Ubiquitin is made in a five-pack. The last monomer has a tail. Apparently this last tailed ubiquitin is a special "fast ubiquitin" for stress. An E4 ligase (which extends already existing Ub chains and so forces them into the proteasome) grabs it under stress. Tell me AI could have predicted this

If you are in NYC, join us for my book launch party! Tuesday October 7th 5:30pm, NYU, Liberal Studies lobby, 726 Broadway, 6th floor (non-NYU: dm me to register). Conversation between myself and Prof. Jared Simard, our resident classicist! Books available! Slavic food! events.nyu.edu/event/onehan...

What interests me: is this the first harbinger of a post-screen future? The key question is what the OpenAI device ends up looking like.

Love it when the solution to an existential crisis is sauna.

What can a cell remember? A lot more than you think. My latest, for @quantamagazine.bsky.social, is on memory beyond the brain—in tiny unicellular creatures and the smallest, most ancient parts of ourselves: www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-a-c...

Ever wondered where memory truly lives? 🧠 In our latest episode, we welcome Prof. Nikolay Kukushkin @niko-kukushkin.bsky.social (NYU), to discuss the biology of memory and consciousness. ▶️ Watch the full clip here: youtu.be/VY9gqT7rs_A 🔗 More: linktr.ee/neuroscience...

We may not sense the progress bar, but human beings are running low on memory. Here’s what we can do. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smal...

Had a great time talking about sea slugs, cellular memory, and my upcoming book with Shekerah and Fatu of We Love Science. Listen here: "Ep 66: Memory and the Human Mind - The Work" at www.buzzsprout.com/1720419/epis...

Here's a biological mystery that stumps me. What's the deal with iodine in thyroid hormones? OK, it helps the hormone pass through the membrane and bind to the receptor. But steroids do that without any exotic atoms. Why iodine, and why thyroid? Any experts?

So true. Vitamins are ridiculous.

Time travelers would be amazed by how much we plan for future health. We take vitamins, count fiber, exercise, and do Dry January — all for benefits we won't see for years. But it might be that even shorter-term patterns leave lasting imprints on our body. 🧵

One of the odd things about non-neural memory we study is how long it lasts — in neurons same genes get deactivated in hours, in kidney cells they stay on for days. This might be why. Neurons repress memory genes stronger. Increases information capacity? Claude Shannon again!!

ARE YOU KIDDING

A reminder that our NYC Russian book club meets to discuss Vladimir Sorokin’s “Day of the Oprichnik” in two weeks, Sunday 26 Jan, 3:30pm, Toné Cafe, Brighton Beach! DM to join.

Swiss guard uniforms are actually camouflage in dichromatic vision

What a metaphor for the unpredictability of the real world. We are trying to solve climate change and cancer and we can't even figure out what's going on with tennis balls. Real life is an infinite parameter space. defector.com/has-the-tenn...

Excellent piece about our recent paper on cellular memory. And yet: quotation marks in the post, and “memory-like processes” in the article. I suspect the authors get it when I emphasize it’s not a metaphor —that’s the whole point—but then the editors just can’t let it go without conditionalizing.

The connection between body and emotion is deep and many interpret our research on non-neural memory in that vein: kidneys store trauma, hearts carry personality. Here’s a much more realistic connection: the insula. A brain region that literally builds emotional awareness out of bodily states.

Honored to be on #NPR for this Christmas segment about our research on memory outside the brain. Will it help students do better on finals? I wish. Happy holidays! #neuroscience #memory #brain #christmas academicminute.org/2024/12/niko...

Tried using Claude as a scantron for finals today and it’s absolute garbage—reads every question and answer but can’t figure out how many mistakes there are. Reminds me of the Pirahã who can talk about each child but can’t tell you how many they have. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We think of our own, biological memory the way we think of computer memory: the more, the better. But that’s not what evolution intended when it created learning. Learning is not just about storing information: it is about choosing what to store and what to discard. 🧵/1

It’s obviously good advice for English speakers, but— does this reflect a Eurocentric left-to-right bias? I wonder what’s more intuitive for Hebrew- or Arabic-speaking scientists.

