excited to attend the european fly meeting! looking forward to share our research, see friends and colleagues from the other side of the pond, and hear what's new with 🪰.

no, the dire wolf is not back. nor do these animals carry ancient DNA. also, tylenol does not cause autism. and the anti-covid mRNA vaccine does not receive 5G signals or cause you to glow green. and bleach is not healthy to ingest. anything else?

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA NIH grants. The same judge, Rita F. Lin, previously ordered all UCLA NSF grants reinstated. Lin has now nearly entirely reversed Trump's July de-funding of UCLA research: www.latimes.com/california/s...

silver lining: if i didn't have these annoying extra flights due to delays, i wouldn't have seen these incredible clouds over a molten iberian sunset. 🌤️

Now with comments... Lots of comments (A long thread) 1/n

oh, the disappointment of delayed international flights and missed connections. the silver lining is i get to tour three spanish airports today. wait, is that actually a silver lining?? ✈️

new adaptation of pride and prejudice by bedlam theater. @sbarolo.bsky.social fyi

intermission

an absolute modern medical miracle, available (for now) at your local pharmacy! and don't forget your flu vax... 🧬💪

pickles lai #Caturday

Microsoft gave guidance on H1Bs to its employees last night

ADD YOUR THOUGHTS ON LIMITING STUDENT VISA TO FOUR YEARS Comment period ends September 29th www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... 1/2

alert to all H1B holders, please share: Trump just banned H-1B employees from reentering US unless employer pays $100,000 "fee". Proclamation applies to both new H-1B entrants and current H-1B employees who are abroad. set to take effect tmrw sun sept 21. please return if you can. i am so sorry. 😢

new Lai lab #miRNA paper alert!! happy to share Renfu Shang's mechanistic insights into the mysteries of miRNA cluster assistance. wonderful collab with Niko Popitsch and @ameressl.bsky.social 🧵 later, but if you don't know this process, my daughter illustrated it.🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

new Lai lab #miRNA paper alert!! happy to share Renfu Shang's mechanistic insight into mysteries of microRNA cluster assistance. wonderful collab with Niko Popitsch and @ameressl.bsky.social. 🧵 later, but if you don't know this process, my daughter illustrated it. 🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

just checking in on one of my favorite walls, "gradient of life".

#Drosophila community - look at this amazing lineup for #InDRC2025 Registration for #InDRC2025 is now open! Visit indrc2025.in to register and submit your abstract. #genetics #devbio @flybase.bsky.social

amazing! more or less what my lab bench used to look like back in the day... 🪰

fly people know! 🪰

I am ready for the apocalypse, got my sequence of pPD95.75 and others right here #celegans

Walz: This is North Korea style stuff. And it's being done because this is a weak, thin skinned man who's failing as a president. All of the things he promised are not happening. It's a it's our most cherished freedom to point out very clearly, this is a terrible president

imagine my surprise when, after mentioning something i thought my daughter might think interesting, she exclaimed at me "bro, what?!?" i think she picked it up in camp in august, or in the first 2 weeks of high school. anyways, it was startling!

What we are witnessing is an outright abuse of power. This administration is attacking critics and using fear as a weapon to silence anyone who would speak out. Media corporations — from television networks to newspapers — are capitulating to these threats.

haha i saw this hashtag #NoMoreNorthern and my first thought was, are you out of your effing mind? #NorthernIsTheBEST 🧬

collaborator sent us AMAZING data! i love the social aspect of science, discussing with others, but its especially nice when friendly+curious folks are willing to lend unique expertise. i feel the bar is high to warrant them taking time out to help our idea, so its so great when cool stuff happens!

congratulations to our DB colleague Maria Jasin, recognized by the Greengard Prize! when she started her lab @mskcancercenter.bsky.social, she was the first to insert DNA into a defined location of a mammalian genome! her work underlies today's CRISPR-mediated HDR. here in convo with Rick Lifton.🧬

The Trump administration ordered several National Park Service sites to take down materials related to slavery and Native Americans, including an 1863 photograph of a formerly enslaved man with scars on his back, one of the most powerful images of the Civil War era. nyti.ms/4nyyyaQ

Stephen Colbert's Emmy victory speech: "Sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it. I have never loved my country more desperately. Stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor!"

