John Dennehy
@drjdennehy.bsky.social
We are the resistance, not because we chose to be, but because we have no other choice.
1/17 Submissions are now open for the 2027 Microbial Population Biology GRC! We expect this meeting to be extraordinarily oversubscribed. If you want to come, time is of the essence--apply ASAP! June 27–July 2 • Andover, NH www.grc.org/microbial-po...
Selective Packaging of Rotavirus Double-Layered Particles into Host Microvesicles RV infection strongly increases host microvesicle production, and these vesicles are enriched for DLPs even though the intracellular viral population is dominated by TLPs. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Selective Packaging of Rotavirus Double-Layered Particles into Host Microvesicles
Rotavirus is a non-enveloped RNA virus traditionally thought to exit host cells through lytic or conventional vesicular pathways, but recent evidence shows that it also exploits host microvesicles for...
biorxiv.org
In our new Science Spotlight, see how Biology Ph.D. candidate Zubaida Marufee Islam is helping root out rotavirus with research that may identify new targets for treating the stealthy killer. https://www.gc.cuny.edu/news/science-spotlight-fighting-scourge
“A Top Virus Scientist Stared Down Covid Lab-Leak Proponents. Now His Life’s Work Is at Stake: The battle over Covid’s origins has come for Bob Garry, who’s faced some of the world’s deadliest viral threats.” — www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
A Top Virus Scientist Stared Down Covid Lab-Leak Proponents. Now His Life’s Work Is at Stake
The battle over Covid’s origins has come for Bob Garry, who’s faced some of the world’s deadliest viral threats.
bloomberg.com
In 2014, Jason Rosch and I met at a GRC in Tuscany and sketched an idea on a cocktail napkin: what if we evolved S.pneumo in mice, treated them with antibiotics, varied their immune systems and watched what won? 11 years and a huge team effort later, it's out in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social 🧵
The Mostly Unknown Epidemiology That Undermines the Lab Leak Hypothesis In light of yesterday's attempt to publicly humiliate NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, this post I wrote a few… https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2026/07/30/the-mostly-unknown-epidemiology-that-undermines-the-lab-leak-hypothesis/
The Mostly Unknown Epidemiology That Undermines the Lab Leak Hypothesis
In light of yesterday's attempt to publicly humiliate NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, this post I wrote a few days ago about a fundamental problem with COVID the lab leak hypothesis turned out to be timely. Anyway... When it comes to people who entertain the COVID lab leak hypothesis–or who support the notion wholeheartedly that the pandemic began with a leak from a research laboratory in Wuhan, China, there is always a piece of evidence that is never raised, even though it was discovered during the early stages of the pandemic.
mikethemadbiologist.com
No they are not. Stop it. The answer to any hint of legitimacy is “fund science better”. Stop wasting an R01 with every Patriot missile salvo in the Middle East.
John Timmer@jtimmer.bsky.social · 2mo agoI tried to acknowledge that the report identifies a few issues that the scientific community is already talking about, like the NIH's focus on funding incremental advances and the administrative burden on faculty. Those are real areas of debate.
A fundamental question in disease ecology remains unresolved: How can an acute, immunizing virus persist in nature? Theory says viruses like measles need huge pools of susceptible hosts. Our new preprint offers an answer. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Persistent, Multi-Species Outbreaks and Long-Range Transmissions of a Measles-Like Virus
Canine distemper\---|a measles-like disease with high mortality and presently without a cure\---|poses a major threat to wild and domestic carnivores globally. Domestic dogs are generally considered t...
biorxiv.org
Glad to see this story and coverage of an important paper. www.statnews.com/2026/06/17/n... 1/16
NIH diversity programs doubled undergraduates’ odds of getting a Ph.D., 20-year study finds
A new study found that two diversity-oriented programs supported by the NIH doubled the odds that an undergraduate would earn a Ph.D.
statnews.com
My colleague @cswormlab.bsky.social wrote a great article about the proposed OMB rule changes for federally funded research. Read it here: psc-cuny.org/clarion/onli... Comment on the OMB site to object to these changes before the July 13 deadline: www.aps.org/initiatives/...
Another federal attack on scientific research - PSC CUNY
The PSC must defend scientific research from an anti-knowledge administration.
psc-cuny.org
Call your representatives because it’s illegal: “By levying such a large tax on its other programs, the agency appears to be defying a congressional directive in the final FY 2026 appropriations bill that ‘No [NSF] directorate shall receive more than a 5% reduction relative to…2024 enacted level.’”🧪
Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽@needhibhalla.bsky.social · 3mo agotech capture of the NSF: “it allows NSF to make awards to nontraditional recipients such as a limited partnership or a venture capital firm, some of which might have been created solely for the purpose of receiving the NSF award.”
