Harold Pimentel

@hjp.bsky.social

Assistant prof at UCLA using the Bayes for the genomes https://pimentellab.com

tech 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.”

Jeffrey Mervis@policyhound.bsky.social · last mo.

Been wondering why NSF isn't spending most of its FY26 appropriation? A $1.5B tech initiative may be the reason. And big cuts to hundreds of research programs could be just the beginning of the bad news. www.science.org/content/arti...

Please repost: My department at USC is hiring for a teaching-track faculty position. We are looking for someone principally to teach statistics for biologists, but there will be opportunities for other courses in statistics & algorithms applied to biology usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Full-Time, Teaching-Track Faculty Position in Quantitative and Computational Biology at USC

Learn more about applying for Full-Time, Teaching-Track Faculty Position in Quantitative and Computational Biology at USC

usccareers.usc.edu

The proteasome-substrate-shuttle protein UBQLN2 contains—like other quality control system proteins—a long region devoid of lysine (a lysine desert) Martin Grønbæk-Thygesen (from @rhp-lab.bsky.social) et al show that introducing K here causes ubiquitylation and degradation doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Fig. 1 – UBQLN2 is a conserved lysine-depleted protein. (A) Sequence comparison of
UBQLN2 orthologs in the indicated species. Intrinsically disordered regions in human
UBQLN2 based on MobiDB are shown as a blue bar. The domain organization based on the
SMART database is marked. Lysine residues are marked as black squares. (B) ESM-2
predictions of all possible single amino acid substitutions of human UBQLN2 presented as a
heat map. The wild-type residues are marked in blue. ESM-2 scores close to zero (light
yellow colors) indicate that the amino acid substitution is compatible with the ESM-2
language model, whereas negative scores (dark orange colors) indicate that the variant is
incompatible with the ESM-2 model. The domain organization (based on SMART) is aligned
above the map. Note that substitutions to lysine or cysteine in general appear detrimental, in
particular downstream of the UBL domain. (C) The AlphaFold2 predicted structured of
human UBQLN2 (AF-Q9UHD9-F1) (left panel). The UBL domain is colored blue, and the
UBA domain is colored orange and the STI1 regions green. Zoom in on the UBL domain
(right panel) with the lysine residues highlighted as stick representations and colored based
on the relative accessible surface area (rASA, dark red exposed; grey, buried).
bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 10mo ago

The importance of UBQLN2 ubiquitylation for its turnover and localization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.02.679934v1

The first (of hopefully many) reports to come from our collaboration with @hjp.bsky.social We present a new type of cell fitness assay that allows you to both quantify and explain differences across human donors in cell proliferation and sensitivity to environmental toxicants.

bioRxiv Genetics@biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Cell villages and Dirichlet modeling map human cell fitness genetics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678880v1

Super excited to get this out. This collab started a few years ago and is the first paper from it. Here, with experimental and computational approaches we: 1. establish that cell villages can be just as accurate (one might argue more accurate!) than arrayed-based designs bsky.app/profile/bior...

bioRxiv Genetics@biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Cell villages and Dirichlet modeling map human cell fitness genetics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678880v1

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a convoluted, 36-page emergency order about NIH grant terminations. Two main takeaways: -$2 billion (not the government # of $780 million) in NIH grants will likely be re-terminated -future legal challenges will be much harder w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social:

US Supreme Court allows NIH to cut $2 billion in research grants

The decision will hinder lawsuits against grant terminations, legal specialists say.

nature.com

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z 
a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material
Text reads:
"The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"