always keep your eyes open for interesting stuff hiding in plain sight! this appears to be an obstacle course for USPS truck drivers. it has a gauntlet of tight spaces and parallel parking spots to practice on. 🚛

like curb cuts and bodega clamshells, this stair ramp is an essential aid for wheeled transports. this one has accommodates strollers and has a groove for bikes. why aren't these more frequent in urban design? @99pi.org

homecoming for my old college dorm, newly renovated. i didn't fully appreciate its opulence back then. what we knew was that it was a special place filled with the weirdest, most interesting, diverse, and creative people i've ever known, then or since. the world desperately needs people like this.

not only do i have awesome friends, they also appreciate my interest in flies!! 🪰

friday night dancing in the streets #nyc

"Honey, what did Bastian @frommlab.bsky.social and Eric do to the miRNAs?!?" +special shout-out @katsutomookamura.bsky.social for initiating this work in 2011. as always, everything Katsutomo did was way ahead of its time. read about giant miRNA hairpin precursors here! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

forgot to include link to our looooooooong miRNA hairpin saga. pls share with your miRNA geek friends and let us know what you think! in the meantime, here's a picture of stretch armstrong i pulled from the interweb. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

New #miRNA paper from Lai lab!! 🧬🔥 some think this field, despite recent Nobel to Ambros and Ruvkun, doesn't have much surprises left. but, do we EVEN KNOW WHAT a miRNA precursor LOOKS LIKE? we found some conserved miRNA hairpins up to 10x longer than suspected. this is mir-12, just bonkers! 1/n

barely 7am and already i learned that 10K flies can live in one big mushroom! 🪰 The Diptera community associated with fruit bodies of a wood-decaying fungus Meripilus giganteus was investigated from a Czech park...10,451 adult specimens of Diptera belonging to 66 species emerged from this fungus.

GOOD NEWS: Despite RFK Jr saying he would cancel $500 million in mRNA research, the House Committee on Appropriations has passed a spending package, that includes $1.1 billion for “advanced research and development” at BARDA, which includes research on mRNA vaccines.

Hello world! sharing a miracle, waylaid by 6 months sadness, but just got resurrected! 1. in Feb, our R01 got this banger score: 1%!😲 2. for next 6 months, PO said its unlikely to fund.😱 3. mysteriously, just got NOA! PO says don't know how, but someone rescued.🥲 tx my savior!🙏 let's go miRNAs!🧬

True. Current Biology on the other hand...

Read more: argonautes.ngo/en/news/3rd-...

#Argonaute2025 was the BEST meeting of the year, intense science but also tons of fun. the most important part was the patient/family panel and hearing the parent's stories and struggles, and meet kids with Ago syndrome. it's heartbreaking we can't help yet, but research will find answers and cures.

News in the history of molecular biology. The Science History Institute in Philadelphia has acquired a huge archive of correspondence and other scientific material from the pioneers of molecular biology (Franklin, Klug, Perutz, Delbrück etc, with items from Crick and Watson, too). 1/n

in these mostly wretched times, you have to find joy wherever you can. last week my ad hoc band the Argonautes (me, Yuki Tomari, Germano Cecere) had a blast playing in Prague. we rocked some old and new songs, and can't wait to do it again in Toronto 2027!

I'm old enough to remember when polio put my friends into iron lungs. We dutifully lined up at school to get vaccinated. We eradicated the disease. We protected the common good and saved lives. What RFK Jr. is doing to public health in America is a disgrace.

🧵 An open letter to the US Open and USTA: Trump will attend the #USOpen as a guest of ROLEX. Yesterday, Trump declared 'WAR' on Chicago. The USTA has called for media censorship of dissent against Trump today. I played NCAA tennis many years ago and still play. Today I resign my #USTA membership.

did everyone get yesterday's pangram?! 🐝 thanks @svobodalab.bsky.social @farmgirlphd.bsky.social @curiousdina.bsky.social and gunter meister for fantastic meeting! #Argonautes2025

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

I gave lab meeting today to discuss incredible data shared at #Argonautes2025 in Prague, and to review some histories of the lab over the past 20 years. Here I am as <2 week old assistant professor! followed by lunch with the current generation, such diverse and exciting projects and the BEST lab! 🙌