It's a pity that Matt works for the Telegraph. He's far too good for that rag.
John F. Allen
@profjohnallen.bsky.social
#Cells | #Energy | #Evolution | #Photosynthesis | #Chloroplasts | #Mitochondria | #Science | Honorary Professor, #UCL
Dear BBC, in the interests of impartiality (see your Charter), please give updates on LibDem, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc policies alongside Reform’s. Thank you, a licence payer
The BBC is promoting RefUK as a govt in waiting, when RefUK have 8 MPs, only 3 elected, the other 5 defected from the Tories. Lib Dems have 71 MPs but are ignored. Ofcom is supposed to ensure impartiality of the BBC - the national broadcaster - so clearly Ofcom is complicit in this political bias.
say what you will about the myriad valid concerns with current LLMs but I personally will never get over the fact that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted to his literal death for downloading JSTOR and then a decade later, they downloaded & ingested the entire world and our IP laws just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The recent paper in Science by Bill Martin's team on a vent form of LUCA and a possible "dual origin of life" got some coverage last week. I took a somewhat deeper dive for @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/life...
Life’s ‘last universal common ancestor’ may predate life itself
A groundbreaking study hints at a hazy boundary between “life” and “non-life,” as well as two distinct origins of biology on Earth
scientificamerican.com
Decades of research on bullying in academia tells us abusers are usually known in HEIs (including to HR). They typically stay in post, or are promoted. Their victims (within and outside the uni) are the ones who quit, step down, or are hurt. HEIs generally only act when their reputations are hit /1
Tribunal criticised failure to investigate Prof Evans' whistleblowing concerns, while pursuing allegations against him for a prolonged period Senior leadership was directly implicated Now on gov.uk site, a permanent record os Cambridge leaderships's failures www.gov.uk/employment-t...
Professor N W Evans v The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge and Others: 3307960/2023 and Others
Employment Tribunal decision.
gov.uk
Amazing stuff, what a structure! Elegant work😍
Silvia Ramundo@sramundo.bsky.social · 2mo ago1/7 New preprint: we found that Chlamydomonas carries a giant and unexpectedly elaborate chloroplast RNA polymerase with 12 previously unknown subunits, overturning the idea that the complexity of this organellar enzyme emerged during plant terrestrialization! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Great piece from my PGR colleague @zkadodz.bsky.social about the cuts, "A supervisor is not an abstract academic who can be replaced at a moment’s notice. My supervisors are the foundation of my whole project". Working with PhDs is SO central to academic life: they've not been considered at all 😧
My supervisors can't be replaced
A PhD student's perspective on the University of Exeter redundancy situation
zamirkadodia.substack.com
Posting false information about election candidates is one of the last remaining forms of criminal libel in the UK, fwiw. If your algorithm/AI is bad enough that it isn't immune to this kind of fuck up, it is not ready for deployment! Turn it the fuck off!
Tracey No™️@traceyno.bsky.social · 2w agohey @support.bsky.team umm what are you doing? This election is happening now, current tense
Heartened to see that my university is ending its contract with Turnitin before the next academic year, because Turnitin is going to use student submissions to train AI models. Institutions can and should resist this stuff!
We're hiring a PhD candidate! 🔬 Are you fascinated by cytoplasmic genetics and eager to uncover the mechanisms underlying maternal inheritance of plastids and mitochondria? If so, join our group and contribute to our ERC-funded research "CytoInP"!🌟 Application link: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/p...
PhD position: Manipulating plastid and mitochondrial inheritance in plants
Our group investigates the maternal inheritance of plastid and mitochondrial genomes in plants, with the goal of uncovering the mechanisms that govern this process.
wur.nl
John is a visionary in our field. I always like hearing his new ideas, many of which end up proving to be rather prophetic. #PlantScience 🌾🧪
John F. Allen@profjohnallen.bsky.social · 3w agoWhy a Chloroplast Needs Its Own Genome Tethered to the Thylakoid Membrane—Co‐Location for Redox Regulation - Allen - 2026 - BioEssays - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Why was the Jason Arday story broken by a racist blogger and not the mainstream press? Because Times Higher Education was intimidated off the story by a letter from notorious libel firm Carter-Ruck. I'm publishing the letter. Its central claim may be false.
There's a solar eclipse happening this Wednesday. Maximum coverage will peak shortly after 19:00. So, embrace your inner Sagan, and enjoy the show. This level of coverage won't happen again until 2081!
Today, Mamdani is at the vanguard of an army of proud sewer socialists, who say that once you deliver for people in their day-to-day existence, they will trust you and back you when you fight for deep, structural changes: prospect.org/2026/04/10/z... 51/
Getting New York City to Believe in Government - The American Prospect
Maintaining the momentum of Zohran Mamdani’s historically successful election campaign has meant doing the little things right.
prospect.org
Why a Chloroplast Needs Its Own Genome Tethered to the Thylakoid Membrane—Co‐Location for Redox Regulation - Allen - 2026 - BioEssays - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Why a Chloroplast Needs Its Own Genome Tethered to the Thylakoid Membrane—Co‐Location for Redox Regulation
A schematic outline of chloroplast DNA tethered to two stacked thylakoids that contain the components of photosynthetic electron transport. Green shapes represent proteins encoded in chloroplast DNA;...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
In 1776, Adam Smith risked his reputation to tell the world that his friend David Hume had died cheerful, kind, and unafraid — without religion. That is friendship. I’ve written about it (and about making friends in middle age) for the #InternationalDayofFriendship.
Lessons in friendship: David Hume and Adam Smith | Andrew Copson
For International Day of Friendship, Andrew Copson reflects on one of humanist history's great friendships – and on why making friends in middle age is worth the awkwardness.
humanists.uk
Yes, it's all good. Just need to save observations now. Story going round that we are outdated just because the Lovell is 69 years old. In fact, our tech is cutting edge and nothing better anywhere in the world, now or in foreseeable future.
"All scientific observations at Jodrell are expected to cease on the 1 April 2028 unless alternative funding can be found." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands
Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.
bbc.co.uk
This story is now published in @natplants.nature.com ! 🎉🎩 Check out the final article here: nature.com/articles/s41477-026-02361-1 Very similar to the original bioRxiv preprint, with the addition of some cool polysome analysis (in the supplementals)! Thanks and congrats to everyone involved! 🙏
Chloroplast-encoded small subunit extensions reshape the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome - Nature Plants
Using in situ cryo-electron tomography, researchers found a unique ‘arm’ domain on the small subunit of Chlamydomonas chlororibosomes. This discovery suggests that chlororibosome structure is more evo...
nature.com
Florent Waltz@florentwaltz.bsky.social · 7mo agoLong in the making, but happy to present the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome! Cryo-ET🔬reveals a large new domain on the small subunit, built from multiple extensions in conserved ribosomal proteins. bioRxiv 📖: shorturl.at/q44tG This suggests greater chlororibosome diversity than expected! 1/n 🧵
To a physician, this is like spending a tenth of NASA's budget to prove whether the Earth is round or flat.
Gillian Branstetter@gbbranstetter.bsky.social · last mo.RFK Jr. asked the National Institute of Health to dedicate $5 billion (!) to finding a link between vaccines and autism. "That would have dedicated more than a tenth of the NIH’s annual budget to investigating a hypothesis already refuted by scientists worldwide."
Terrific insights here on the metaphorical origins of “heredity” and on the limits of that metaphor. From Thomson (1908)
