Today I’m excited to share our new study in Nature Biomedical Engineering, in which we used protein engineering to create a therapeutic able to completely eradicate metastatic ovarian cancer in mice. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rewiring oncogenic signalling to precision ablation of metastatic cancer - Nature Biomedical Engineering

An engineered ErbB oncogene-selective virus shows improved safety and efficacy for treating mouse models of ErbBr/HER2 positive ovarian cancer, showing promise for curing early cases and substantially...

nature.com

Excited to announce big steps for electrical imaging in the brain! In 4 preprints, we and collaborators present 2 new GFP-based voltage sensors: ASAP6c for high-throughput spike recordings, and ASAP7y for subthreshold 1P and 2P imaging bit.ly/4x3k3kX bit.ly/3RKZhq3 bit.ly/4o4fKl3 bit.ly/4uHXuk3 🧵

The Lin Lab is hiring! We're seeking motivated postdocs for projects on voltage imaging and optogenetics in the brain. If you're excited to develop new methods to undersatand and correct brain diseases, working together with other neuroscience labs at Stanford, drop us a line!

Happy to reveal our latest work, Microbe-Independent Deep Assembly and Screening (MIDAS), a method for engineering proteins >10x more cheaply and quickly than before. MIDAS addresses the slowest step in protein engineering — construction and expression of variants — by skipping cloning entirely

Sarafan ChEM-H@stanford-chemh.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Faculty Fellow Michael Lin introduces MIDAS, a new method that builds and tests thousands of protein variants in days instead of weeks - delivering an order-of-magnitude improvement in speed and cost and advancing how proteins are engineered and studied:

It is with a heavy heart that I share the devastating news that my wonderful PhD student, Pengli Wang, passed away on Friday, May 1, at the age of 28, in an unexpected accident. I’ve struggled to write this because it is hard to put into words just how much Pengli meant...

Small selection of classroom doors decorated for Teachers Appreciation Week. It’s just Palo Alto School District, no pressure or anything 😄

The richest man owns X. The second and fourth richest men control Google. The third richest man owns The Washington Post. The fifth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros. See the problem here?

April 24th Update: We are at the lowest transmission levels in almost 5 years, 40% lower than our recent spring lows. This remarkable lull should last 6+more weeks. Estimates: 🔸90,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 750 currently reasonably infectious (5 day window)

Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year

The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

washingtonpost.com

Our group just received a new R01 that was delayed by many months- it should have been awarded ‘25, like the curve below. This grant had the highest score we’d ever received (2%-ile), yet funding was uncertain. With the delay we had to lay people off. Very inefficient. And we are the lucky ones.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The story includes a funding curve graph showing the delay in making new and competitive renewal grants. 2/8

“Amid the search for a new CDC director, some well-qualified candidates sought promises of autonomy to be able to fire and hire staff and to keep science insulated from political influence. Those candidates were not selected, sources told the Post.” arstechnica.com/health/2026/...

Trump picks qualified, normal health leader to head CDC; experts still cautious

She's well qualified but will need to navigate RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine agenda.

arstechnica.com

Erica Schwartz could fix the CDC — as long as she’s not blocked by higher-ups

Trump’s CDC Pick Looks Solid. The Real Risk Is RFK Jr

President Donald Trump has wisely sidestepped controversy by choosing former deputy surgeon general Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

bloom.bg

Just came across this wonderful recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Soloist Julia Fischer is absolutely amazing. The videography brings out every note and every instrument, better than having a front-row seat. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SshD...

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor | Julia Fischer, Dresden Philharmonic & Michael Sanderling

YouTube video by DW Classical Music

youtube.com

The NSF GRFP is now out! There are 2,599 awardees, which is the most ever—and a big shift from last year which initially halved awardees (1,000 awardees + an additional 500). I've thrown together a plot to break down the changes by field. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

At a glance, 2599 recipients - I think the highest total ever? And quite a few in the Life Sciences, which I know was a concern for many - Evolutionary Biology had twice as many recipients (38) as last year (19).

Holly Moeller@mixotrophe.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NSF GRFP results are out! Awardees: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... Honorable Mention: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... (Our team members didn't get emails but discovered the lists through Reddit. Confirmed by logging in to the website and checking.) #NSF #GRFP

Tides do turn

Kevin Rothrock@kevinrothrock.me · 4mo ago

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban conceded defeat on Sunday after what he called a ″painful″ election result, ending 16 years in power for a powerful figure in the far-right movement. apnews.com/article/hung...

Fellow X-scientists! Curious who among you might want human iPSCs stably expressing ASAP-family green fluorescent voltage indicators. Cardiomyocytes and neurons differentiated from these iPSCs can self-report voltage with <1-ms and <1-mV resolution by standard widefield imaging.

"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." !!! 🎁

Stephen Miller allegedly urged Department of Homeland Security agents to “force confrontations” with protesters in Minneapolis in order to win a “PR battle." trib.al/NcbpdiX

CAN THE GOVERNMENT, JUST ONCE, STOP PUTTING THE WAR MACHINE ABOVE HUMAN NEEDS??? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR???

Reposting for the sine

Scientific American@sciam.bsky.social · 4mo ago

More than 1,500 mathematicians are demanding that their field’s most prestigious meeting be moved from the U.S.

Somewhere in the Bay Area not yet ruined by AI

A reminder to take a little time to look around you and enjoy the beauty of nature

This made me smile Thanks to AtomicAerials of reddit — I really needed that

Very excited to share that I’m starting my lab at the Krembil Brain Institute @kbi-uhn.bsky.social at UHN and the University of Toronto! If you’re interested in motor learning and circuit plasticity, please reach out - we are hiring! www.motor-plasticity.org 1/

Roth Lab

Welcome! We study the synaptic and circuit bases for motor control and motor learning. The brain’s ability to learn and form new memories relies on the precise reorganization of neuronal circuits, inv...

motor-plasticity.org

Excited to introduce ScaRCaMP — a highly blue-light resistant red GECI. 🔴 Now live on bioRxiv and marking my first PhD preprint (2nd for the Marko lab). Would love feedback from the community!!

Jeff Markowitz@vulcnethologist.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We made a highly blue-light resistant red-fluorescent genetically encoded calcium sensor GECI) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... BluePrint™ 🗺️ below:

NIH funding rate per applicant dropped 38% in FY2025 vs 2022, from 27.1% to 16.7% Here's a breakdown by career stage. Why FY2022 vs FY2025? • FY2022 was first FY with budget passed and administered by Biden • FY2025 budget was in CR until 3/15/2025, so budget and most grants were under the Trump WH

Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday. Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.

In some countries the outbreak of bloodshed inspires the opposition party to call for the leader to resign

For #fluorescentfriday, an image contributed by my daughter showing GFP in a vial. Specifically mClover3, of course.