Are you on the faculty job market? Interested in coming to work here at Stony Brook? (You should be!) Physiology & Biophysics (my home department) is looking to add faculty at the Asst/Assoc Prof level: apply.interfolio.com/148377

I saw the picture and thought the situation with the reflecting pool had gotten out of hand.

Puget Sound Whale Sightings@pugetsoundwhales.bsky.social · 2mo ago

💚♠️ Fri, Jun 19 Lovely & busy whale days: SRKWs & w/new calf L130; continuation of T64Bs w/T65As; rare & 1st time inland Puget Sound orcas... 
📷 T68C1 Sila slices thru glassy calm Hammersley Inlet before the family eventual Puget Sound exit & journey to the Pacific. By April Basham 6/12 
 #psws

Plus: the intellectual archeology of whole lines of text crossed out and arrows reordering sentences.

Markus Deserno@markusdeserno.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This. Writing is more than the process of putting thoughts on paper. It’s the process of bringing them into being in their fully worked out form. A pen and a piece of paper are a powerful extension of my brain. I’m a better thinker with both of them available.

Thrilled to contribute to this fantastic collaboration with @georg-meisl.bsky.social, @arosiolabeth.bsky.social, @tscheidt.bsky.social (many others). Lots of great experimental work went into this paper, but here's a brief thread on what I find exciting from the theory side. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Structural defects in amyloid-β fibrils drive secondary nucleation - Nature Communications

Authors study links between amyloid secondary nucleation and growth defects, demonstrating these sites on Aβ40/Aβ42 fibrils are rare compared to the number of protein molecules. Re-analysis of publish...

doi.org

Structural defects in amyloid-β fibrils drive secondary nucleation www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Multidisciplinary training, over time, produces the highest impact people www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

Scientists have long debated the origins of exceptional human achievements. This literature review summarizes recent evidence from multiple domains on the acquisition of world-class performance. We re...

science.org

Physicist Leo Szilard, in a short science fiction story from 1948, describing how to retard science by making the funding application longer and harder than the proposed research - now called the ‘Szilard point’

Excited to share the first paper from my group with Gianluca Teza (MPI-PKS) and Attilio L. Stella (U Padova)! “Coarse-Graining via Lumping: Exact Calculations and Fundamental Limitations” shows when lumping is exact and when it fails even without approximations. arxiv.org/pdf/2512.11974

Finally!

I-75 Scientist@flscitriguy.bsky.social · 8mo ago

I think some folks might be happy to see this. NIGMS MIRA R35 for EI/NI has been published. PAR-26-121 files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunitie...

Very cool work. I also thought about Hwa's growth laws while reading the thread. Quantitative curves are great to stimulate chin scratching!

Will Ratcliff@wcratcliff.bsky.social · 8mo ago

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Here’s the thing, emerging scientists aren’t going to flee to do science elsewhere…they just won’t do the science. We will lose at least one, if not two generations of knowledge if we don’t get this shit sorted out immediately.

Meade Krosby@meadekrosby.bsky.social · 8mo ago

My teen, who had dreamt of being an astrophysicist, just told me he wants to go to law school because, “Science isn’t going to be a priority in the US in the future…I don’t want a job where I’ll be constantly worried my funding will be taken away.” Gutting. How many future scientists have we lost?

The US is funding fewer grants compared to the past. The money is given in one lump sum instead a yearly infusion from a multi-year funded grant. This leads to more competition, less $ and time to do research. Not a win-win situation. 🧪🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article)

A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

nytimes.com

"I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice." Einstein sent a letter to Max Born #OTD in 1926, in which he gave his oft-quoted objection to the probabilistic interpretation of the wavefunction in quantum mechanics. 🧪 ⚛️ You may be surprised by where this is headed. (1/n)

We're back for our final seminar of 2025 with talks from @alexholehouse.bsky.social and Birthe Kragelund! 1 pm EST or 7 pm European time. If you're not already signed up, head on over to idpseminars.com to register!

