André Schneider, University of Bern
@schneian.bsky.social
Biochemist interested in mitochondria, trypanosomes and science in general
🧵🚨: Remember the recent #genAI cheating scandal at Brown? Everyone talks about the average score drop from take-home midterm to proctored final: 95.7 → 48.8. That number alone can't settle anything. But the released data can, and almost nobody has looked at it. So we did! Read on. #AcademicSky
What exam scores can and cannot prove about unauthorized AI assistance: Evidence from a highly public classroom episode
In spring 2026, an economics professor at Brown University gave a take-home midterm and, after unusually high scores, made the final exam proctored. Among the 59 students who completed the course, ave...
arxiv.org
T. brucei KMP11 is tiny, essential, and its function is unknown. Here we show that it localizes to the FAZ/TAC/PFR/MtQ but not to the BB, suggesting that KMP11 may X-link alpha-helical cytoskeletal proteins. Congrats to Salome, Torsten et al. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article-...
journals.biologists.com
Sure, let's engineer cockroaches to make them MORE indestructible
Matthew Sparkes@sparkes.bsky.social · 2mo agoRemote-controlled cyborg cockroaches can now breathe underwater for up to 3 hours thanks to tiny SCUBA suits. Researchers hope one day they could even help us to explore space or planets like Mars. www.newscientist.com/article/2531...
Rosetta stone for “The extended central dogma of Mol Biol”. Bottom: b-globin 🧬. Middle: b-globin protein🩸. Top: cell types and organs 🫁 ❤️🧠. We understand the gene to protein transition, we are still working out how cell types are formed. Easteregg at the bottom for @matthewcobb.bsky.social #SciArt
Beautiful videos nicely explaining microtubules! Congratulations to Renaud Chabrier and Casten Janke 👍 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVbv...
Microtubules | Scientific Animated Short Film 2026
YouTube video by Drawing Intelligence
youtube.com
A new retraction for an influential evolutionary biologist is raising the question of whether scientific misconduct more than 20 years ago was just a blip in his impressive publication record or further proof, as some claim, that much of his work rests on a shaky foundation.
A prolific evolutionary biologist caught faking data decades ago notches a new retraction
A study claiming a tenfold decrease in bugs splattered on evolutionary biologist Anders Møller’s windshield over two decades has been retracted. shanecotee / iStock Anders Møller, an influential ev…
retractionwatch.com
My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday
Philipp Rieche, Marten Exterkate, Arnold Driessen et al show that the #lipid divide between #bacteria and #archaea is not as strict as previously thought as bacterial lipid synthesizing enzymes can use both stereo-forms of glycerol-phosphate. #MembraneBiology -> link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Bacterial lipid synthesizing enzymes PlsY and PlsC utilize both stereo-forms of glycerol-phosphate - EMBO Reports
The chemical composition of membrane lipids differs between eukarya, bacteria and archaea. The central dogma posits that the stereochemistry of phospholipids in bacteria is distinct from archaea. Bact...
link.springer.com
Today marks 30 years since we identified the apicoplast, a relict plastid in human and animal parasites (PMID 8632819). Apicoplasts are the target of the widely used antimalarial prophylactic doxycycline, which has saved many thousands of malaria infections.
Has there ever been a controlled study comparing the good cop/bad cop method with good cop/bad cop/indifferent cop?
I met a microbiologist yesterday. He was much bigger than I expected.
Essay by André Schneider ( @schneian.bsky.social ) "The controls that got out of control: How failed control experiments paved the way to transformative discoveries" @emboreports.org . https://buff.ly/4i79rZO @unibern.bsky.social
Briefly, we used two fluorescent dyes that were supposed to label newly synthesized cell wall material in bacteria, but found that when we blocked synthesis, one of the two dyes still bound - indicative of a different type of cell wall. 2/ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Pentapeptide‐rich peptidoglycan at the Bacillus subtilis cell‐division site
The large macromolecule peptidoglycan, that forms the bacterial cell wall, contains local differences in architecture and chemistry that encode the shape of the wall. We used different probes to labe...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
We would have never published a paper (see thread) if not for a control that delivered a surprise - that I didn’t believe at first and asked Danae to repeat multiple times before realizing she was on to something. 1/
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Fun read! Another classic example is Cynthia Kenyon's discovery that loss of the insulin receptor DAF-2 extends lifespan in C. elegans, which came out of the control for a clever mutant screen in which progeny of single F2s are sent into dauer with daf-2(ts) to track lifespan of the parent.
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” The unknown unknowns are why I LOVE science 🧪
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
What a great article!
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A fun read, unveiling key discoveries revealed because the control "failed" 🧪
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A nice reminder to think through _why_ controls failed
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
This is such a beautiful paper.
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago'If a control experiment fails, does that mean that the entire experiment is poorly designed and you must restart from scratch? Often, yes— but not always. I present five examples where failed control experiments triggered entirely new fields of research.' link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Many Thanks - I see you are working with RNA. Then maybe this something for you as well. It is a chimera between science history and formal review "A short history of guide RNAs" file:///Users/Andre/Downloads/embr.202051918.pdf
The Fromm Lab@frommlab.bsky.social · 3mo agoThis is such a beautiful paper.
0/ 💡💡💡Had one of those slightly weird moments reading something today. Two seemingly very different research traditions—starting from opposite directions—appear to be converging on almost the same conclusion about one of biology’s biggest questions: How do genomes generate phenotypes? 👇🧵
1000x linear expansion. Who would have thought this would be possible - From the inventor of the original expansion microscopy - This is absolutely fantastic! - Expansion microscopy is one of the most creative methods I have ever heard of in my 40 years of being a scientist - CONGRATS!
Ali Shaib@alishaib.bsky.social · 3mo agoHello #world, meet 1,000× Expansion Microscopy. A small gel would grow to the size of an Olympic swimming pool, while amino-acid-scale distances become visible with ordinary light microscopy. Led by Helena Hu from @eboyden3.bsky.social's lab, in collab with us. Story: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
How to determine the proteome of cellular compartments? We established a method to do just that, published n @eLife.bsky.social: SPEx: Compartment-Resolved Proteomics via Expansion Microscopy–Guided Microdissection doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
SPEx: Compartment-Resolved Proteomics via Expansion Microscopy–Guided Microdissection
doi.org
Uncovering the initial response: Intra-mitochondrial surveillance activates the UPRmt: Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
Uncovering the initial response: Intra-mitochondrial surveillance activates the UPRmt
Taskin, Shankar, Peselj, et al. demonstrate that mitochondria possess an intrinsic surveillance system that senses mild oxidative stress and activates the UPRmt before damage signals reach the cytosol...
cell.com