WFMU's 2026 Fundraising Marathon continues through Sunday! Keep amazing, listener-supported radio cranking out the tunes for another year by pledging here: pledge.wfmu.org/donate. (Shown: the new 2026 WFMU bumper sticker, yours for a pledge of $20 or more.)

Some molecular machines, like ribosomes, can persist for long periods of time in cells. Could molecular aging of ribosomes shape how proteins are made? In our new preprint we track ribosomes as they age in cells and uncover unexpected effects on translation (1/10) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The 2026 Visual System Development GRC and GRS are fast approaching. Jeremy Kay, Kristen Kwan, Robert Johnston, and I have built an exciting program that we hope you will enjoy. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the meeting this summer in beautiful Maine. Register and RT!

This is the first time in 12 or 13 years I haven't gone to Jersey for the WFMU marathon and performed a show too. End of an era. But I'll still be live on the air remote on Thursday so tune in.

Like to see a version of Dracula where when they're signing the papers for the castle, Dracula has his own buyer's agent, and there's also someone there from the title company who did the title search. Maybe that's who the three vampire women in the original Bram Stoker book are.

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

Love when Nosferatu says, "We are entering a golden age of vampirism and I have have vampired better then anyone ever before...these nasty people with stakes...they have stakes. They call them stakes (sucks air between teeth). It's a beautiful thing though how I suck the blood. Completely undead."

Instead of SOTU, I'm watching Nosferatu (2024) because it has some of the same letters and roughly same vibe.

It's so weird that the OJ trial was a real life event on TV, but it still had spin offs. The Kardashians are The Jeffersons of the OJ trial.

A week ago I found out that the grant I was confident would fund our spring mural will not, bc we're 2 blocks too deep into Kensington. This STINKS. This project rocks bc it's community driven, biodiversity-focused (& more! read on!) We're raising money to make it happen givebutter.com/KenzoMural

Did you know @zebrafishhusbandry.bsky.social has a guide to zebrafish husbandry basics in 22 languages including Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Serbian, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Turkish, Urdu & Japanese 1/2 🧪

Does anyone have any recommendations for a low cost amplifier for extracellular recordings that would be good for a teaching lab? We have been using the Grass Instruments P55 ones but they no longer appear to exist and we are running out of working ones. Sharing of this message would be appreciated.

Save the date! The organizers of the Midwest Zebrafish Meeting would like to personally invite you to attend their next gathering, which will be held June 24–26, 2026, at the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Check out this thread for more details about the conference!👇 #zebrafish 🧪

New preprint out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... One of the most salient lessons I learned in all my adventures with screening and protein engineering is the importance of context. The context in which you test a gene or protein determines what function it has.

Since it has been twenty years since I shot film, I forgot the wonderful Schrödinger's film roll feeling of having your photos be both genius and garbage at the same time while they remain undeveloped.

Our paper on TCBE-Umax is out in @natbiomedeng.nature.com! We developed these high-efficiency cytosine base editors for zebrafish, enabling rapid functional testing of disease variants. This work is led by a talented scientist, Wei Qin. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

At some point I will do Quatermass and the Pit as a radio play and replace the Quatermass character with Lt. Columbo. Tomorrow is too soon since I'm out of fresh veggies so can't dissect any martians.

A new study by Barbara Murdoch and colleagues reveals diverse bacterial communities inside scorpion venom secretions, with differences due to geography and between the two species studied, Paruoctonus becki and Anuroctonus phaiodactylus. plos.io/4tfd7zk

With this snow storm coming, I should probably top off the dog's neck cask.

Selling my Academy of American Poets award. It's not a medal, just a letter, but it will make you a poet if you buy it from me.

Shot one roll of color and one black and white, and now I'm sending them to the past to get developed.

A new paper from my lab. I will have a full description soon. rdcu.be/eX1Ld

whole-genome data for 7 rhododendron ~50% transposable elements (TEs) 🤩 TEs significantly associate w genomic differentiation & structural variances Gene duplication & loss significantly associated w flower color & expression potentially driven by TEs 🧪🪴🌸🌺🧬 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fun! Link to original research: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

LEGO blocks aren’t just for kids 🐟 Research from Dr. Sarah Alderman’s lab @integrativebiology.bsky.social shows zebrafish raised with LEGO early in life learn faster, show less anxiety-like behaviour & handle stress better than those raised in barren environments 🗞️: www.uoguelph.ca/cbs/news/202...

