Great to see this out in it's final form. To interpret the results from a CDC7i CRISPR screen, Bernard used DepMap co-essentiality to group all hits into functional clusters, identifying CDK8 in a DNA replication group. It's a nice way to quickly get from hit lists to interpretable pathway groupings

The EMBO Journal@embojournal.org · 3d ago

Surprising non-transcriptional function for mediator kinase CDK8 in human DNA replication: Corrado Santocanale & coworkers find it to cooperate with CDC7 in MCM helicase phosphorylation & activation–with implications for antiproliferative actions of CDC7 inhibitors link.springer.com/article/10.1...

No other democracy spends billions on elections or the wealthiest citizens so many opportunities to shape the result. It will take more than two years to build a government that serves the needs of Americans, not a small class of oligarchs, but the Democrats can begin now.

Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · yesterday

What was at stake - and what is at stake now www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofOn...

Good Job America!

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

The most comprehensive data that I know isis from Grant-Witness and States United. www.lostfunds.org

Lost Funds — $174 Billion Gone

Track the Trump administration’s federal funding disruptions state by state — what was cut or frozen, who it hurts, and how states are fighting back in court.

lostfunds.org

Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️@napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 4w ago

Does anyone know of a running tally of how much $$ has been cut from research in the US under the current administration? I read recently that $11 billion has been cut from science funding, but I can't find a source for that.

1\ We know a bit about how 3D chromatin interactions are formed, but what do we know about how they are disrupted? We asked this question in our latest preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202..., focusing on the massive loss of promoter interactions during neuronal differentiation.

Linker histone H1 is known to bind ssDNA (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), and this study identifies HPF1 as a novel interaction partner of phos-H1 by LLPS assemblies at stressed forks. Interesting new link between linker histones, replication stress, and LLPS. pubs.acs.org/acbcct/artic...

Single-stranded nucleic acid binding and coacervation by linker histone H1 - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Using single-molecule imaging and manipulation, the authors show linker histone H1 preferentially forms phase-separated droplets with single-stranded nucleic acids over double-stranded DNA and nucleos...

nature.com

I know I am repeating myself here but: in 2012 the right-wing government did this in Spain. They dismantled the Ministry of Science and incorporated it as a department in the Ministry of Economy. This effectively gave them control over the entire budget because it was one and the same 🧪

Nature@nature.com · 2mo ago

An agreement paves the way for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of projects to be transferred from the NIH’s institute for infectious diseases to the Department of Defense. go.nature.com/4ycEbk8

The quest to identify genetic susceptibility to breast cancer continues - of 33 clinically identified RAD51C variants, several have intermediate homologous recombination deficiencies, and some have distinct therapeutic vulnerabilities. New in NAR Cancer: academic.oup.com/narcancer/ar...

RAD51C breast cancer-identified variants with attenuated homologous recombination function exhibit sensitivity to combined PARP1 and ATR inhibition

Abstract. The tumor suppressor RAD51C is essential for DNA double-strand break repair through the homologous recombination (HR) pathway. RAD51C loss is lin

academic.oup.com

CRISPR-based experiments build a more complete picture of the regulation of interferon responses, which may inform the development of treatments for immunodeficiencies or inflammatory disorders linked to aberrant IFN production. #ScienceSignaling https://scim.ag/4qth02y

A genome-wide map of the genetic network in monocytes that regulates type I interferon induction by the cGAS-STING pathway

Genetic screens identify context-dependent regulators of STING-driven IFN-β induction in monocytes.

scim.ag

Happy to share a brand new story from the group! Started in 2019, stopped for pandemic and revived in 2025. Kudos to all authors and especially to Benedetta and Floriana who is taking the challenge! Take-home message: even small deviations from the norm can make big changes in life... Stay tuned!

bioRxiv Cell Biology@biorxiv-cellbio.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Subthreshold perturbation of DNA replication induces a secretory response and a bystander effect in naïve human fibroblasts https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.20.745990v1

I just completed my standing study section service in June (2022-2026) and want to emphasize Bryan's point: maintaining the integrity of the peer review process is an important act of service for our colleagues, especially right now. If you are asked and can swing it, please consider serving.

BWJones@bwjones.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Just accepted the 2nd study section invitation for this autumn/winter. If you can serve on study section, please accept when asked. The SROs and the POs are working so hard to get good science funded.

This is 572 5 year biomedical research grants to study cancer, heart disease, blindness, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, diabetes, infectious disease, etc…

Patrick Hickey, MD@pwhickey.bsky.social · 3mo ago

rollcall.com/2026/08/04/p...

