Registration for this mechanisms of RNA Polymerase regulation meeting is Aug 2: u.osu.edu/mltermmeeting/

The gas pump is not a parking spot. Vacate if you are not actively paying or pumping

Maybe we stop drinking in our 40s because 2 beers is not enough for a buzz, but sufficient for a hang over.

AI slop and electric scooters/mopeds make society worse.

If you are an admin and claim something is policy and not just your convention, you should be able to point to a written policy. Everyone's priority at the university is to support the education and research missions! do not make our lives harder for no reason.

i often hear faculty complaining that students do not enter graduate school with the skills necessary to complete a PhD. they don't seem to understand that graduate students need to be trained in these skills.

in the era where moving small amounts of liquid between tubes and bioinformatics is relatively easy, domain expertise and knowing how to address a question is what will get you a fellowship, grant, job, tenure, etc

I am glad I went to college without a cell phone and without AI

conflating statistical significance and biological significance is the downfall of many scientists. We have really sensitive assays in 'omics, so be careful about chasing small effect sizes of statistically significant phenomenon.

I would much rather complete a ChIP-seq analysis midterm than grade 16 midterms. Giving everyone their own transcription factor raw data makes it much tougher to grade.

does phenol:chloroform still dissolve serological pipettes? is this still a concern that my students shoudl have?

digitally signing documents with Adobe is the hardest part of my job. Signatures always disappear, nothing seems reproducible. I can see signatures in Preview, but not Acrobat; I see them on email previews, but not when it is downloaded. I must be missing something. Is it because I am 40+ now?

⏰ Calling all chromatin aficionados! We we will be joined by @adelmanlab.bsky.social from @harvardmed.bsky.social for our March 27th webinar 📅 Karen will be sharing her groups work on 'Transcription & RNA Quality Control in Health & Disease' 😷🧬 Register here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Please join Andreas Ladurner and me for the GRC Chromatin Structure and Function conference to be held near Barcelona Spain from May 31-June 5! We accepting abstracts for posters and talks. The meeting is preceded by an awesome GRS. Learn more in our video below and apply www.grc.org/chromatin-st...

Happy Chuck Darwin day!

consistently having smaller incoming PhD class sizes is going to kill labs. I am fortunate to have grants, but with incoming PhD classes at 15 for the entire UConn Health, there is no way I can fill out the 3 student positions I can fund.

when my university communications office wants to highlight/detract from the data, they selectively include zero on the y-axis or not. They also seem to really like default excel graphics

❤️

If I fill out a scheduling poll, it is not safe to assume that I will still be free at those same times over 2 weeks later.

this mini-review was fueled by frustration with others who use "context-specific" to describe transcription factors that supposedly can function as repressors or activators: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Molecular Mechanisms of Transcription Factors with Dual Activator and Repressor Functions

Transcription factors (TFs) are traditionally classified as activators or repressors, yet some can perform both roles. We highlight well-supported examples of dual activator/repressor functions and...

tandfonline.com

you paper was in review for 4 months, then one month of editorial who knows what. YOU HAVE 24 MINUTES TO GET THESE PROOFS BACK TO US!!!!

Is it ok to use "you nerds" as a gender neutral term to refer to the students in class? I cannot get myself to use "y'all" and "you guys" is not neutral.

submitting to a journal who accepts LaTeX submission, but the .bst file is not correct and they cannot send me a correct one. Why bother having editors, copy editors, and production staff?

my 13 year old is learning to code and I told him he should not use chatGPT. I know he listened because the code is crap (but it works!) and all his comments are just commented out print() statements.

As usual this time of year, started drafting the list of gene regulation conferences for 2026, enjoy! generegulation.org/conferences-... Know of a relevant event that’s missing? Please reply below

the solution for a leaky roof at UVA and UConn Health seems to be a bucket under the leak. This should be embarrassing and they should use indirects to fix the problem.

Join @stirlingchurchman.bsky.social, @moffittlab.bsky.social, @saramostafavi.bsky.social, me and all speakers for the 2026 CSHL meeting Systems Biology: Global Regulation of Gene Expression, March 11-14. Abstract deadline January 9! More infos and registration at meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

I usually see "peaked" as opposed to "piqued" __my interest__ in graduate school applications, but I got "peeked" for the first time this cycle!

Does anyone have a -80 that they like? Ideally one that doesn't require a thaw every year and constant software updates. I really want one from 1990.

we should force politicians to take 9th grade math tests or critical reasoning tests live during a debate. speaking words confidently is not a great measure of competency.