No better time to call or email your members of Congress. Next year’s NIH budget is being debated in the Senate. A new nonpartisan campaign is making it easy to defend science and protect America’s innovation. Just follow this link to contact your representatives: www.protectscienceandinnovation.org

📣Save the date! 📣 We will be hosting the 18th Mini Herpesvirus Workshop and the HHV-65 Symposium in Freiburg this year. We are very excited about all of the amazing speakers that we get to welcome. We can't wait to see you all there!

🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨 Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham. It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda. We’ve launched an open letter. SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

A new combination of microscopy methods has revealed exquisite details of the virus assembly process used by herpes simplex virus during replication. buff.ly/aO8W9BJ

Our research shows that ~50% of mothers globally decline at least half of opportunities to participate in conferences after becoming parents (N=3995). We understand the barriers and are offering Travel Grants to help overcome these challenges. Apply now - deadline 31st March! shorturl.at/gnCU2

Let's not forget that apart from science advocacy the Rauch lab also does kick-ass science! Together with the @psmitchej.bsky.social and Tait Wojno labs, we show that #tuftcells can induce specific protective signaling after recognition of intracellular bacterial infection via the #inflammasome!

I’m very excited to share our first preprint “Structural Basis for OAS2 Regulation and its Antiviral Function” from my postdoc together with Veronika Merold (Vroni) from NTase lab with @oliveiramann.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SO MANY STAND UP FOR SCIENCE EVENTS TO CHOOSE FROM—153 and COUNTING! To get more information on our local events and to register your own, head to www.standupforscience2025.org/local-event-information/ ☀️⬇️🌎

Get in Dorks, we are going protesting. STAND UP FOR SCIENCE. MARCH 7th 12-4pm. DC AND YOUR STATE CAPITALS. More information to come.

NYGC is organizing a number of efforts to address the changes to NIH IDCs and other changes to federal policy. If you are a US citizen, or in the US working in science, please consider signing this petition. The more signatures the stronger our hand in interacting with law makers. chng.it/kK2HMP5pGk

Each week, we are collecting, reading, vetting & tagging all the links, news & rumors you’re seeing whiz past you online. We are also talking to dozens of researchers & PIs about their firsthand experiences. Every Friday, I debrief you over a drink at buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

The excellent Swiss Virology Meeting just ended. Thanks to the organizers and participants for making it such a warm and collegial environment. Here Magalie and I are with the project that began as her masters project. 🦠🚀

Happy to share the first preprint from my lab by @indrabekere.bsky.social and Veronika Merold! We solved the cryo-EM structure of the RNA immune sensor OAS2 and revealed how dimerization and subcellular localization regulate its activity! Check out Indra’s thread for a summary:

We are excited to announce the 2nd Symposium on the Immunobiology of Pattern Recognition Receptors, Oct 1-2 2025, Lausanne, Switzerland. Registrations open March 1 - Attendance limited to 150 participants. More info: wp.unil.ch/immunobiolog... #ImmunoSky

Check out our latest pre print! Alexandra and colleagues show that the enigmatic inflammasome receptor, NLRP6 is activated by sterile and pathogen induced endolysosomal damage. Hot off the press! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

For those who haven't been following the cozying up to RFK Jr. by some liberals (call them what you want, they are not Republicans) and why it's dangerous. Three pieces to lay out the case. 1/

The class gap in career progression: US academia First-generation college graduates are 13% less likely to end up tenured at an R1, and are on average tenured at institutions ranked 9% lower, than their PhD classmates with a parent with a (non-PhD) graduate degree. mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/d...

MIT researchers introduce Boltz-1, a fully open-source model for predicting biomolecular structures With models like AlphaFold3 limited to academic research, the team built an equivalent alternative, to encourage innovation more broadly www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

A new genomic study in Science encompassing more than 300 genomes spanning the last 50,000 years has revealed how a single wave of Neanderthal gene flow into early modern humans left an indelible mark on human evolution. scim.ag/4gkMvpz

It's that time of year. Confocal + Christmas = Xmas Tree, Ymas Tree, and our favorite Zmas tree. #microscopy #confocal #imaging

Interested in learning more about NINJ1? My colleagues in the @brozlab.bsky.social, including @ehartenian.bsky.social, wrote a nice review of our current knowledge. www.cell.com/trends/bioch...

New: Bernaleau et al. @rebsamenlab.bsky.social use a loss-of-function genetic screen to identify the ER-resident protein CCDC134 as an essential regulator of Toll-like receptor (TLR) responses. CCDC134 binds and stabilizes the TLR chaperone Gp96. https://buff.ly/3ZrE70d

Pol II degradation activates cell death independently from the loss of transcription https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.09.627542v1

#herpesfold A super helpful resource for herpesvirus proteins, both for their structure and for inter family homology. 👏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Publication Alert! Happy to share our new work published in CellReports of a collaboration with the Zychlinsky Lab (Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology). "Histone H1 kills MRSA". cell.com/cell-reports.... Enjoy!

Couldn’t find a virology starter pack so here’s one to get the ball rolling. Repost/reply if you are a virologist so I can find and add you to the list! go.bsky.app/SinqoJU