Looking for a postdoc? Work on vertebrates and have lab experience? Come be the lab manager/museum postdoc for the LSU Museum of Natural Science! (It's a great stepping stone to being a curator!)

Finally out! We studied the retinas of the longest-living vertebrate, the Greenland shark, and found that the retinas remain remarkably healthy in animals around 150 years old. What is the mechanism? It may be a highly efficient DNA repair system. Enjoy! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey, science community (whoever is here). Can you please help me amplify this message? Postdoc position available in Düsseldorf!

🧪 A fascinating discussion of the disjunct between biological systems and digital computation, that really emphasises the vast gulf between the neurons in our brains and the nodes in a computer-hosted neural network.

I don't go around bragging about it, because I want to be known for my own accomplishments, but I am a direct descendant the first human.

Join me this evening when I reduce complex philosophical ideas to bumpkin-y nonsense and poo jokes. Ever wonder why there's language? Me neither! Let's not break our streak. Miracle Nutrition on @wfmu.bsky.social WFMU tonight at 6 eastern. Shemp Jive!

I've had a couple estranged family members die before I could make peace wih them, and it really isn't as bad as you think.

📢 I'm hiring! 3-year postdoc in theoretical evolutionary ecology at University of Helsinki 🇫🇮 Apply: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki-Postdoctoral-Researcher-in-Theoretical-Evolutionary-Biology/1348955157/ #AcademicJobs #Postdoc #EvolutionaryEcology #TheoreticalEcology #ScienceJobs #AcademicChatter

Always wanted to be a mall Santa, but I figured I'd never be fat with a big white beard. Now I am, but there are no more malls.

What it looks like to me, a known simpleton, is that bourbon distilleries flooded the market years ago then tried to create artificial scarcity, then tried to destroy the hemp industry, now they are dramatically shuttering facities and blaming trade. Also, bourbon is really cheap and good right now.

I feel like life is a test and I got done early so now I'm just sitting here looking at my watch.

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

If you or your trainees are just getting started with image analysis of cells & are #CellProfiler -curious, here is a fairly thorough walk-through demo I did recently. Loading files, extracting metadata (fun with Regex!), identifying objects, measuring, filtering, QC, exporting: youtu.be/fO5nJdhj_7I

Kaitlyn Rutter, Susan Brockerhoff & co generated a #ZebrafishModel carrying mutations in the enzyme required for de novo purine synthesis, then examined how these mutations affected cone photoreceptor degeneration, a process that typically results in blindness. #retinopathy Read more bit.ly/4ixBIdt

Most basic neuroscience research in the U.S. is funded by the federal government, but there is an entire funding landscape that lies beyond those federal agencies. To bring those sources together, @thetransmitter.bsky.social presents a funding source directory: bit.ly/4pBBF2B #StateOfNeuroscience

Side hustle level-up! My book, IN THE BEGINNING, will be published by @harperonebooks.bsky.social in 2027! It's about the human embryo, how it gets built, and what it means for where we come from and where we're going. @harpercollins.bsky.social (1/2) @socdevbio.bsky.social #devbiol #scicomm

I was lucky enough to inherit a bunch of racks where a graduate student had labelled all of them with Rack jokes 😂, perfect. I am dead at Racksputin.

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

Our paper showing the first ever recordings of spiking activity from neurons in the human lateral geniculate nucleus has just been published in Nature Communications! Congrats to the whole team. #neuroskyence @nin-knaw.bsky.social @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Last night's show at Institute 193, Hearty White's The Map, was a hit! Grateful to everyone who came (some from far away!). Thanks to John Ferguson and Joe Watts, the modern day Vertov/Kaufman brothers. And Robert Beatty, the modern day Robert Beatty.

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Vacationed one year in Big Rock Candy Mountains. You could do the Lake of Stew Canoe Adventure or the Lake of Whiskey canoe tour package. We opted for the whiskey lake, because honestly the one made of stew didn't look or smell right. Also found out I'm allergic to cigarette trees on that trip!

Folks, it is finally out! Our paper on T2T assemblies of the zebrafish genome is on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Past presidental perfumes ranked: 1. NiXoN! 2. NiXoN! Intense 3. Obama Hope Extreme 4. Jimmy Carter Says YES 5. Bush Encore 6. Truman's Fleur de Feu 7. Calvin Coolidge's Cul lege 8. La Nuit de Johnson

Please join us on Thursday, November 13 in THM 116 at 2:00PM for our seminar featuring Dr. Afshin Beheshti of University of Pittsburgh.