Now we know where the missing money that NSF hasn't allocated in FY2026 is going. Current funding allocations are just one-eighth of the FY 2025 total through 15 June: www.science.org/content/arti...
Exclusive: NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say
Unexpected shift in funds has meant sharp drop in grants this fiscal year
science.org
American science is being destroyed. Worst funding year in generations. grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0...
The NSF is on Track for its Worst Year in Generations – Grant Witness
Throttling of science funding is utterly unprecedented and radical when compared to the past 50 years.
grant-witness.us
NIH grant cuts disproportionately hit minority and female scientists www.nature.com/articles/d41...
NIH grant cuts disproportionately hit minority and female scientists
A survey reveals sharp divides in who bore the brunt of last year’s spree of grant cancellations by the Trump administration.
nature.com
'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...
National Science Foundation’s future in limbo as Trump eyes cuts
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) future is in limbo as President Trump pushes for more budget cuts and his nominee to helm the research agency awaits Senate confirmation. Since Trump’s retu…
thehill.com
Congratulations to Biology Ph.D. student Taylor Rubin, who won a 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America!
Where a Love of Birds Leads
Biology Ph.D. student Taylor Rubin wins a 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America.
gc.cuny.edu
"The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Jay Bhattacharya) has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half." !!! 🎁
CDC delays publishing report showing covid vaccine benefits
The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness.
wapo.st
Now out in AEM @asm.org! 🎉🧪 *High school student-isolated mutants 👉🏻 novel genetic causes of biofilm-associated adaptations *We learn how diversity arises quickly and is maintained *EvolvingSTEM enables scalable research in classrooms & promotes scientific literacy journals.asm.org/eprint/FBU9M...
Genetic diversification of Pseudomonas fluorescens maintained by multi-niche selection within biofilms | Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Bacterial biofilms dominate microbial life; however, their evolutionary genetics remain incompletely understood. Extensive replication of biofilm selection experiments by secondary school students can...
journals.asm.org
Vaughn Cooper@vscooper.micropopbio.org · last yr.Sharing the most significant work from my group, led by the @evolvingstem.bsky.social team. Come for the discoveries of how Pseudomonas adapts in biofilms, stay for the story of how they were discovered by thousands of young scientists in grades 9-12. 🧪🧫🧬🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.nature.com/articles/s41... "Rip1 uses these phage protein ring complexes as a template to assemble into membrane-disrupting pores that inhibit phage virion assembly and cause premature death of the host cell."
A pore-forming antiphage defence is activated by oligomeric phage proteins - Nature
Bacteria use diverse defence systems against phages, including a 164-residue prophage-encoded protein, Rip1, which senses conserved phage assembly rings to form membrane pores that block virion matura...
nature.com
www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/n...
National survey of NIH-funded researchers shows precarious state of U.S. science — ‘This is like the Titanic’
A nationwide STAT survey of NIH-funded researchers reveals that, a year after Donald Trump's return to the White House, many scientists are reeling
statnews.com
Which type of Scientist are you? I don't remember where I got this but found it going through some very old files. NB: I am a Geek.
New paper 🔔 Collaboration @sullivan-lab.bsky.social Marissa Gittrich led the work Klebsiella phage biology has focused almost entirely on capsulated strains, but capsule loss is the #1 resistance mechanism under phage predation. We used a naturally acapsular host to reveal the receptor landscape
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Mind blowing
A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand
The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...
science.org
I'm a big fan of bioRxiv, so it was fascinating to dig into the stats behind the rise of this preprint server from its first 13 or so years for Nature News @nature.com 🧪 @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social #preprints www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How bioRxiv changed the way biologists share ideas – in numbers
Four million articles are now downloaded from bioRxiv every month, according to an analysis of the life-science preprint server’s first 13 years of existence.
nature.com
Capturing dynamic phage–pathogen coevolution by clinical surveillance "we capture the acquisition of a parasitic anti-phage mobile genetic element, PLE11, that initiated a selective sweep coinciding with the largest cholera outbreak in recent records. " www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Capturing dynamic phage–pathogen coevolution by clinical surveillance - Nature
The acquisition of a parasitic anti-phage mobile genetic element, PLE11, showing potent anti-phage activity against cocirculating ICP1, and the subsequent evolution of ICP1 to escape this defense, are...
nature.com
