Meanwhile Robin Ince genuinely has been cancelled for daring to voice his opinions and for defending trans people. Where's the outrage from the "cancel culture" lot? What are the Free Speech Union doing to help him?

Garry@thegmcconnachie.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

NEWS - Professor Mark Buttner receives Marjory Stephenson Prize 2026 Professor Buttner, one of our Emeritus Fellows, has received the @microbiologysociety.org Marjory Stephenson Prize for 2026. Congratulations Mark! 👏 Read about his exceptional research and career: www.jic.ac.uk/news/profess...

People are starving to death, or being gunned down while desperately trying to access food at aid sites — even journalists are in grave danger. This abhorrent situation cannot be allowed to continue www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...

Gaza health ministry says 33 people dead from malnutrition in last 48 hours

New figures from the Hamas-run ministry include 12 children who have died, as the UN says Israel must allow aid into Gaza.

bbc.co.uk

Thanks for your advocacy and this excellent letter, @anthrofuentes.bsky.social !

This is not the time to step back from diversity, equity, and inclusion

Recently, I exchanged views with a prominent Ivy League scientist who was complaining about the minority students and junior faculty applying to his program. He claimed that the university, through di...

science.org

Cycling achievement unlocked: Strava “excluding” my ride as its rubbish AI can’t believe I could ride this fast 😂

It always pleases me to see how little we know. I can pick a random ~700 AA protein from a bacterial genome and it has no conserved domains and no characterised structural homologues, yet there are >1000 homologues across diverse Gram+ and Gram- bacteria.

Hungary banned Pride marches. This is the response ✊🏳️‍🌈

Phillip Ayoub@payoub.bsky.social · last yr.

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban

Super happy to see our work on lydiamycin biosynthesis, structure and function published in @pnas.org 😀 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... The work is described in the thread below, where we use BGC info to guide the discovery of multiple key features of this antibiotic. @johninnescentre.bsky.social

Identification of the lydiamycin biosynthetic gene cluster in a plant pathogen guides structural revision and identification of molecular target | PNAS

The natural products actinonin and matlystatin feature an N-hydroxy-2-pentyl-succinamyl (HPS) chemophore that facilitates metal chelation and confe...

pnas.org

Andy Truman@andytruman4.bsky.social · 2y ago

New pre-print from the group 🥳 We use targeted genome mining to show that the plant pathogen Rhodococcus fascians makes the antibiotic lydiamycin. The BGC information then informed the discovery of multiple key features relating to the molecule 1/4 #biosynthesis www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Returning home after a fun couple of days in London at the RSC Chemical Biology Symposium and then the Chemical Biology Interface Council meeting. Excellent talks and always a joy to return to Burlington House @rsc.org

Happy Tuesday to everyone apart from whoever approved this awful design! Annoys me every time I use Greater Anglia.

Join us for the RSC Chemical Biology Leadership Retreat for Early Career Researchers! This is designed for researchers within 5 years of their first independent position. Bursuries are available (details in link below). Venue: Imperial College London Date: 10-12 Sep 2025 www.rsc.org/events/detai...

We're looking for a postdoc to join the lab to work on cell-to-cell communication via the apoplast. Candidate must be brave, as they will have to lead us (me) away from the plasmodesmata-lands we've inhabited for so long! www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

Postdoctoral Researcher (Faulkner Group) | John Innes Centre

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Faulkner Group at the John Innes Centre, working on cutting-edge science in the field of Cell & Developmental Biology.

jic.ac.uk

If you have a few minutes spare in your busy schedule today, it's well worth taking time to read this article from @lewisgoodall.com.

Lewis Goodall@lewisgoodall.com · last yr.

Trump could have pushed for an end to the war in Ukraine without becoming actively hostile to Ukraine. Instead, he has imbibed Putin’s lies. Have written about the emergence of a new US/Russia axis, where it comes from and the staggering implications for Europe. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

PRESS RELEASE - Professor Uauy appointed as Director of the John Innes Centre Following an international search, we are delighted to announce that Professor @cristobaluauy.bsky.social has been appointed as the next Director of the John Innes Centre. www.jic.ac.uk/press-releas... @ukri.org

Professor Uauy appointed as Director of the John Innes Centre | John Innes Centre

Following an international search, Professor Cristóbal Uauy has been appointed as the next Director of the John Innes Centre. Professor Uauy is internationally recognised for his significant…

jic.ac.uk

Utterly bonkers. I’m stating the very obvious, but it’s remarkable (yet also depressingly predictable) how quickly the proponents of “free speech” start banning everything they don’t like.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · last yr.

We got a message from the university to remove any use of the "DEI", "diversity", "equity", or "inclusion" from all public-facing documents. They said that even "biodiversity" is being flagged by the federal government. We live in the dumbest timeline.

