Yale’s trustees face a decision with profound consequences
🧫 IOCB Prague is launching the first edition of the new international #DreamBiologyAward, a competition that offers young scientists from around the world the opportunity to present their ambitious scientific visions in the #lifesciences. 1/4
How did octopuses evolve novel traits? Rishav Mitra, Richard Han, Trey Scott, et al serendipitously discover a unique ribosome adaptation that increases the accuracy of protein synthesis and evolved alongside their elaborate nervous systems vs deep sea relatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A cool discovery, with a lesson: Pay attention to the outliers!
HHMI@hhmi-science.bsky.social · 4w agoDiscoveries can hide in plain sight. #HHMIInvestigator Steven Henikoff's lab found a surprise when revisiting their old data: a region of ribosomal DNA producing microRNAs that can be associated with cancer, revealing a new role for part of the genome overlooked for decades: bit.ly/3RQwTmy.
What is the point of this AI paper scoring game?
Oded Rechavi@odedrechavi.bsky.social · last mo.5. People ask, “Can you game the score by running your paper over and over?” We intentionally scored the papers in retrospect and analyzed papers that people posted on @openrxiv.bsky.social under their real names. We also have protections to try to prevent possible future gaming.
A column by Jeff Coller: “The Science That Turned Lizard Venom Into GLP-1s Is Under Attack” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/o...
Opinion | The Science That Turned Lizard Venom Into GLP-1s Is Under Attack
nytimes.com
A great public information initiative by MIT aimed at making the case for the importance of scientific research for the welfare of everyone. www.curiositymission.org
Curiosity Mission
MIT research is transforming energy, health, food, and America's competitive edge. Explore the stories of scientists whose curiosity is changing the world.
curiositymission.org
I just finished reading "The Future is Peace" by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, which I recommend for anyone who has witnessed, with constant feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, the decades-long cycle of violence and revenge between the Palestinian and Israeli people. Go to www.iinteract.org
InterAct
iinteract.org
Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...
Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year
The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.
washingtonpost.com
Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year
The best time to reimagine yourself as an activist was years ago, the second best time is TODAY. You can say you messed up and should have fought and then…you can fight with us. The tent is big and we need all the science fighters we can get! SO GET IN, DORKS!
The press has reported on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision as if it were only about tariffs. Wrong. It’s far bigger and even more important. Let me explain. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-supreme-courts-tariff-decision
Since I can’t sleep, here’s another hot take: The world would be a better place if everyone‘s science literacy was much better. There should be more emphasis on teaching basic science at all levels in school. Science isn’t just something nerds do, it’s the foundation of the modern world.
With federal research funding uncertain, states debate new science initiatives www.statnews.com/2026/02/20/s... via @statnews.com
With federal research funding uncertain, states debate new science initiatives
A handful of states are considering initiatives to increase funding for scientific research as uncertainty around federal dollars has grown.
statnews.com
I would appreciate hearing context on this issue. Is the concern that if the patient’s medication is working, and hence their clinical presentation is mild, then they would get an assessment that would result in losing benefits that enable them to get the medication?
Alt National Archives@altnatarchives.altgov.info · 6mo agoFucking hell. Here’s the link to the fucking rule. The comment period runs thru April 20. PLEASE COMMENT. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
thanks @lucksmith.bsky.social 15 years after your key paper with Nelson Lau showing the abundance & widespread nature of piRNAs from 3' UTRs, we now start to get the logic. dissecting how the Yb protein reads out U-content, and talks to the Upf1-related SF2 helicase Armitage, will be interesting.
eric lai@lucksmith.bsky.social · 6mo agoas always, beautiful mechanistic dissection by @86dominik.bsky.social @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social lab, taking advantage of genetics and genomics to get decisive insights into piRNAs! surprising how instructive U content is for piRNA biogenesis, but it makes total sense, the system is very clever! 🪰
Would add to this thorough list of harms at NIH: 1) multiyear funding, Vought’s trick to fund less new research with the same amount of $ 2) presidentializing of NIH, shifting toward a political agenda rather than science. More on that from @markhisted.org: open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...
American biomedical science in 2026
Where we are, how we got here, and what to do next
open.substack.com
Alt-NIHscience4ALL@alt-nihscience4all.altgov.info · 6mo ago@altfda.altgov.info challenged us to list #5Things that each of us Alts think have caused the most damage in our agencies over the past year. Each of the five items is chock full of sub-items…adding up to far more “things.” Here goes.
There must be trials. Not as an emotive aspiration, rhetorical meme, or empty threat. A concrete plan. A dedicated special court for it. Structural legislation and prosecutors and funding and all the rest of it. Everything necessary for it can be done constitutionally. All it takes is the will.
Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · 6mo ago“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.” - 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas. Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children. www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
🧪Scientists from our Haselbach lab captured how proteins begin to fold as they’re being made. Using cryo-EM, they visualised chaperones guiding nascent proteins on the ribosome: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67685-6
Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/u...
Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato
nytimes.com
Very cool!
Julius Brennecke@juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 8mo agothis is very interesting! @astridhaase.bsky.social are these pseudogenes sitting in the previously annotated major pachytene clusters? And do you see phased piRNA production from the targeted genes (like Spin1) due to slicing? lovely work. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41237758/ A thought-provoking perspective on animal development and tissue homeostasis.
Bridging single cells to organs: Mesoscale modules as fundamental units of tissue function - PubMed
Recent studies at molecular and genomic scales have enriched our understanding of life's most fundamental building block: the cell. However, bridging the gap between single-cell phenotypes and the emergent functions of tissues and organs remains a formidable challenge. Here, we suggest that the conc …
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Neurodevelopmental disorder–linked Argonaute mutations permit delayed RISC formation and unusual shortening of miRNAs by 3′→5′ trimming.” Explore now: https://ow.ly/hwP450XxHM6 For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/q6Cl50XxHGN.
All hail Caenorhabditis elegans, one of the most researched organisms on Earth. Collaborative data sharing in the nematode research community led to four Nobel Prize-winning discoveries about human development and disease. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/uNqU50Xyj4e
Where did he get that? Did he just make it up? (Does anyone know what is ‘Mortality Match’, indicated by the logo at upper left?) Sweden’s excess death rate was far greater than any of its neighbors in 2020 but got much better in 2021, presumably owing to vaccination among other factors.
Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 8mo agoDirektör Bhattacharya: Som forskare, när du ser negativa överdödsfall som börjar under ett allvarligt sjukdomsutbrott, får det dig att ifrågasätta antagandena i din modell? 1/2
