Started the day by belatedly reading the excellent essay "Critically assessing atavism, an evolution-centered and deterministic hypothesis on cancer" by Bertrand Daignan-Fornier and @pradeu.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1002/bies... The latter is recruiting a postdoc: philinbiomed.cnrs.fr/jobs/postdoc...

Preprint: Plant pathogens cleave 2’cADPR to suppress TIR immune signaling Inspired by knowledge on how phages inhibit bacterial immunity, we now show that disease-causing bacteria inhibit plant immunity in a similar way. A 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Plant pathogens cleave 2'cADPR to suppress TIR immune signaling

Small molecules produced by TIR (Toll-interleukin-1 receptor) domains are essential for plant immune signaling. A central TIR-derived signal is 2'cADPR, a cyclic ADP-ribose (ADPR) molecule that is gen...

biorxiv.org

ICYMI: Nuclear STING compromises replication fidelity

Reminder to register for the Unifying Ecology Gordon Conference by next Monday! Lest you miss out on this incredible line up! www.grc.org/unifying-eco... @jennsunday.bsky.social @ewaldoleitao.bsky.social #GRC #ecoevo

Sciences Po, Paris-I, Toulouse : les facs confrontées à des répressions « inédites ». www.mediapart.fr/journal/fran...

Sciences Po, Paris-I, Toulouse : les facs confrontées à des répressions « inédites »

Agression, distribution massive d’amendes, contrôles d’identité… Pour enrayer les mobilisations syndicales et étudiantes, les universités ont de plus en plus souvent recours à la police, aux dépôts d…

mediapart.fr

Many thanks to Markus Kunze, Jérôme Badaut, Muriel Darnaudery, Léa Peltier, Thomas Pradeu @pradeu.bsky.social Isabella Sarto-Jackson and Jan-Pieter Konsman for the great collaboration on this paper! END N=25

Fridolin Gross and @pradeu.bsky.social are advertising a two-year postdoc in conceptual, theoretical, or philosophical approaches to cancer at ImmunoConcept (CNRS & University of Bordeaux, France). Closing 30th July. Sounds amazing! philinbiomed.cnrs.fr/jobs/postdoc...

Alisa Bokulich@alisabokulich.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Postdoc in Philosophy of Cancer at University of Bordeaux, France w/ @pradeu.bsky.social Resume & cover letter w/ brief (2-4 pages) description of your project idea(s) to fridolin.gross@u-bordeaux.fr & thomas.pradeu@u-bordeaux.fr. Application deadline: July 30, 2026 #philsci #philmed #philjobs

'Lower-ranked institutions exhibit higher rates than elite universities, young for-profit publishers show elevated rates vis-à-vis competitors, and academic fields differ widely in adoption. LLM adoption in academic writing is pervasive but socially stratified.' www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The diffusion of large language models in published academic articles | PNAS

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly changing academic research, raising questions of who is adopting these tools and under what conditions. Th...

pnas.org

This is today and this is not to be missed.

PhilInBioMed@philinbiomed.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We are pleased to announce the upcoming PhilInBioMed Seminar: June 8 | 5:00-6:30 pm (CET) | virtual Joan Roughgarden (Stanford University, USA): “Theoretical Microbiology: Holobionts, Lytic/Lysogenic Switch, and Merger vs Major Transition” More Details here: philinbiomed.cnrs.fr/event/joan-r...

Great piece and cover @science.org about how our field is uncovering the evolutionary and mechanistic connections between bacterial and eukaryotic immunity ! www.science.org/content/article/ancient-wars-between-microbes-gave-us-key-immune-defenses

Candidates for California governor discussed housing and insurance policy in the first half of an hourlong debate, then furiously attacked one another at the end.

5 Takeaways From the Last Televised California Governor Debate

Candidates debated housing and insurance policy in the first half, then furiously attacked one another at the end.

nyti.ms

Are all #living things capable of #cognition? Today at 5pm, Mazviita Chirimuuta, an oustanding philosopher of #neuroscience who recently received the #Lakatos Award, will give a hybrid talk that identifies the key features of non-cognitive processes. #philsci #cognitive @philinbiomed.bsky.social

PhilInBioMed@philinbiomed.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We are pleased to announce the upcoming PhilInBioMed Seminar: May 5 |5:00-6:30 pm (CET)| hybrid Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Edinburgh, UK): “A Mark of the Non-Cognitive” Further details here: philinbiomed.cnrs.fr/event/mazvii... If you wish to join the session, please reach out to us.

