Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

UC faculty, please take note of who is being fearless and decisive in standing up for our rights. It’s not the admin, it’s not the senate. They’re structurally unsuited to the way we need to fight right now. It’s @uc-faculty.bsky.social. It’s time to join, if you haven’t already.

You know who was also a young husband and father—not to mention ex-Marine—who died, not attacking others to make himself rich and powerful, but to save the lives of others? David Rose, the officer killed by the anti-vax domestic terrorist who attacked the CDC. apnews.com/article/deka...

As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people. Read our statement: asm.org/press-releas...

So #RFKJr is a liar. He's a charlatan. @kasie.bsky.social catches him here and it's wonderful to watch. We need more of this. Do not give this man any credibility. He's a huckster with famous name and is destroying public health and science in America. Spread the word.

This 🧵 is long so please bear with me. It is compiles evidence in a historical timeline on how effective #COVIDVaccines are. When a pandemic ends we quickly and easily forget the tools that got us out of it. So here is my labour day gift to you prompted by this headline.

🌟📢 The September 1st issue of RNA Modifications Digest is here 🧬 From frameshift-preventing tRNA mods to aa-tRNA-seq breakthroughs and hidden damage by Tgt, and check also the preprints. 🦠💫 #microsku #rnasky open.substack.com/pub/rnamodif...

Late is the hour in which both William Broad and the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/s...) express concern over the Trump administration's promotion of antiscience: 🧵

Perfection.

Thank you @acepnation.bsky.social for standing with us. My time in the emergency department has shaped my commitment to ensuring the health of our communities. www.emergencyphysicians.org/press-releas...

Very nice profile of one of my new heroes, @drdemetre.bsky.social: www.advocate.com/politics/dem... Has important details about changes at CDC I hadn't recognized, too.

CDC scientists receive a heroes welcome after walking out today.

Calling all part-time and full-time faculty in the South: Speak out on academic freedom, shared governance, and your working conditions! Survey closes 8/29 at 5pm ET. States: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Want to see the economic impact of #NIH grant cuts in your community? Check out @joshuasweitz.bsky.social and colleagues' project here. Tell your friends and neighbors what is happening. scienceimpacts.org

It bears repeating that nearly the entire US enterprise in science and technology has been irreversibly gutted. This is shocking. All this loss has occurred without any real benefit to the average US citizen. Except we now have the biggest, best funded secret police force perhaps ever. Yay for us!

There is no solace for NIH funded researchers in this Supreme Court decision. Grants that were ripped away on dubious grounds, restored by a reasonable judge are now again terminated by an out-of-control Supreme Court. Labs will shutter, people will lose jobs. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

We are hiring! The Dept of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics is looking for faculty at the Assistant or Associate professor level (tenure track). Please consider joining our vibrant microbiology and immunology community at the University of Pittsburgh School of medicine

GREAT NEWS EVERYONE! Only 10 more days until we know exactly what causes autism!!

Join me in donating to ABRCMS. For many of us early in our careers (and for many of us now), this is THE conference. Let’s make sure future generations get the same experience. I was told if each poster judge donated $25, their goal would be quickly met, but I think we can do better! 🙏🏾💪🏾

Just got an email that the NIH Early Independence award is "not going forward." This was an award that catapulted promising PhD students into faculty positions and is part of the High-Risk High-Reward grant program in the NIH Office of the Director. Deadline was 9.6.25!

But a white guy with a COVID conspiracy manifesto isn’t news at this point. After all, that’s who runs the government now! The CDC is a part of Health & Human Services, headed by RFK Jr., whose conspiracy-addled ideology is indistinguishable from the motivations of this terrorist.

The CDC shooting didn’t even really register in the news and the details are absolutely insane

And yes, there is a larger literature showing that male authors under cite female authors. The point here is that the h-index itself is biased in favor of majoritarian authors. No wonder those who benefit so revere it.

Congrats to former BCDB graduate student Julia Tanquary whose research on the specificity of bacterial toxin RelE for its cognate antitoxin RelB was recently published in the JBC! 1/6 www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Congrats to former students and co-first authors Ian Pavelich and Marc Schureck for their work published in @narjournal.bsky.social : “Antitoxin control of optimal transcriptional repression in the atypical HigB–HigA toxin–antitoxin system from Proteus vulgaris”! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

🦠 Launching a bimonthly digest on RNA modifications and related topics in bacteria!🤩 First issue: Summer 2025. Shared here + by email, future ones will be quicker reads! 😅 #rnasky #microsky #ribosome Subscribe and share if you are interested! rnamodifupdates.substack.com/p/rna-modifi...

