NASA employee: oh hey you guys are back early. Astronaut: *grabs plunger, gets back on rocketship*

I hate writing but love having written. Writing wrecks me every time, but once I've finished, having written a thing lasts a lot longer. My writing process consists mostly of ways to coerce myself into doing the writing.

PIs that already know how to read and digest and write might make use of tools that potentially save *them* time. These tools would short circuit skill development in the untrained and inexperienced

Yeet accomplished

This is a really important paper in an area that is hard to study. I would recommend any student read this preprint to see how confounding issues arise even in clever assays. Internal Ribosome Entry Sites (IRES) are very interesting because they bypass normal translation initiation mechanisms. 1/

But more so, I would have wanted to be the one to correct our own errors or be part of the experiments to challenge our own ideas. We can't fall in love with our models, and doubling down trying to prove a model rather than refute it can lead to mistaken conclusions 12/

I also think that one should always want to be in position of being the sharpest critic of one's own model, with as little emotion as possible. Our models are only useful if they serve the scientific pursuit and it is important that we challenge and test them. 9/

I went back to capture what the astronauts said in full when the clock was stopped at T-10 minutes and they were asked if they were go for launch: This is Victor. We are going for our families. This is Christina. We are going for our teammates. This is Jeremy. We are going for all humanity.

"We are going for all humanity." "Artemis crew is go for launch. Full send." Publicly funded science to explore our universe and our own precious world is a beautiful thing.

NASA is honestly one of the greatest things humans have ever created, the stuff of math and dreams

New season* of Taskmaster starts in less than two weeks and I need everyone to start watching this show so we can all talk about it here, please and thank you (*not series!!)

It’s great to see our latest microPublication go live! Four undergraduate researchers worked with grad student Kat Yamamoto to demonstrate a correlation between fat storage and survival of #Celegans on pathogenic bacteria! Congrats Alan, Grace, Tiffany, and Daniel! #undergradinthelab #proudPI

We're hiring a Research Fellow (postdoc) in cell biology at NTU Singapore. The project sits at the intersection of host-pathogen interactions and ER stress biology: CRISPR screens, infection models, lipid peroxidation, wound healing. Apply or share 👇 ntu.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/Careers/job/...

Interested in the nuclear envelope? Do you reside in the US northeast (or are willing to pay a visit)? Don't miss this year's NENE (northeast nuclear envelope) - a trainee-led regional meeting that brings together scientists at all levels for a day of exciting talks and discussions. June 5th @ Yale

WEHI researchers have led a major global effort to create the first authoritative atlas for E3 ligases, resolving more than 18 years of inconsistencies in the ubiquitin field. Study led by Dr Ngee Kiat ‘Jake’ Chua & Dr Rebecca Feltham in @cellpress.bsky.social www.wehi.edu.au/news/new-enz...

$2.45 billion NIH grant cuts and ~2300 terminated active research grants were DOGE'd in early 2025 Who were most affected? www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... Early career and women researchers

“Why am I dying when my telomere age is so young?!?!??!?!?!”

David Botstein was one of the giants of genetics and genomics, and my mentor, colleague and friend for more than 40 years. I’m sad that he is gone, but his larger-than-life persona comes through here. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/s...

Our Indiana Academy of Science meeting would not be complete without the annual #RubensteinLab skybridge team selfie!

A wonderful day of science at the annual meeting of the IN Academy of Science! #RubensteinLab members Hailey, Sudhee, & Kaikeyi did a fantastic job presenting posters, & James gave an award-winning talk about his thesis work. Very proud of how our team members supported each other.

Congrats to lab undergrad Hailey Barton! Hailey was awarded a BSU Undergrad Student Grant! Hailey studies differential degradation requirements of aberrant ER & Golgi proteins. I’m proud of how she embraced the challenge of writing a proposal. Looking forward to the good work she'll continue to do!

NIGMS is signed onto the F31 NOFO. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

I had a splicing joke, but it was excised

😭😭 grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

I have a proteasome joke, but it's too degrading.

13% success rates for FY2025 grant awards. NIH finally releases some FY2025 success rate data drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/18/n...

Congratulations to James Avaala, who successfully defended his master's thesis about the role of the derlin Dfm1 in unclogging ER translocons! James did a fantastic job presenting his wonderful work and exciting (and sometimes weird!) results.