We have an exciting full-time permanent position available for a proteomics specialist for the Proteomics platform at @johninnescentre.bsky.social The platform has excellent facilities and provides essential experimental expertise research at the institute. jobs.jic.ac.uk/Details.asp?...

#NowListening some banging tunes on.soundcloud.com/ZbMUDa61xrHo...

Anish Kumar - BBCR1 Essential Mix [02.11.24]

Tracklist 01 Anish Kumar - ID1 [unreleased] 02 DWIG - Luise und die Strandpiraten [Giegling] 03 Anish Kumar - ID2 [unreleased] 04 The Blessed Madonna - Exodus [Stripped & Chewed] 05 K-Lone - Cinco [Sw

on.soundcloud.com

Harmless Scientific Experiments for Boys (the introduction does at least acknowledge that girls can also use the book) including such “harmless” experiments as making gas from coal, and a DIY thermometer involving your own glass blowing and “a very small quantity of mercury” 🤔

Well the award for most cowardly, boot-lickingest academic society has squarely gone to the American Society of Microbiology, who has taken down features of various non-white scientists. Absolutely pathetic behavior. Those articles are now coming up as “under review”. Truly sickening cowardice here.

Is anyone having issues with NCBI at the moment? Really difficult to reliably retrieve sequence data using Entrez. Unsure if this is an impact of the absurd presidential decisions about the NIH, or just routine maintenance?

This is how Bruce Wayne became a millionaire

Martin Robbins@mjrobbins.com · 2y ago

Includes the astonishing stat that HS2 paid £330,000 per inconvenienced bat.

Very happy to share the final version of our work on the evolution of broad host virulence in Pseudomonas out now @cellhostmicrobe It’s just in time for the holidays 🎄🦠 www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

A necrotizing toxin enables Pseudomonas syringae infection across evolutionarily divergent plants

Grenz et al. interrogate the Pseudomonas syringae species complex for its capacity to infect evolutionarily divergent host plants. Their results demonstrate that broad host isolates from phylogroup 2 rely on the lipopeptide toxin syringomycin to promote host necrosis and enhance bacterial growth in plants.

cell.com

Returning to the UK after a great trip to beautiful Gent. Alway a pleasure to hear about the natural products research happening there 😊 Also got to dress up in a gown for the first time in years! Now to the JIC Mol Micro Xmas lunch to “recover” after last night’s Belgian beers 😂

Taking Britain out of the Erasmus+ programme was a huge mistake. Labour must rejoin and accept the EU’s offer of a youth mobility scheme

Bring back Erasmus+ and youth mobility in Europe

Taking Britain out of the Erasmus+ programme was a huge mistake. Labour must rejoin and accept the EU’s offer of a youth mobility scheme

sussexbylines.co.uk

Are you working on natural products? We’ve just released version 4.0 of the MIBiG data standard and repository! It now includes 3059 biosynthetic gene clusters, thanks to the combined efforts of 288 expert contributors. A thread: (1/8) academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

MIBiG 4.0: advancing biosynthetic gene cluster curation through global collaboration

Abstract. Specialized or secondary metabolites are small molecules of biological origin, often showing potent biological activities with applications in ag

academic.oup.com

We find a lot of proteins - particularly antibiotic biosynthetic enzymes - are produced in soluble form in Streptomyces lividans but not E.coli. It’s a useful platform for the production of otherwise intractable proteins.

ActinoBase@actinobase.bsky.social · 2y ago

pIJ86 sequence and map just added to actinobase.org. Useful for anyone wanting to over produce proteins in Streptomyces species. Plasmid available free from JIC (streptomyces.org.uk)

The Natural Products Atlas 3.0: extending the database of microbially derived natural products - thanks to the Linington lab for letting the Duncan lab be part of the curation efforts academic.oup.com/nar/advance-... #NaturalProducts #SpecializedMetabolites #microsky #microbialchemistry

The Natural Products Atlas 3.0: extending the database of microbially derived natural products

Abstract. The Natural Products Atlas is a database of microbially derived natural products that contains structures, producing organism taxonomy, biosynthe

academic.oup.com

Congratulations to Nathan Byrne for passing his PhD viva 🍾 Thanks to @barriewilks.bsky.social and Chris Corre for agreeing to be examiners too!

Just a reminder - I’ve made a second microbial natural products starter pack - let me know if you want added (please check you don’t already feature in the first pack to avoid duplication) go.bsky.app/4xnRN52

We have a fully funded 4-year PhD studenship available that builds on parts of this pre-print: biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/dis... 🗓️ Deadline 25 Nov 2024 Please do get in touch if you're interested!

Andy Truman@andytruman4.bsky.social · 2y ago

New pre-print from the group 🥳 We use targeted genome mining to show that the plant pathogen Rhodococcus fascians makes the antibiotic lydiamycin. The BGC information then informed the discovery of multiple key features relating to the molecule 1/4 #biosynthesis www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...