Being a prof is great. In September I get out of things by saying “the semester just started so it’s crazy”. In October I say “oof well we’re in the thick of the semester”. In December—“well it’s the end of the semester, so, you know”. And in the summer—hell, gotta plan that semester. #highered

This is crazy. A virus creates this zombie spiral which takes a ubiquitin ligase adaptor from the cell and uses it to label a transcription factor, needed for antiviral defence, for destruction. It’s like when the Bene Gesserit do their TAKE OUT YOUR KNIFE—DRIVE IT IN YOUR THROAT #cellbiology #dune

This reminds me about a decade-old Soylent-era conversation with my wife about a true bachelor chow — can you make one? She would ask “but what about X?” (vitamins, fiber, flavonoids, diversity of flavor and nutrients) and I would answer “it’s in the chow!” Eventually she said I was being a tech bro

Okay so gamma is bottom-up data, alpha is top-down prediction, beta is dopamine, delta is synaptic downscaling, and theta episodic memory. What have I oversimplified beyond reason?

Don’t quote me on this, but this is why my personal exercise routine is to run until I smell acetone.

A great feature about our research by @scinews.bsky.social. Had a bit of a philosophical debate with the editors: initially “memory” was in quotation marks, and the first sentence conditionalized it as “metaphorical”. But I stood my ground. There’s no sense in which “brain memory” is more “real”!

My students treat spelling like an obsolete chore. But studies show that how we learn to spell determines more than just writing, and might in fact shape our abilities, personalities, and even, quite possibly, national cultures. 🧵

I’m such a city boy I’ve ever actually seen a tractor plough IRL. Nothing lays bare the raw power of machine age quite like it. In Brazil, I read about the reaction of Amazonians to seeing a metal axe cut down a tree for the first time — I imagine this, to a farmer, was similar.

I know this is intended as a spoof but I don’t think it’s that silly, just highlights the concept of scale. Along the same lines: all terrestrial vertebrates are a rare form of weird fish.

Yes but the same exact thing happened in Russia by totally independent means so the evolutionist in me concludes the selective pressure is more universal.

Imitation, to culture, is what replication is to genes. What an incredible example of cultural imitation in non-human animals. I’m on Whidbey Island for Thanksgiving, right here in the Puget Sound — will be watching out for fashionable orcas!

I had no idea. Apparently the main neurotransmitter of the human brain, and the receptors that convert it to electricity (calcium), evolved before the animal-plant split. I wonder about glutamate release now. Is that reverse coupling (Ca to glutamate) also as ancient, or is it a later animal add-on?

Was checking #H5N1 NextStrain to see if I should wear a mask flying to the West Coast for Thanksgiving today. Red is human. Sooo yeah I’m wearing a mask.

Our lab has been studying memory in sea slugs for decades and everyone was like “sea slug memory? Haha how precious”. Then we showed pretty much the exact same memory in human kidney cell cultures and people were immediately like “I KNEW IT—this is where my childhood trauma is stored!”

Wow. Really makes you appreciate living, breathing nature and how different it is from a textbook diagram with chemicals walking in straight lines politely reacting with one another. It’s chaos. Molecules flying around ramming into each other, bending, sticking, breaking—THAT is chemistry.

What this makes me think is — why hasn’t nature invented a wheel? Is it because you can’t have completely dissociated parts of the body? Still, achievable via superorganism.

Serotonin, in my opinion, is the most mysterious neuromodulator. It means danger in slugs, profound thoughts in humans, and it apparently dips during reinforcement. What exactly did it evolve do do? What was the original idea?

I disagree. Behavior is just muscle motion. It is not the only output of a brain nor even the most subjectively meaningful. Brain function is about information, not motion.

This is so true. Every word submitted now comes with a hint of suspicion. I make students come in for oral interviews if in doubt. About 50% admit guilt when guaranteed confidentiality. The rest fight. I clear maybe 50% remaining ones and report the rest. It poisons the vibe. But what do you do?

When learning is spaced in time, memory is enhanced, but so far this was only observed in neural systems. A study in Nature Communications shows that non-neural cells, including kidney cells, also show a spaced effect in terms of transcriptional responses. 🧪

Hi! I study how cells form memories. Our lab's most recent study in Nature Commmunications shows that non-neural cells, including kidney cells, can count, detect precise time patterns, and form lasting memories in ways similar to neurons.🧵https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53922-x