Fritz Roth
@fritzroth.bsky.social
Opinions here are my own. Day job: Professor and Chair, Computational & Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine https://rothlab.csb.pitt.edu/ Systematically testing impacts of genetic change & mapping protein interaction dynamics
Well, I just spent an hour updating my claims for the Anthropic data theft class action lawsuit 4 editions of my Biochem book, 4 editions of the Biochem Short Course, Principles of Bioinorganic Chem, and the quaint How the NIH Can Help Get You Funded A pain, but any funds recovered will be useful
Kim et al. introduce PRIME, a framework of codon-level maximum likelihood methods that explicitly model amino acid exchangeability as a function of physicochemical properties. 🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... #societyjournal #evobio #molbio
The physicochemical basis of protein evolution: property-informed evolutionary models (PRIME)
Abstract. Standard probabilistic models of coding sequence evolution effectively identify where and when selection acts but remain agnostic to the mechanis
academic.oup.com
@fritzroth.bsky.social & co of @ajhgnews.bsky.social latest article measures the impact of amino acid changes in AIRE via a multiplexed reporter assay, providing a variant effect map & enabling more accurate pathogenicity classification of missense variants: https://bit.ly/3SdUBcU #ASHG
🧪 One small step towards a complete atlas of human sequence variant effects, a giant leap for figuring out which variants in the Autoimmune Regulator (AIRE) protein are pathogenic, and some baby steps towards understanding the AIRE protein @varianteffect.bsky.social
The American Journal of Human Genetics@ajhgnews.bsky.social · 2mo ago🧬Online now! 📄Systematic and proactive evaluation of AIRE missense variant effects 🧑🤝🧑 @axakova.bsky.social @fritzroth.bsky.social & co www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...
Excellent response from Dr. Bertagnolli to the article from Scott Atlas www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-a...
Don't abolish the NIH. Fix it.
Scott Atlas wants to abolish the National Institutes of Health and let markets take over ("NIH is a government weapon for political power. Abolish it," Washington Post, July 2).
linkedin.com
Excited to share our preprint introducing ASHI: the Atlas of SLiM-mediated Human protein-protein Interactions. By screening 800+ domains against the human intrinsically disordered regions, we map 20,000 SLiM-mediated interactions. Many thanks to everyone involved! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
An Atlas of Short Linear Motif-Mediated Human Protein-Protein Interactions
Short linear motifs (SLiMs) within intrinsically disordered protein regions mediate transient interactions crucial for cell physiology. However, the global interaction landscape of human SLiMs remains...
biorxiv.org
Gratified and humbled to receive the Gold Medal, Society of Breast Imaging, for a life's work/career that is its own reward. Thank you to the many grant-funding agencies, co-investigators, and participants in research. We have more to do! @bcrfcure.bsky.social densebreast-info.org/remarks-from...
Remarks from Dr. Wendie Berg, 2026 SBI Gold Medalist | DenseBreast-info, Inc.
We are so proud of our Chief Scientific Advisor, Dr. Wendie Berg, who was awarded the SBI Gold Medal at this year’s Society of Breast Imaging Annual Meeting — the organization’s highest honor. We are ...
densebreast-info.org
new publication in #Nature Commun evaluating PPI prediction by #AlphaFold & co for yeast and human compared to exp. screening. We show AF predictions at stringent cut-off are high quality. But true novelty is sparse and the experiment outperforms pred. nearly 40-fold. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Experimental assessment of AI-based interactome mapping - Nature Communications
AlphaFold’s success in protein structure predictions has led to similar attempts to predict interactomes. Here, the authors demonstrate that AI-based screens are very limited in discovering truly nove...
nature.com
I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty remarkable. Earth and Moon in one NASA photo. ht @astrokatie.com
Our latest paper is out! We built a large-scale mutational map of amylin to understand how sequence drives #amyloid formation, a process linked to type 2 #diabetes🩸📈📉. It’s a step towards connecting molecular mechanisms with human genetic variation in a systematic way.
