Exclusive from Jason Mast and Brian Yang at @statnews.com who write "the disclosure raises concerns about the quality and transparency of China’s more lightly regulated pathway for drug trials." www.statnews.com/2026/08/05/c...

Once again, child dies in gene editing trial in China, rekindling debate on transparency and safety

With a second delayed report of a child's death in China, criticism is rising of a looser form of clinical trial. One expert: what "bothers me is the lack of transparency.'

statnews.com

🤯 Wow, this looks great. The combination of a sophisticated genetic toolbox and available connectome is so powerful for figuring out how animals do what they do. 🧪🪰

Yichen Luo 骆奕辰@camellyc.bsky.social · 2d ago

1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

It's not often single author primary research papers are published in our field & it's even rarer when the author is a Nobel Prize winner Check out the new work by Eric Wieschaus in @dev-journal.bsky.social Flattening maternal gradients in Drosophila embryo journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Maternal patterning in early Drosophila embryos: how much information can single maternal gradients supply?

Highlighted Article: Comparison of the patterning capacity of Drosophila embryos that have only one of the three maternal gradients known to control anterior posterior patterning.

journals.biologists.com

🚩 My 2010 PhD thesis is ‘70% AI’ I ran my 2010 PhD thesis through an AI detector. It flagged 70% as AI, then tried to sell me a ‘humanise’ fix. Either I am a time traveller, or these tools do not work. Link to my thesis in the comments to try yourself. #AIDetection #HigherEd 🧪 #AI

A message is being communicated, can you get it?

Andy Scollick@andyscollick.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex at Robledo de Chavela municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain on fire. Burgohondo wildfire. 📷 via Infues Avila

“Seven days after the girl’s medical team infused trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the base editor into her spinal fluid, she died of a severe immune reaction linked to the therapy…” This, in @science.org, is an important and tragic story. (It’s also an incredibly well reported one.) 🧪

Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public

Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals

science.org

Join our team! The @bogdan_lab in Marburg is hiring a postdoctoral fellow and a doctoral student for studying innate cellular immune response to tumor cells and epidermal wounds in Drosophila. Apply: stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/4... stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/3...

(1/4) How is the timing of cell death regulated? We have developed a #liveimaging system to follow the dynamic cell death of #Drosophila hepatocyte-like cells (oenocytes) in intact pupae throughout metamorphosis. Watch some beautiful videos from our #preprint in this thread! #DevBio #CellDeath

Nice paper by the @hietakangaslab.bsky.social using multiplexed Cas12a mutagenesis to show that Salr acts as a negative regulator of growth and lipid storage. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📣 📣 📣 📣 To all Drosophilists: the call for Workshop proposals at the 2027 European Drosophila Research Conference in Bonn (20-23 September 2027) is OPEN! Go to link below for instructions. Closing date: 30 September 2026. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 tinyurl.com/45y8trzd

Is the real issue less a guilty/not guilty verdict but - as in Tessier-Lavigne’s case - the fact this seems bound to occur in a hypercompetitive environment incentivizing fraud and a feudal system ill-equipped and disincentivized to address it?

Dalmeet Singh Chawla@dalmeet.bsky.social · 4w ago

Neuropathologist Adriano Aguzzi is not guilty of research misconduct or negligence, a probe of three dozen studies at the University of Zurich has found. My latest for @thetransmitter.bsky.social: www.thetransmitter.org/ethics/neuro... @elisabethbik.bsky.social, @charlespiller.bsky.social

After months of experiments, failed injections, unexpected results, and those rare moments when everything suddenly works - our manuscript is finally submitted. Read our newest story about a journey of tiny vesicles carrying big biological messages, now in bioRxiv. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)

1/n What fraction of the human genome is essential for cells? Excited to share our preprint that explores this question by combining an unusual CRISPR system, phage promoters, and thousands of deletion launchpads. @sudpinglay.bsky.social @jshendure.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fantastic recruitment for our local genome engineering scene. Welcome back to Heidelberg Jonas!

