James Catterson
@scotsfriction.bsky.social
Researching neurodegeneration using flies. Based at Edinburgh University. UKDRI. Also Music. Politics. Ceramics. Leith4Life
Very excited to be a part of this major initiative. Great things to come for Mitochondrial diseases.
Minczuk Lab@mitogene.bsky.social · 11h agoDelighted to share the launch of the Cambridge-led, £50m MRC Centre of Research Excellence in Mitochondrial Genome Therapeutics (CoRE-MitoGT). Over 14 years, we will unite international expertise to understand mtDNA disease & develop therapies targeting its root causes. www.ukri.org/news/mrc-fun...
Over at @pitchfork.com, I review Ever the Optimist, the lovely new album by the Trashcan Sinatras that now seems achingly poignant after the unexpected death of their rhythm guitarist John Douglas this week.
Trashcan Sinatras: Ever the Optimist
Read Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review of the album.
pitchfork.com
I'll actually be playing my OG G&L ASAT on the tour that starts in, umm, two days. G&L stands for "George and Leo" and is the company George & Leo Fender started after they sold Fender. They just liked making guitars
Maria Bustillos@mariabustillos.com · 2h agoPrivate equity strikes again: Fender's sudden decision to enforce its copyright on the 1950s Stratocaster design, 70-odd years later, is creating havoc in the guitar world. Misha Angrist has an absorbing account at @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/issue-622/
After lengthy repair, the 172m Porto’s Dom Luís I Bridge reopened to public transport, taxis, cyclists & pedestrians only. After lengthy repair, #Edinburgh’s 160m North Bridge reopened with a lane of hatching, no cycling provisions, without widening busy pavements and no traffic reduction measures.
"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
Completely forgot to promote this wee article we wrote about ARUK 2026! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... @britishneuro.bsky.social @alzheimersresearchuk.org #ARUK2026 #ARUKconf2026 @elizabethsimzer.bsky.social @sorayam.bsky.social
Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS
In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...
pnas.org
How does the brain know where the body has been touched? In our new eLife paper, we map how touch-sensitive bristles on the fruit fly head connect to circuits that guide precisely aimed grooming, revealing how brain maps turn touch into action. (elifesciences.org/articles/108...)
A comprehensive mechanosensory connectome reveals a somatotopically organized neural circuit architecture controlling stimulus-aimed grooming of the Drosophila head
A synaptic-resolution map reveals how spatially organized touch pathways in the fly brain shape aimed head grooming through parallel excitatory circuits and inhibitory control.
elifesciences.org
New paper: Spinal circuitry modeled for locomotion using spatial transcriptomics and cell-type projections. Local excitation, long-range inhibition, and a longitudinal skew—an asymmetric "Mexican hat"—give rhythm, rotational dynamics, and gait, with no pacemakers. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Impossible to put into words how useless Gmail search is. No wait, these guys did it!
Glad to see this work finally out! A joy working with the incredible Nurun Fancy to figure out the interaction between TREM2 and CD33, how TREM2 variants differ and what happens to other cell types in cases with TREM2 variants. Thanks to everyone involved in the study, it was a great team effort!
UK Dementia Research Institute@ukdri.ac.uk · 2w agoCould a protective gene counteract risk of Alzheimer's in people with a high-risk gene variant? 🧬 Researchers led by Dr @jojacksonhere.bsky.social revealed how TREM2 – a well-known Alzheimer’s risk gene – interacts with CD33, a gene that can reduce disease risk. ukdri.ac.uk/news-and-eve...
One of the best gigs I’ve been to was Prince at the Roundhouse. Halfway through, the crowd parted to let a very sweaty man through who had been having a dance down the front. It was Bill Oddie, resplendent in bird watching gilet. It made our night, almost as much as the show itself!
