Funny quote of the day. “No major life decisions within 30 days of: A meditation retreat A psychedelic experience Your first encounter with the latest Claude model” 😂

Deeply honored to be named a 2026 Beckman Young Investigator #BYI!🧬 This recognition reflects the creativity and hard work of my incredible lab, and we are so grateful and excited for the Foundation's support as we tackle the next generation of continuous evolution.

Beckman Foundation@beckman-foundation.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Congratulations to our 2026 Beckman Young Investigator Awardees! Twelve Researchers Selected to Receive $7.2M in Total Science Funding for Cutting-edge Research www.beckman-foundation.org/latest-news/... #BYI #beckmanresearch #newlyawarded

Researchers have identified MESH1, an enzyme that helps explain why many people with cancer lose muscle during treatment. https://medschool.duke.edu/news/hidden-enzyme-may-explain-muscle-loss-tied-cancer-treatment-and-aging #AcademicSky #MedSky

Hidden enzyme may explain muscle loss tied to cancer treatment and aging

Team from Duke University School of Medicine and Duke NUS identify an enzyme that helps explain why muscles weaken in some cancer patients.

medschool.duke.edu

It’s brutal in academia right now. A lot is out of our control, but it doesn’t cost anything to remember that there are humans behind papers and grants…reviewers, program officials and funders can be more empathetic in the face of unprecedented chaos in the US scientific enterprise.

My lab was lucky to be able to help test Proteina-Complexa binders experimentally. We were blown away by the results. Congrats to our colleagues at NVIDIA!

Kieran Didi@kdidi.bsky.social · 5mo ago

📢 We’re launching Proteina-Complexa — and after the Jensen keynote mention, we definitely had to post this thread now ;) Atomistic binder design with generative pretraining + test-time compute, plus large-scale wet-lab validation. Project page: research.nvidia.com/labs/genair/... 🧵 1/n

Find out more: flip.protein.properties

You can use the model right now to freely generate families for single sequence inputs (i.e., diversification conditioned by intrinsic representations of evolution), or to engineer proteins based on family promts (diversification by conditioning on particular evoluationary trajectories).

@rohitsingh8080.bsky.social USHER: Guiding Foundation Model Representations through Distribution Shifts Aditya Pratapa, Purushothama Rao Tata, Rohit Singh bioRxiv 2025.11.20.689462; doi: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

USHER: Guiding Foundation Model Representations through Distribution Shifts

Foundation models pre-trained on certain biological data modalities exhibit systematic representational biases when encountering out-of-distribution (OOD) data from new assays. The embedding drift lar...

doi.org

The existence of specialized phosphatases in regulating the AIS was unclear. In this initial report, we show that a PP2A subunit is enriched at the AIS and contributes to its local phosphoregulation. Fun collaboration with Dr. Matthew Rasband's lab, and thanks to all authors for their contribution!

A distinct PP2A subunit regulates local protein phosphorylation at the axon initial segment - Nature Communications

The existence of phosphatases specialized in regulating the axon initial segment (AIS) was unclear. Here, the authors show that a PP2A-B55 subunit is selectively enriched at the AIS and contributes to...

nature.com

There is nothing sweeter than the first paper from your former postdoc’s own lab. Huge congratulations to Yudong and his lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A distinct PP2A subunit regulates local protein phosphorylation at the axon initial segment - Nature Communications

The existence of phosphatases specialized in regulating the axon initial segment (AIS) was unclear. Here, the authors show that a PP2A-B55 subunit is selectively enriched at the AIS and contributes to...

nature.com

Sounds very exciting

Jeffrey J. Gray@jeffreyjgray.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Congratulations to @swcanner.bsky.social for the successful defense of his thesis, “The Protein Sugar Interactome”! Leveraging deep learning and AI, he created tools and uncovered putative structural interactions underlying intercellular communication. He will receive his diploma in December.

The published version of our study on the early-life transition from isolation USVs to adult-like USVs in juvenile mice is out in Animal Behaviour! authors.elsevier.com/a/1m1YDmjMA4GP bsky.app/profile/kati...

Katie Tschida @katietschida.bsky.social · last yr.

Another study to share, led by my grad student Nicole Pranic! Before diving in, I'll add that Nicole (who is clever, tenacious, and interested in neural changes that underlie developmental changes in social behaviors) is looking for a post-doc position! Please RT! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Deadline for applications- November 1st!

John Pearson@jmxpearson.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Duke Cell Biology is hiring in AI/ML! @scottsoderling.bsky.social, @rohitsingh8080.bsky.social, and others are building a very active community around ML for discovery science, and Duke is a great place to be. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30509

We are hiring!

