Jeff Lewis
@lewislab.bsky.social
Interested in understanding how organisms sense and respond to stressful environments, and why some individuals are more sensitive or more resilient. he/his
Updated version of our preprint about mutations in URA6 causing 5-FOA resistance in S. cerevisiae, now including new metabolite profiling data! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
URA6 mutations provide an alternative mechanism for 5-FOA resistance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
The URA3 gene is frequently used in the budding yeast community as the mutation target for 5-fluoroorotic acid (5-FOA) resistance. We identified a class of ura6 mutants that can grow in the presence o...
biorxiv.org
Who needs chromatin anyway...? NOT THIS GUY! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n
Chromatin is dispensable for bacterial life
Inside cells, DNA is intimately associated with proteins, forming chromatin. The protein constituents of chromatin vary across the tree of life: histones are the principal building blocks of chromatin...
biorxiv.org
And people think I am paranoid to point out that there are bigots everywhere, implanted, covert and who are DELIGHTED to be able to step into the light at last.
Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 3d agoHe carried water for the anti-"DEI" push including filing a deposition in one of the lawsuits against grant terminations which was misleading, sloppy, and, in my view, bordering on perjury. I know because I was asked to (and did) file a declaration in response. 2/4
A long 🧵 about my former Hopkins colleague... Jon Lorsch is the NIH's Deputy Director for Extramural Research (DDER). He is the individual most responsible for overseeing the NIH grants program. He was formerly the Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. 1/21
Hey folks, this hasn’t gotten much attention, but remember those proposed OMB rule changes we all commented on recently? There’s a new attempt to sneak them just for NSF. We have three days to comment. Please don’t sleep on this!
Noam Ross@noamross.net · 5d agoThree more days to comment on NSF's attempt to smuggle in OMB's already-rejected policies of terminating any grant without cause, gutting civil rights obligations and restricting international collaborations. Submit your comment today! Then call your representatives. 🧪
Some folks are giving the current administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to binning NIH proposals into three broad bins instead of individual scores, ostensibly to solve a problem many complained about. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” especially after they’ve already ravaged Troy.
Excited to share this review that @needhibhalla.bsky.social and I wrote on meiotic checkpoints! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Tuning Meiotic Checkpoints: Evolutionary Costs and Mechanistic Trade-Offs
In this review, we discuss three meiotic checkpoints—the DNA damage response, the pachytene checkpoint, and the spindle checkpoint—and highlight their similarities and differences across diverse syste...
annualreviews.org
Excited to have this out in the world! @lacefieldlab.bsky.social and I discuss meiotic checkpoints, with a focus on how they may be tuned both in and across systems to reflect the mechanistic trade-offs, evolutionary constraints and unique goals and innovations of meiosis. 🧪
Soni Lacefield@lacefieldlab.bsky.social · 5d agoExcited to share this review that @needhibhalla.bsky.social and I wrote on meiotic checkpoints! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
POs run meetings at NSF and have much greater understanding of the rankings because the spreadsheet has the ranks of the proposals and they are there. The highest NSF bin is also smaller. At NIH, SROs run meetings and POs handle other stuff. This means information will be much more compartmentalized
"I encourage you to keep this in mind as you craft your response...My view is that outraged responses that imply or declare the misunderstanding that all NIH grant selection marches in lockstep with the peer review outcome, and/or should only follow the order of peer review, are a huge mistake."
Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · last wk.NIH RFI on plans to stop using percentiles to select grants for funding drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/08/18/n...
"I think we need to focus our critique on the question of who is doing the deciding and what is the basis for that decision."
Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · last wk.NIH RFI on plans to stop using percentiles to select grants for funding drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/08/18/n...
I don’t think the pull quote fairly represents what is being said here.
Minor correction. It is not “previously underrepresented groups”. It is “previously *and currently* underrepresented groups”. Take care your framing does not imply the partial measures in response to, eg the Ginther gap, have budged the needle.
David Gorski, MD, PhD@gorskon.bsky.social · last wk.The NIH just released an RFI (request for Information) on a proposed new format for reporting the scores of grant applications determined by study sections. If implemented, this new system will make it easier to hide political manipulation of grant funding. sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-opposite...
Think about it. If you score a 3rd percentile grant and it is rejected by Big Brother, you'd be suspicious. However, if you scored "somewhere in the top 25%" and it was rejected by Big Brother...who's to blame? Were there better grants out there than yours and they got the funding first? Who knows?
“the idea that any numeric score would be generated and then not shared with the people who would find it most useful (i.e. the people making the funding decisions and the people who wrote the application and need to decide whether to revise and resubmit it) is ludicrous.”
elizabethginexi.bsky.social@elizabethginexi.bsky.social · last wk.My former colleague has brilliantly provided additional context to understand the new NIH Unified Funding Strategy. A must read! substack.com/@jennifertro...