Bastano poche righe a descrivere responsabilmente la realtà dei fatti a Ceuta. Ma i sovranisti scatenano l’indegna cagnara dell’invasione, minano la solidarietà europea e speculano sui morti.

100% this. I am so grateful to everyone at NIH who continues their work despite continued and escalated sabotage from above. Feeling so lucky that my grant made it through but recognize that there are still unknowable numbers of labs that risk closing in the near future.

Mark Histed@markhisted.org · 3mo ago

And much praise to the civil servants at NIH making this happen in terrible conditions

Anti-Z-NA antibodies can distinguish accessible Z-form states across DNA, RNA, and DNA-RNA substrates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.22.740205v1

A simple but (I think) compelling re-analysis of a paper that Director Bhattacharya frequently cites in his talks to claim that NIH-funded researchers no longer pick up the newest ideas. Dr. Bishop concludes the opposite using the same data. The original conclusion was contrary to my experience.

Dorothy Bishop@deevybee.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Further analysis of Packalen & Bhattacharya article, where they claimed #NIH-funded research was slow to pick up on new ideas. I argue that their approach is flawed, and I present an analysis that shows the exact opposite. pubpeer.com/publications...

“Once again, the answer to critique and demands to ‘reform‘ the NIH is a simple ‘they already do that’...The next response is ‘if you want more of this thing they already do, than give the NIH an increase in budget. Otherwise, what specific core activities of the NIH are to be cut to pay for that?’”

Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NIH must "open scientific careers to skilled craftspeople and practitioners" drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/07/22/n...

Thanks to @deevybee.bsky.social for this! Am looking forward to digging into the analysis.

Dorothy Bishop@deevybee.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm grateful to the authors of this paper for sharing their data and code, but I don't think they did the right analysis! pubpeer.com/publications...

Happy Independence Day to all American people 💪🔬

Study (N=8,097) finds women more likely to finish a PhD before 30 & have children after 35. Men tended to become parents during doctoral studies & often had 3+ children by 40. Early-career mothers had lower citation rates; fathers had no such penalties. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Female Academics Increasingly Delay Motherhood Until Age 35

“Pronounced penalties” for those early-career staff with children may explain why Ph.D.s postpone becoming parents, a recent study finds.

insidehighered.com

NIH grants have been under political scrutiny since early 2025. But what does the screening process actually look like? What is being flagged? I spent a month digging into leaked docs and emails. We've published the 235-word list that are being flagged by an internal AI tool. And so much more. 🧵

Inside the new political screening that’s stalling NIH grants

Mandatory reviews by top health officials and checks for 235 disfavoured terms have left hundreds of vetted grant applications in administrative limbo.

nature.com

A technique that supersizes cells to reveal minute details has gone big — really big go.nature.com/4xUP2jG

Making samples one billion times bigger lets simple microscopes pinpoint amino acids

Nature - Stretching protein samples in all directions pulls molecules farther apart, allowing them to be visualized using only light microscopy.

go.nature.com

ANY other President would have been removed, disgraced, and castigated.

Ben scritto, misurato, fondato su osservazione dei fatti, non ideologico.

Scientific American has an outstanding article about what has been happening to our scientific research enterprise that is aimed at the lay public. Worth sharing widely. www.yahoo.com/news/science...

America’s compact between science and politics is broken

Last year Christopher Reynolds started to worry that his space telescope was going to be killed. Eight teams of researchers pitched NASA their ideas; Reynolds, an astronomer at the University of Mary...

yahoo.com

"Right now, in some underfunded lab, a scientist is chasing a question that sounds pointless...a century of experience says that funding people to do this work is a good bet. If we stop making that bet, we will pay for it in cures no one will know to miss."

Victor Ambros@vambros.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A column by Jeff Coller: “The Science That Turned Lizard Venom Into GLP-1s Is Under Attack” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/o...

I for one like the idea of limiting the number of R01 type grants a lab can have to help diversify the research being done. However, the data (a little out of date) says this is not the problem. The issue is ever decreasing $ to the NIH in inflationary dollars.

Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Talk of limiting grants, by number or by dollars, should be informed by data. It’s been a long time since we got NIH information on grants per PI. drugmonkey.scientopia.org/2013/01/30/p...

Here is our article published in Nature Comm, on new players in chromatin dynamics after UV repair. This work highlights the histone chaperones DNAJC9 and MCM2 as central players in chromatin repair. Our proteomic dataset opens up new perspectives for dissecting epigenome maintenance mechanisms.

Proteomic profiling of UV damage repair patches uncovers histone chaperones with central functions in chromatin repair - Nature Communications

Chromatin states need to be maintained during DNA damage repair. Here, the authors expand the histone chaperone network involved in repair-coupled chromatin restoration and highlight a mechanistic coo...

nature.com