Jonas Koeppel@jonaskoeppel.bsky.social · 2mo ago

22/n On a personal note, I’ll soon start an independent research group in the Genome Biology Unit at EMBL Heidelberg. If you enjoy this type of work and want to engineer genomes at the largest scale, please reach out! jonas-koeppel.github.io/koeppellab/ www.embl.org/groups/koepp...

Our Bachelor student Lara has lot's of talents beyond lab work (unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the amazing cake she made).

Our latest manuscript on (Harry Potter and) the effect of elevated temperature on embryonic development in flies. Even a small increase in temperature causes developmental defects, indicating problems in the face of global warming! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo - Nature Communications

Kale et al. show that nuclear divisions are defective at elevated temperature, leading to gastrulation defects and embryo lethality. Their work finds that F-actin – microtubule interactions during mit...

nature.com

How your email finds me (not). #outofoffice #dolomites

Has anyone already claimed their money back they paid for fraudulent products?

Reese Richardson@reeserichardson.bsky.social · 3mo ago

@johanduchene.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social Spent the last hour looking, found ten more apparently manipulated Western blots in Thermo Fisher's antibody verification data (across eight different catalogued products). Thread below. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro...

1/8 🚨 New preprint from the @sternberglab.bsky.social & @martinjinek.bsky.social labs! CRISPR-associated transposases (CASTs) insert large DNA cargoes at precise genomic locations — no double-strand breaks needed.

"Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails

Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.

nature.com

Got an obnoxious little finding you'd otherwise shelve? We did our first @micropub7n.bsky.social and it was a 10/10 experience! Find out why you should use caution if deploying Repo-GeneSwitch-Gal4 for investigating fly sleep. Led by @seakelly5.bsky.social & @keisukefukumura.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLtb...

While My Guitar Gently Weeps | The Beatles (acoustic cover)

YouTube video by Corey Heuvel

youtube.com

Very interesting thread 👇🏽

Elphege Nora Lab at UCSF@elphegenoralab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Why can't we explain enhancer action despite 2 decades of chromosome conformation technologies? 😬 Our new study spearheaded by Leonid Mirny's group points to a flaw in our assumptions, and to a solution from physical principles By @timothyfoldes.bsky.social 💻& @karissalhansen.bsky.social 🧪 🧵👇

Interesting new #CRISPR papers. Two studies show that Cas12a2 can act as a RNA-guided DNA shredder to selectively kill cancer cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Exciting news 📣 The first preprint from @grandlab.bsky.social is out 🧬 How are essential genes controlled? By rapid degradation and recovery of TFs alone or in combination, we show that essential genes rely on a single dominant TF, despite dense co-binding. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thrilled to see this work published. Thanks to helpful reviewer suggestions, there are some exciting new insights that were not in the preprint (particularly in Figure 4). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology@mrclmb.ac.uk · 3mo ago

The hidden rules behind mRNA transport. A collaborative study between @simonbullock11.bsky.social & @carter-lab.bsky.social’s groups has found a structural code that explains how cells selectively transport mRNAs. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBNews @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social 🧪

Site-specific, multi-kilobase insertions and over-writes in mammalian cells, without DSBs, HDR, recombinases, integrases, transposases, or active cell cycling? Using fully or predominantly single-stranded DNA donors? 1/15

NEWS: The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about changes to the re-submission rules, intended to manage the surge in demand for grants. The Scientific Council will readjust some of the changes: link.europa.eu/TBqRQJ

ERC Scientific Council readjusts rules for reapplication

The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about the recent announcement on changes to the re-submission rules. The changes, intended to manage the ...

link.europa.eu

Kejelcha broke the 2-hour marathon barrier on Sunday 🤯. He came second and barely made the news. In science, we'd call that getting scooped. But science is not elite sport. It's not a zero-sum game. A "winner takes all" attitude actively discourages a pillar of good science: independent replication.