“Social media forms a huge part of our reality, it shapes our perceptions, it is literally what we perceive for a large part of the day.” I’m not sure I entirely agree but i do think it can generate an outsized sense of what ideas are dominant, if not appropriately moderated
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 2w agoVery good piece from @lioneltrolling.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/johnganz...
Excited for @gabrielesgarlata.bsky.social’s new preprint on the Genome-Wide Effect of Drift and Selection over a Single Generation 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The Genome-Wide Effect of Drift and Selection over a Single Generation
The relative importance of genetic drift versus selection to evolutionary change has long been debated. This debate has mainly focused over long-time-scales (e.g. hundreds of thousands of generations)...
biorxiv.org
I appreciated the distinction here between epistemic and non-epistemic writing here, and its possible relevance to using LLMs, but I don’t think I agree about the distinction in writing in the sciences and humanities.
Martin Lenz@goingloopy.bsky.social · 2w agoWhy much academic writing isn’t thinking. A response to Lavinia Marin
Not often do I retweet Andrew Neil approvingly - but Jason Arday was a mutable, imperfect, and ultimately fragile human being. We can all change. We can all atone and improve. Until we can't - with the great big full stop of death My first ever comment on Jason Arday: RIP
Come on, folks. Your chance to get you voice heard. It’s comment time! (until October 13th)
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 2w agoThe NIH just released a proposal that will apparently hide peer reviewers’ impact scores and percentiles from the research team, their institution, and NIH program officers. All the better to obscure how funding decisions will be made primarily via political review, I’m guessing.
If I read this correctly, program officers would not see any ranking differences among the top 25% of applications. Which immediately begs the question of how applications within this group would be chosen for funding. Lottery? Personal preference of the PO? Choice by LLM?
Elizabeth Sypek@elizabethis.bsky.social · 2w agoFriday drop grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
This is an excellent point, and will likely further reduce collaborative and smaller mech submissions due to the new cap. And will likely increase the review burden if POs have little idea of whether a grant will be funded until it happens.
Kevin Wright@kevinmawright.bsky.social · 2w agoMore on my thinking here: I've previously been funded by NINDS and NEI, where <10 %ile meant you had a really good chance at funding, and >15 %ile meant "get cracking on the resubmission". Now, a PI won't know until after council decisions. Prolonged uncertainty in this environment is bad.
More on my thinking here: I've previously been funded by NINDS and NEI, where <10 %ile meant you had a really good chance at funding, and >15 %ile meant "get cracking on the resubmission". Now, a PI won't know until after council decisions. Prolonged uncertainty in this environment is bad.
By the by, this is why I'm not--even in jest--suggesting possible Draconian measures to 'fix' any NIH issues du jour.
Brian Wasik@brianrwasik.bsky.social · 2w agoI have no interest in hearing from someone, 'oh this can be ok cause I proposed this reform to NIH in 2003 to improve support for...' No. <spray bottle> This is a corrupt leadership not acting in good faith. You under no circumstances have to give benefit of doubt.
I have no interest in hearing from someone, 'oh this can be ok cause I proposed this reform to NIH in 2003 to improve support for...' No. <spray bottle> This is a corrupt leadership not acting in good faith. You under no circumstances have to give benefit of doubt.
elizabethginexi.bsky.social@elizabethginexi.bsky.social · 2w ago‼️NIH is proposing to change NIH Peer Review outcomes. Instead of impact scores they propose 3 categories: "Most competitive" "Competitive", or "Not discussed" This RFI link will accept your comments/feedback on this proposal until 10/13/26. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
IMHO, this is 100% designed to reduce transparency. The top bin is much larger than NSF's (<10% IME), compressing information. And leaving aside the implied insult that POs can't make their own judgment with scores in hand, I'm skeptical that PO recommendations will be followed up the chain.
elizabethginexi.bsky.social@elizabethginexi.bsky.social · 2w ago‼️NIH is proposing to change NIH Peer Review outcomes. Instead of impact scores they propose 3 categories: "Most competitive" "Competitive", or "Not discussed" This RFI link will accept your comments/feedback on this proposal until 10/13/26. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
My view is that this proposal coming out now cannot be considered in a vacuum. It should be considered a tool to subvert peer review of NIH proposals. The statements in the RFI about impact scores are actually correct- they are imperfect measures. But reporting them maintains transparency.
elizabethginexi.bsky.social@elizabethginexi.bsky.social · 2w ago‼️NIH is proposing to change NIH Peer Review outcomes. Instead of impact scores they propose 3 categories: "Most competitive" "Competitive", or "Not discussed" This RFI link will accept your comments/feedback on this proposal until 10/13/26. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