Our new research was just published in Nature Communications! Graduate student Evy Kimbrough, Ha An Nguyen and Jacob Mattingly contributed to this work, Our results directly answer a long-standing and fundamental question in biology of how tRNA modifications influence mRNA reading frame maintenance.

This was an attack on a federal institution. An attack BECAUSE it is Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This was domestic terrorism. Why isn’t it getting more press coverage? Some coverage, not enough. Domestic. Terrorism.

Tonight, please spare a thought to all our scientists and public health workers who have dedicated their careers to saving millions of lives. Despite their amazing work they are constantly threatened due to politicization and the unfettered spread of misinformation. It should not be like this 💔

Four CDC buildings shot up. Employees under lockdown and in fear for hours. Public health is physically under attack, and the silence from the administration is deafening.

I have not published a paper since (checks notes) June 17th and have not worked on a research project since (checks notes again) 5:30 AM this morning. I am currently working on three different projects. 24/n

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

@acs.org is recognizing Jennifer A. Doudna with the Priestley Medal for her discoveries on ribozyme function, the Dicer RNase enzyme, double-stranded RNA processing, and CRISPR gene editing, along with her impactful international science leadership. cen.acs.org/people/award... #chemsky 🧪

Let's please keep the remaining staff at NIH, NSF, etc in our thoughts even as you lose sleep over your own lab and scientific career. They are enduring pure chaos to try to hold the fort. See snapshot from wapo.st/4feKKuu (gift 🔗) saying they are "barely holding it together"

I have been an NIH funded scientist since 2002 and that ends for me on August 8 as the grant that currently funds me runs out and the lab downsizes. Never did I think that this could happen to the NIH. I have skimped over antibodies when funding was tight but my god. They are destroying it.

My quote of the day Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested. Octavia Butler

Soft money is great. Until there’s no money left. Academics are about to learn the hard way that we are nothing but independent contractors who can be terminated pretty darn easily. “Tenure” be damned. (Many of us knew this already, of course…)

As Requested - A Starter Pack of PIs in Biology (or adjacent) fields who are recruiting POSTDOCS! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you wish to be added! go.bsky.app/4gbXXR3

There’s a nonzero chance you will die from a cancer that could have been curable because people who couldn’t pass 7th grade biology and are scared of things like “mRNA” and “riboflavin” and “walkable cities” decided to make their ignorance everybody else’s problem

Mourning the loss of those who were RIF’d back in April. Our colleagues at NIH and across HHS are getting their official separation notices. These are friends and family members who were vital to the HHS mission being kicked to the curb. Please keep them in your thoughts.

Our MARC T34 got a new NOA today- also reinstated the IMSD T32 and a summer program- INSPIRE R25- we were reinstated due to involvement with ACLU lawsuit filed on behalf of the American Public Health Association-

Preprint from our collaboration with the labs of Gerry Wright and Shura Mankin identifying the first translation inhibitor binding to the E-site of the bacterial ribosome… www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

10 years ago I was looking at non science jobs and talked to a marketing person. They asked what I wanted in a job I said exciting, creative and impactful and their response was that wasn’t really a job. We scientists have a privileged daily “grind” that isn’t easily replaced doing something else.

The Trump admin is trying to destroy American higher education. We’re standing in his way. And we need your help. The AAUP Foundation helps support costs of the AAUP’s participation in legal cases brought by the AAUP and our allies. Please donate today to support this important work.

Genome Sciences is looking for a Director of Departmental Computing. This is a rare opportunity for someone interested in leading our excellent IT team, building and maintaining computational infrastructure, and working closely with our faculty and labs uwhires.admin.washington.edu/ENG/candidat...

If McNutt can’t stand up for science, what is the point of the Academy? Leadership isn’t complicity in your own destruction, nor does “fixing” science mean capitulating to fascism. The pursuit of truth is bigger than the organization or Academy. No confidence vote now.

Deadline is July 18 to apply for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund/ASTMH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tropical Infectious Diseases. Must be from a U.S. or Canadian institution, with a medical degree and an academic appointment of fellow. tinyurl.com/pphzwwff

Hi, it’s Meg again. Brad is still in ICE custody. We are grateful to the many friends, supporters, and allies who have gathered in Federal Plaza. Together we are standing up for those with no voice.

Over the next 25 years, if proposed cuts in NIH funding are made real, “In a population of more than 340 million, this reflects **82 million** fewer years of life.” In the US alone. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...