"Grokipedia...mentions genetics more frequently than Wikipedia and hallucinates or misrepresents human genetics research...it asserts that genes are causal factors underlying group-level measures such as...crime rates" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

From Wikipedia to AI: Measuring 25 years of synthesis of human genetics research in the public-facing information ecosystem

Genetics research frequently intersects with ethnicity, nationality, and race, making it uniquely vulnerable to misrepresentation. Yet, 25 years after the initial sequencing of the human genome, there...

biorxiv.org

1st genome sequenced (Sanger 1977), 1st genome synthesised (Venter 2003), 1st genome + proteome fully mutated (Huijin Xiangua 2026!) @crg.eu @sangerinstitute.bsky.social Complete Mutagenesis of the Genome and Proteome of ΦX174 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Complete Mutagenesis of the Genome and Proteome of ΦX174

The bacteriophage ΦX174 was the first genome to be sequenced and the first to be chemically synthesised. Here we present a complete map of the consequences of changing every nucleotide in the ΦX174 ge...

biorxiv.org

"f you are hunting for a COVID villain[,] investigate crooks who promoted quack remedies...sources of anti-vaccine disinformation...No mistakes by the scientific community begin to compare with the [right's] brutal indifference to the well-being of Americans" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...?

Anthony Fauci Is Not the Villain in This Story

The doctor was thrust into his pandemic-leadership role because of Trump’s deadly dereliction of duty.

theatlantic.com

Claude: "Epigenetics is the study of how gene activity gets turned up, down, or off without changing the underlying DNA sequence itself. The main mechanisms are DNA methylation; histone modification; non-coding RNA" 1/n

"pictur[e] chronic inflammation as a road crew that shows up to fix a broken pipe...they inevitably create additional problems: noise, dust, traffic snarls...those new problems may become as troublesome as — or even worse than — the broken pipe itself." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Inflammation Keeps Us Alive. It's Also Making Us Sick.

The discovery that chronic inflammation is a cause of myriad illnesses could be this century's biggest medical breakthrough.

nytimes.com

"Here we apply DNA Typewriter, a prime editing-based recorder that writes stochastic symbolic insertions to an engineered genomic TAPE in strictly sequential order, to trace mouse development from zygote (E0) to late organogenesis (E13.5)" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In vivo reconstruction of the cell lineage history of a developing mouse with DNA Typewriter, from zygote to late organogenesis

The complete cell lineage of C. elegans, mapped over four decades ago, was tractable because the animal is small, transparent, and lineage invariant. Most animals are none of these, having orders of m...

biorxiv.org

A "defining characteristic of editorial work is responsibilities rarely disappear....new integrity measures don't replace tasks; they're added. [Staff] are expected to investigate image[s], evaluate disclosures, verify identities, respond to allegation[s]" scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/07/29/t...

The Hidden Cost of Trust - The Scholarly Kitchen

Research integrity demands stronger safeguards in order to protect the scholarly record. But for editors, when new integrity measures are introduced, they do not replace existing tasks; they are added...

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

arXiv has spun out as an independent non-profit like openRxiv. Today they announce their new CEO and founding Board blog.arxiv.org/2026/07/30/a...

arXiv welcomes inaugural CEO and founding Board of Directors

arXiv welcomes inaugural CEO and founding Board of Directors

blog.arxiv.org

SSPE is a fatal brain inflammation caused by measles. Occurs in every country where there are infections. Best way to prevent it: vaccination. Cattaneo on live TWIV podcast recording at #ASV2026 www.microbe.tv/twiv/

Trust but verify…

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦@merz.bsky.social · last wk.

When AlphaFold 3 puts the critical helix in the wrong N-to-C orientation, despite there being both X-ray diffraction and cryoEM structures of the complex in the PDB (5BUZ, 9ZCS)…

Speaker refused to divulge the name of compound X in Q&A after his ASCB talk. Questioner [who will be known to many cell biologists] blew a raspberry into the mic and gave the speaker the finger.

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · last wk.

Hey 🧪! I was just reminiscing with a friend about the time a very senior academic called a mid-career guy's work "completely meaningless" at a meeting and now I want to hear your best (public, academic) disses

Flo’s excellent summary is the perfect illustration of how science works. We uncover new data and change or refine our understanding and our hypotheses Pretending otherwise is misrepresenting (or perhaps outright ignoring, though some people should know better) reality

Flo Débarre@flodebarre.eurosky.social · last wk.