IBEC | Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia@ibecbarcelona.eu · 6mo ago🔬 Investigadores de l'#IBEC creen un mapa mutacional de l’amilina que mostra com certes mutacions poden accelerar o frenar la formació d’agregats tòxics vinculats a la diabetis tipus 2. 📖 https://ibecbarcelona.eu/an-unprecedented-mutation-map-reveals-how-amylin-mutations-influence-type-2-diabetes/
Validation of aggressive LDL lowering to reduce major adverse cardiovascular events, a randomized trial targeting LDL < 55 mg/dl. In participants with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (secondary prevention) [we didn't have the data from a randomized trial before] www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
NIH restrictions on foreign research partnerships significantly impacted 1 in 4 U.S. scientists www.statnews.com/2026/03/27/n... via @statnews.com #HHS #NIH #science #publichealth
NIH restrictions on foreign research partnerships significantly impacted 1 in 4 U.S. scientists
In a survey of NIH-funded scientists, 25% said their research had been impacted a great deal or a fair amount by a move away from foreign subawards.
statnews.com
OMB has posted the full-year apportionments for NIH. openomb.org/file/11511545 I believe this means that NIH now has the spending authority to fund grants! There may be nuances and I will be tracking these as best I can.
National Library of Medicine and 24 other accounts | 11511545
Apportionment file 11511545 (National Library of Medicine and 24 other accounts) retrieved from OMB public records
openomb.org
Action Item...Action Item...Action Item Time to comment on the Framework for the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan grants.nih.gov/grants/guide... Comments due by May 16, 2026
NOT-OD-26-047: Request for Information (RFI): Inviting Comments and Suggestions on a Framework for the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2027-2031
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Request for Information (RFI): Inviting Comments and Suggestions on a Framework for the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Fis...
grants.nih.gov
"I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14. How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research" elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-re...
The Gur lab has published a new article in JACS Au, a journal of the American Chemical Society, that sheds light on how a promising class of cancer-fighting molecules works at the atomic level. Read more about the research on protein phosphate 2A, an "off-switch" for cancer: tinyurl.com/JACSPP2A
All projects The fiscal year 2026 appears to be flattening out a bit in the past week. 2/9
We are deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of David Botstein, a towering figure in modern #genetics and a foundational force behind SGD. www.yeastgenome.org/blog/in-memo... #yeast #modelOrganism
New paper alert: Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy www.cell.com/current-biol...
Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy
Duplicated self-interacting proteins can interact and interfere with each other’s function. Cisneros, Mattenberger, et al. show that selection against interfering loss-of-function alleles extends the ...
cell.com
Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating). A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)
Nature Portfolio@natureportfolio.nature.com · 7mo agoA study in Nature shows that the single-celled form of a tiny, aquatic organism can turn into a multicellular version by three different routes. The discovery adds insight to the possible origins of multicellular life, suggesting a previously unrecognized degree of flexibility. 🧪
Seattle locals: thesis defense Tuesday at 11:30 in Foege! Mapping the functional landscape of the pharmacogene CYP2D6 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by Gabby Ferra, joint student between my lab and @kelleyharris.bsky.social
In #GENETICS, a new model developed by @christianlandry.bsky.social and colleagues examines how molecular dominance determines total protein activity and contributes to phenotypic dominance. buff.ly/CfaTDp7
More on NSF funding data A deeper dive into the numbers of awards by Directorate. 1/9
a picture of a person in the water with the words call of the deep below it
ALT: a picture of a person in the water with the words call of the deep below it
media.tenor.com
Check out our new work now published in G3! We use proteomics and phosphoproteomics to study how cells cope with tRNA variants that mis-insert amino acids.
Genetics Society of America@genetics-gsa.bsky.social · 8mo agoUsing proteomics approaches, @matthewberg22.bsky.social et al. show how mistranslating tRNAs in #yeast alter the abundance and phosphorylation of proteins involved in proteostasis, cell cycle, and translation. Learn more in #G3journal: buff.ly/7KW7m0K
We’re happy to share our 2025 Annual Report! A year of "momentum and connections"! ➡️ zenodo.org/records/1833... #AnnualReport #GlobalAlliance #FunctionalGenomics #VariantEffect #Community
We’re excited to share our latest preprint on the mechanism of excised linear intron stabilization in yeast! This work was led by PhD student @glennli.bsky.social and was a wonderful collaboration with @maxewilkinson.bsky.social. Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/4)
Thanks for everything, Dr. Foege. May we all work to be more diligent stewards of the legacy you left us: to work every day to care for all of our neighbors, present and future, a bit better than we did yesterday.
Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 8mo agoA public health giant has passed. “Among public health professionals, Dr. Foege was almost without peer… In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor given to a civilian.”