In news that will surprise nobody I am really enjoying the new Charli album and the line about shopping at APC made me laugh out loud and feel seen
I'm not sorry to see Anas Sarwar stand down as Scottish Labour leader; I think he should have done so immediately following the disastrous loss in May. But doing it now to take up a junior ministerial job in Westminster sends a terrible message about what Labour thinks of Scotland. Really terrible.
Another Labour election loser whose principles melt away at the first chance of a job for life without any pesky voters to worry about.
Do #tintinnids dream of electric sheep? 🤯 Here is a single cell capable of building a lorica and living inside it for protection... it also swims, feeds, hunts Can even detect and habituate to mechanical cues! #celllearning #protistsonsky #cilia Read more in our preprint doi.org/10.64898/202...
Today I'm posting a blog about another ridiculous antibody blunder. Dozens of papers in the senescence and ageing field have mistakenly used an antibody for E. coli β-galactosidase when trying to stain for the human protein with the same name. forbetterscience.com/2026/07/21/d...
a beautiful parting gift to centrist dads everywhere from Sir Keir, homebrew electricity to power your mobile aircon from next month!!!
Josiah Mortimer@josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 2w agoI know it's not the biggest news of the day, but I just spotted this... One of Keir Starmer's last acts in Govt is this: Laying legislation that will legalise 'plug-in solar' (aka balcony solar) panels in Britain It means plug-in solar panels do not (legally) have to be wired in by an electrician.
It was a pleasure to present our emerging story @cambridgeflyclub.bsky.social. Great feedback from an engaged and enthusiastic audience of young (and some not so young 😜) fly researchers. Now let’s hear from some ECRs…
Cambridge Fly Club@cambridgeflyclub.bsky.social · 3w ago💡 First, Dr Alex Whitworth @labwhitworth.bsky.social, explored the emerging concept of the gut–brain axis in neurodegeneration. His talk highlighted how Drosophila models provide insights into gut homeostasis, systemic inflammation, and their links to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.
Husband just came in to tell me that since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln every American president has been alive at the same time as Herbert Hoover.
Forget pervert glasses - what about smart plugs? Me on domestic abusers taking over home devices as.ft.com/r/8f4ab2f1-4... How smart tech is being weaponised in the home
After separation, I went back into renting having been a homeowner for a decade. More people should return to renting in their 40s, they’d be radical housing market reformers before the end of the week.
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 3w agoOk well live next door to a house that’s a nightmare - anti social HMO, empty and a lightning rod for nonsense, a commercial building rotting - that’s owned by someone hundreds or even thousands of miles away, who is unresponsive, and their agents don’t care, and even the council can’t get purchase
Must feel so good for text after you hit ctrl-x, floating in liminal space, before ctrl-v thrusts it back onto the desolate page
Why Britain’s privatisation experiment is so extraordinary by international standards. www.arguably.uk/p/can-andy-b...
"Our findings likewise suggest that scientific impact does not translate into happiness. This gap reflects a deeper misalignment: the external recognition conferred by citations may not satisfy researchers’ intrinsic psychological needs" doi.org/10.1093/rese...
Scientific impact at the expense of happiness? Work/life balance in performance-driven research careers
Abstract. Research evaluation systems place increasing emphasis on scientific impact, yet their consequences for researchers themselves remain underexplore
doi.org
We’re rapidly approaching a situation in which it becomes legally hazardous to express any criticism of “gender critical” views. The combination of well-funded lawfare and well-funded media moral panic is extremely dangerous to free speech for everyone, as well as obviously to trans people’s rights.
Alex Says Stuff@alexsaysstuff.bsky.social · 3w ago"unearthed by The Times" "Published in May and available on Amnesty's website"
Or much of a drop in public support. Fascinating example of elite consensus switching despite popular opinion.
Arieh Kovler@ariehkovler.com · 3w agoIn two years Net Zero went from broad political consensus to politically toxic, without any particular scandal over the policy.
Anyway the World Cup final between these two…. Quite a thing.