CDC communication undermines trust in vaccines | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

CDC communication undermines trust in vaccines

Uncertainty-based framing raises doubt, lowers vaccination intentions, and boosts science denial

science.org

Dismissing all members of the National Science Board will only continue the destabilization of American fundamental research and scientific workforce development. Read our statement: brnw.ch/21x1Z8n

Quelques échanges récents ici m’ont donné envie de proposer un panorama de la philosophie des sciences contemporaine. Non pour défendre une corporation, mais pour corriger une image assez datée de la discipline. Je resterai volontairement assez schématique pour ne pas alourdir un thread long. 1/n

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

#OTD in #Phage history: In 1873, the phage therapy pioneer Félix d’Hérelle was born!!! His amazing work at @pasteur.fr and other institutions laid the foundation in which groups like the BBH were founded You can read more about his fascinating life story here www.pasteur.fr/en/institut-...

Exclu Le Parisien : des centaines de médecins, scientifiques et personnalités publient une tribune pro-#vaccination, contre "des idéologies qui manipulent les peurs" : "C'est un bien commun de l’humanité, nous ne laisserons personne la remettre en cause."

Vaccination : le cri d’alarme contre « des idéologies qui manipulent les peurs » - Le Parisien

EXCLUSIF. À l’occasion de la semaine de la vaccination, Le Parisien publie un texte offensif, initié par l’Institut Pasteur et rédigé par de

leparisien.fr

If you are planning to attend, the registration is open. We @hpscambridge.bsky.social are pouring our hearts into this conference and it will be amazing. Even though my own submission was not accepted! #philsci #philsky #hps #metascience

Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice 2026 Conference | SPSP Cambridge 2026

The Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice 2026 Conference at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge

spspcambridge2026.com

NAS President Marcia McNutt claims she is being bipartisan by avoiding “topics for which there is a partisan divide.” But this is blatantly partisan. She is doing exactly what one party wants. Worse, in direct opposition to the science in these fields. 🧵1/?

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

About 42:00 "We have been focusing on topics for which there is NOT a partisan divide"... 2/4

Here’s the head of the National Academy of Science saying that the academies shouldn’t work on climate change or vaccines because of political partisanship, and instead focus on fields with “bipartisan” support like national defense and AI.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

From Marcia McNutt's President's Address at the National Academies meeting this morning. www.youtube.com/live/3NXm6d5... 1/4

U.S. President Donald Trump has fired all 24 members of the National Science Board, the body that oversees the National Science Foundation. https://scim.ag/4cxQWhl

Trump fires NSF's oversight board

Dismissal of the National Science Board is widely seen as latest move to erase NSF’s independence

scim.ag

Extinction of the human species: What could cause it and how likely is it to occur?' by Professor Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh (University of Cambridge), on Wednesday 6 May at 6pm UK time. cassyni.com/events/AKmfE...

theconversation.com/a-few-weeks-...

A few weeks of X’s algorithm can make you more right-wing – and it doesn’t wear off quickly

Elon Musk’s social media platform is boosting conservative content – and it’s having long-lasting effects on how users see the world.

theconversation.com

Excited to share our new findings in @science.org on how the DRT3 bacterial defense system uses a reverse transcriptase that builds DNA repeats without a nucleic acid template. Microbes never cease to amaze! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very proud of this work and all the efforts from my team and collaborators on this! You can now use DGRs for in vivo targeted hypermutagenesis in E. coli. We also included some early proof of concept in Yeast thanks to @seth-shipman.bsky.social !

Raphael Laurenceau@raphael-microb.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🔈Paper out! We turned the most fascinating phage host-switch mechanism, diversity-generating retroelements, into a programmable mutagenesis tool, DGRec. You can perform targeted hypermutation of any 50-200bp sequence directly in vivo in E. coli www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our new work on how phages escape bacterial immunity. We show that a phage homing endonuclease drives segmental amplification of anti-defense genes, pointing to a versatile and rapid mode of adaptation. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PhageSky #MicroSky

Phage homing endonuclease amplifies anti-defense genes to evade bacterial immunity - Nature Communications

Phages employ diverse counter-defense strategies to overcome bacterial immune systems. Here, the authors reveal that the phage homing nuclease SegB facilitates immune evasion by promoting the segmenta...

nature.com

Structures of the QatBC complex from Angela Gao and Doug Wassarman in our group reveal an evolutionary link between QatABCD and Type IV CBASS and a role for protein deazguanylation in diverse anti-phage defense systems www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We found that TIR domains in animal immune proteins, including the human TLR4, are enzymes that cleave NAD+ to produce the signaling molecule cADPR Read our new preprint by talented Bohdana Hurieva: “Conserved catalytic activity of immune TIR domains in animals” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...