I am sick of some media uncritically repeating Rand Paul's misrepresentation of Fauci's journal about the Huanan market. In late Jan 2020, it was a common commentary that the market may not be the origin of the outbreak, b/c of a Lancet paper on early cases ▫️1/6 www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

Vandewoude: domestic cats are at the nexus of H5N1 transmission and potential vectors ➡️ humans. Infection more common when fed raw milk/meat and farm exposure occurring, like 1921… #ASV2026

Bieniasz at #ASV2026: SARS-CoV2 FCS is a Rorschach test. But insertion is a major mechanism of viral evolution. 5X10^-3/genome freq and can observe acquisition of new FCSs during normal virus replication. Happening all the time but human intuition not used to dealing with numbers of this magnitude.

Baric at #ASV2926: the most important job of faculty is to give young people the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

Baric at #ASV2026: SARS3 is in our future. Spillovers from animals occurring all the time - every 20 years there’ll be an epidemic. Viral evolution and changing human immunity mean SARS3 in 20-50 years.

Standing ovation for Ralph Baric at #ASV2026 …

RNA-seq tells us how much RNA is present in the cell. But to understand gene regulation, we need to easily measure the synthesis and decay rates driving this abundance. We introduce AIR-seq: analog intrinsic recoding sequencing. (1/6) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Analog intrinsic recoding measures RNA dynamics without chemical conversion

Steady-state RNA abundance measurements mask the synthesis and decay rates that shape gene expression. Analog intrinsic recoding sequencing (AIR-seq) repurposes the base-pairing properties of N4-hydro...

biorxiv.org

Am about to lift the following from a thread I did once in the Olim Bird Place, but if I leave a legacy behind, please let it be the legacy of coining the term The Chortlemuffin effect. The Chortlemuffin Effect describes a citational chain leading to bullshit. /1

"Academic AI research is driven almost entirely by Asia, even though the commercial centre of power is in the USA." newsletter.journalology.com/p/the-jist-j...

The Jist: July 8 to July 27

Get the gist of recent news stories, written by journalists, that cover topics related to scholarly communication.

newsletter.journalology.com

Schadenfroh doppeldenken?

Joe Bak-Coleman@jbakcoleman.bsky.social · last wk.

While I might be in the minority for not experiencing a renewed interest in the Odyssey this summer, I do love that my mutuals seem to be holding both an enjoyment for the movie and the scathing critique at the same time.

Beyond providing insight into the centromere paradox, this work demonstrates that complete chromosome reconstruction is now possible from wild-caught flies, opening new opportunities for population, functional, and quantitative genomics in Drosophila. Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A conserved architectural domain shapes centromere evolution in Drosophila

Centromeres ensure faithful chromosome segregation despite being embedded within rapidly evolving repetitive DNA, a contradiction known as the centromere paradox. While centromere identity is defined ...

biorxiv.org

I ❤️ NY Subway Graphics Standard Manual - on view at 5th Ave/53rd St stop

Headed to #ASV2026 - we have booth 15. Come say hi or ping me if you want to chat about preprints.

New standard for genetic pedigrees: Kahlo format display

It will continue to grow and spin out of control the longer we ignore it I understand that competition for attention is very tough in this crazy world, but as Kai says this Ebola outbreak is something that should be receiving a lot more attention- and a lot more help

Kai Kupferschmidt@kakape.bsky.social · 2w ago

Another massive jump in Ebola cases in DRC (reflecting new cases as well as "data harmonization"). Now 2,905 cases including 1,269 deaths. I find it harder every day to square the size and speed of spread of this outbreak with the lack of attention it is getting. insp.cd/sitrep-n069-...

"7 days after the medical team infused trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the base editor into her spinal fluid, she died of a severe immune reaction" www.science.org/content/arti...

Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public

Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals

science.org

"assessment outcomes were shaped more by the judges than by the papers...Journal effects did not explain [the] variation" We often say "just read the paper, have an expert look at it, don't use journal as a proxy in evaluations. But if beauty is in the eye of the beholder.. arxiv.org/abs/2607.09783

Judges matter more than papers in post-publication research assessment

Research assessment relies on expert evaluations, yet human judgement is noisy, and it is unclear whether differences in assessment arise primarily from differences in genuine research quality or from...

arxiv.org

The Impact Factor is an excellent measure of article quality.

James McLeod@jamespmcleod.ca · 2w ago

It's safe to assume that all major LLMs are scraping Bluesky data to train future models. As an open protocol, Bluesky is one of the few sources of fresh human-generated content that anybody can gobble up. So all this is probably going in the models. There are submarines in the Great Lakes.

New -cytosis term has dropped on bioRxiv "We term this process ‘skoupocytosis’ after the Greek word for garbage” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Microglia extract neuronal proteolytic organelles via skoupocytosis

Neurons face unique challenges in maintaining protein homeostasis due to their tortuous morphology and extended processes. Proteolytic organelles are typically transported retrogradely towards their s...

biorxiv.org