New publication! How to read the curves in biomolecular phase diagrams! A collaboration between the Schmit Group and Jonathon Ditlev, Les Loew, and @ani-chattaraj.bsky.social. 1/7 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Biomolecular Phase Boundaries are Described by a Solubility Product That Accounts for Variable Stoichiometry and Soluble Oligomers

The solubility product is a rigorous description of the phase boundary for salt precipitation and has previously been shown to qualitatively describe the condensation of biomolecules. Here we present a derivation of the solubility product showing that the solubility product is also a robust description of biomolecule phase boundaries if care is taken to account for soluble oligomers and variable composition within the dense phase. Our calculation describes equilibrium between unbound monomers, the dense phase, and an ensemble of oligomer complexes with significant finite-size contributions to their free energy. The biomolecule phase boundary very nearly resembles the power law predicted by the solubility product when plotted as a function of the monomer concentrations. However, this simple form is concealed by the presence of oligomers in the dilute phase. Accounting for the oligomer ensemble introduces complexities to the power law phase boundary including re-entrant behavior and large shifts for stoichiometrically matched molecules. We show that allowing variable stoichiometry in the dense phase expands the two phase region, which appears as curvature of the phase boundary on a double-logarithmic plot. Furthermore, this curvature can be used to predict variations in the dense phase composition at different points along the phase boundary. Finally, we show how the solubility product power law can be identified in experiments by using dilute phase dissociation constants to account for the oligomer ensemble.

pubs.acs.org

Out now in #SoftMatter, our work on linking single molecule features, microstructure, and macroscopic properties of condensates! Led by Daniel Tan, a former undergrad student who is now pursuing a PhD in Computational biophysics, Dilimulati Aierken and Pablo Garcia! pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Excited to share our paper: “Historical and Experimental Evidence that Inherent Properties Are Overweighted in Early Scientific Explanation” I’m grateful to Zach Horne & my dear advisor @andreicimpian.bsky.social to let me be part of this project, it was a great experience! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Historical and experimental evidence that inherent properties are overweighted in early scientific explanation | PNAS

Scientific explanation is one of the most sophisticated forms of human reasoning. Nevertheless, here we hypothesize that scientific explanation is ...

doi.org

Biomolecular phase boundaries are described by a solubility product that accounts for variable stoichiometry and soluble oligomers https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.27.672390v1

"What does this curved line mean?" Like palm reading for your phase boundary. Plus, when is your condensate actually an oligomer (or vice versa)? A new preprint from the Schmit Group, in collaboration with Jonathon Ditlev, Les Loew, and @ani-chattaraj.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Biomolecular phase boundaries are described by a solubility product that accounts for variable stoichiometry and soluble oligomers

The solubility product is a rigorous description of the phase boundary for salt precipitation and has also been used to qualitatively describe the condensation of biomolecules. Here we present a deriv...

biorxiv.org

Can't say enough about the Condensates program at @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social. Invigorating discussions, fantastic facilities, and a beautiful location (a place I consider "home"). Thanks to @weber-lab.bsky.social, @jerelleaj.bsky.social, @zwickergroup.bsky.social, and Frank Julicher for organizing!

What nanometer structure-function relationships exist in your favorite condensate? We hope you will try to measure it! Congrats to Kris, @evdokiiap.bsky.social, Abby, Archish, Gandhar, and @schmitbiophysics.bsky.social . 4/4

In lab’s #FIRSTPREPRINT, we present methods to measure nanometer-scale organization around & between specific proteins in condensates in live cells. We uncover unexpected heterogeneity for a liquid-like phase with local meshwork spanning 10-50nm, stemming from ribosome biogenesis in the nucleolus.

bioRxiv Biophysics@biorxiv-biophys.bsky.social · last yr.

Nanometer condensate organization in live cells derived from partitioning measurements https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.26.640428v1

Here is a thread on a paper we published on Dec 30th: doi.org/10.1038/s414... In this collaborative work, we looked at the structure of proteins behind Huntington’s disease. HD is an inherited neurodegenerative disease, with patients having a mutated form of the huntingtin gene. (1/..)

Hoping the demise of the clock app drives me to discover more cool science here.

When the turkey is supposed to be the centerpiece but your 12yo steals your thunder.

Cutting NIH funding to improve federal cash flow is like cutting the wings off an airplane to make it lighter.

Sergiu P. Pasca@sergiuppasca.bsky.social · 2y ago

Research funded by NIH generated $2.46 in economic activity for every $1 of funding in 2023 [a total of $92.9 billion] www.fiercebiotech.com/research/rep...

Shopping for summer 2025 conferences. Pitch me your favorites in: Biological LLPS Amyloids Self-assembly Soft condensed matter Physics Chromatin Systems biology Other???

www.fiercebiotech.com/research/rep...

Report: Every dollar of NIH research funding doubles in economic returns

Research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) generated $2.46 in economic activity for every $1 of funding in 2023, a total of $92.9 billion, according to an

fiercebiotech.com

Excited to find this place and find all the people from the biophysics and LLPS community are already here! I'd like to link up with the soft condensed matter community too. Any suggestions?