1/3 Thrilled to see our paper led by Kirandeep Deol is out in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology! CRISPR screens to uncover a role for vitamin B2 metabolism in stabilizing FSP1 via FAD, revealing a new way vitamins regulate ferroptosis. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Following @joshuasweitz.bsky.social post and discussions with him and the Vox story, I have estimated R01 success rates for each NIH institute and center with enough awards for this to be meaningful. A long 🧵... 1/25

Every once in a while, I am kind of staggered by how we as a species have figured out some absolutely ridiculous, seemingly unknowable things -- sometimes within living memory -- that we then teach to every elementary school student (in rich parts of the world) as if they are simple.

What a glorious day🎉 🎉🎉 Inaugural PhD from the Fish team in the Neal lab! Congratulations to Dr. Saroj Gourkanti on a successful PhD defense. These are the moments that make this job worthwhile💕💕💕

Ok. Last figure done. Finally analyzed the expression data for table #2, time to write this manuscript! Step one, decide which journal that might want a mostly observational study on an AP1 knockout cell line and won't cost me much because we're running on fumes and the funding forecast looks bad.

Here is the "effective payline" for each institute, estimated (by Claude) as the percentile where one can expect 80% probability of funding from a logistic regression fit. The effective payline has gone from a historic ~12% to 6% in 2025.

Another preprint is out from the Neal Lab! 🎉 Excited to share the first systematic side-by-side comparison of ERAD Derlin paralogs, revealing distinct cellular functions for Derlin-1, Derlin-2, and Derlin-3. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Are you at #Dros26? Come by the micropub booth!

Genuine question: given reports of [waves hands around] everything, us US academia falling apart or are people finding ways of making things work? It seems like funding is evaporating, but I don’t know if that’s accurate or the social media anxiety machine hyperbolizing to some extent.

We have started a project trying to predic the interactions/structures of all yeast protein pairs using an AlphaFold pooling approach. We are making the current dataset open and we welcome collaborations. www.evocellnet.com/2026/03/mapp...

Olympic Drosophilist, y’all!!! 🪰 I’m suddenly interested in skiing!

🚨Dear Bluesky friends, we need your help to advance in 2026 STAT Madness, the March Madness of Science tournament! 🏀🧪 Please vote for our Univ of Michigan Caswell Diabetes Institute team in your bracket before Mon March 9. Thank you! 🙏 www.statnews.com/feature/stat...

🚨⚠️ New Preprint Alert! ⚠️ 🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Screening p97 cofactors, @prithadg.bsky.social identified FAF2 as the strongest activator of the p97-UFD1-NPL4 complex. Leveraging her mechanistic descoveries, we designed 𝘥𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘰 binders that could also enhance p97 substrate unfolding.

If you are a fan of reality TV (or looking for an escape from reality), I highly recommend two-time Survivor contestant @stephenfishbach.bsky.social's new novel Escape!! Great characterization, propulsive action, clever storytelling, and a super-fun peak behind the curtain of reality TV.

Crap www.online-tribute.com/DavidBotstein David Botstein passed away. I worked with him at Stanford for a few years in designing and teaching a course on "The Heart". My heart is heavy right now. He was a wonderful mentor.

Are the effects on careers being quantitatively tracked somewhere? Numbers of layoffs, labs closing, promotion/tenure denials, etc? We are still at the early stages of the impacts on people's lives, livelihoods, and scientific output.

Sooo happy to share our new paper in @nature.com “CLCC1 promotes hepatic neutral lipid flux and nuclear pore complex assembly.” A terrific collaboration with @arrudalab.bsky.social, led by co–first authors Alyssa Mathiowetz and Emily Maymand. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Forget the textbook view of a cell as a calm, orderly place. Glowing trackers reveal that it is jam-packed as a crowded nightclub — raising questions about how molecules can encounter their partners for the reactions that enable life. www.quantamagazine.org/the-biophysi...

it me

We need to have this discussion: how do we fight the AI onslaught while also keeping learning accessible? I don’t know how we thread that needle in a way that scales.

Kudos to the whole team and @tgalli.bsky.social -- 🙏 for allowing us to collaborate on this super exciting story -- I would also add #stress #organelles -- #ER_literature #proteostasis

Deadline for submission is March 15! Applications must be submitted through the Indiana Academy of Science website. For questions, email [email protected]. www.indianaacademyofscience.org/academy-gran...