Scott Soderling@scottsoderling.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Please repost!!: We are searching for new AI-Bio faculty at Duke to be part of a new Discovery AI center. Looking for faculty who focus on pushing boundaries in ML model development in a highly interactive environment. DEADLINE for applications- Nov 1st!! www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Please repost!!: We are searching for new AI-Bio faculty at Duke to be part of a new Discovery AI center. Looking for faculty who focus on pushing boundaries in ML model development in a highly interactive environment. DEADLINE for applications- Nov 1st!! www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Position –AI/ML for Cell Biology - Durham, North Carolina (US) job with Duke University School of Medicine | 12844591

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Position –AI/ML for Cell Biology

nature.com

I am thrilled to share our latest story led by the incredibly talented Brooke D’Arcy and Camila Musso. We discover a rich world of local gene expression in radial glia, essential neural and glial precursors, and develop a new method for sub-cellular mRNA manipulation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cool new work- DynamicsPLM adds prot conformational dynamics to LMs: fuses seq with per-residue structure-token distributions from an ensemble (no averaging) → state-aware embeddings. Gains: +4% HumanPPI, +11% on multi-state proteins. Firing this up in the lab soon! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Duke Cell Biology is hiring in AI/ML! @scottsoderling.bsky.social, @rohitsingh8080.bsky.social, and others are building a very active community around ML for discovery science, and Duke is a great place to be. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30509

Duke is recruiting a tenure-track Assistant Professor in AI/ML for Biology—joint Discovery AI Initiative × Cell Biology Search. Building models for protein design, single-cell/spatial omics, imaging, proteomics, genomics? Apply: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30509 #hiring #AIforBio #CompBio

Building a spine is no joke, but thankfully zebrafish have their own clocks to keep the pace. Excited to share our preprint on the role of biological oscillators in coordinating notochord development! (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) Additional thread below

Priyom's preprint is out on biorxiv. See below for a detailed thread. In a nutshell, she has discovered and characterized the oscillator that times notochord and spine segmentation in zebrafish. Turns out that there are uniform Erk oscillations across the entire tissue that act as timekeepers!

Priyom Adhyapok@priyomadhyapok.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Building a spine is no joke, but thankfully zebrafish have their own clocks to keep the pace. Excited to share our preprint on the role of biological oscillators in coordinating notochord development! (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) Additional thread below

Duke researchers have uncovered a promising path to potentially treat a family of rare neurodegenerative disease called neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation (NBIA). 🔗: https://mgm.duke.edu/news/fundamental-cell-molecule-could-help-fight-rare-brain-disorders #AcademicSky #MedSky

Another milestone for the amazing Munjal lab!

Akankshi Munjal@akankshi.bsky.social · 12mo ago

So happy for Kira! She also received NOA for her F32.

The order is the latest move by the Trump administration to assert control over US science go.nature.com/3H6IxVr

Trump order gives political appointees vast powers over research grants

Researchers are alarmed that the move might upend a long-standing tradition of peer-review for grants.

go.nature.com

Sharing our newest study led by the incredibly talented @federicamosti.bsky.social investigating new molecular mechanisms of human brain development. We discover a human-specific enhancer HAR1984 that influences chromatin looping to promote cortical size and folding! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Great work from Huanghe Yang’s lab in Duke Biochemistry.

Duke University School of Medicine@dukemedschool.bsky.social · 12mo ago

New research from Duke could transform how complications related to the placenta during pregnancy are detected and prevented. This discovery may also lead to new insights into cancer, bone healing, and viral infections. 🔗 Read more: medschool.duke.edu/news/protein... #AcademicSky #MedSky

Congrats James! Loved hearing about this at an earlier CZI meeting!

James Zou@jameszou.bsky.social · last yr.

⚡️Thrilled that #VirtualLab is published in @nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We created a team of AI agents to mirror my Stanford lab 🤖. Led by a PI agent, the AI scientists ran their own group meetings and discovered effective binders to new CoVID variants that we validated.

I like o3 pro even better.

Nature@nature.com · last yr.

o3, an AI model developed by the creators of ChatGPT, has been ranked the best AI tool for answering science questions in multiple fields go.nature.com/4lzaWlC

Steve Jobs was a vibe coder, he just prompted Steve Wozniak

Researchers are making ever more sophisticated mini organs in the lab — and now they can grow their own blood vessels go.nature.com/4nNF3ri

Mini hearts, lungs and livers made in lab now grow their own blood vessels

These sophisticated models will be used for human-development studies and drug testing.

go.nature.com