play in maintaining this system, setting the incentives, etc 😅 The power of change lies within. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...