How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller? Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase. 1/n

Deadline Approaching: Kaiser-Goldberg Research Fellowship | Apply for this award that funds a 10–12 week summer program for one selected student annually to work in an Endocrine Society member's laboratory. Applications are due Friday, February 27: https://bit.ly/4ssaGJb

Pub of the Month! 💜📰 Kicking off January 2026 by celebrating outstanding research in Science Advances, featuring Dr. Yu-Ying Chen’s recent publication from Dr. Humphry Yao’s group at NIEHS. Cheers to discovery! 🔬✨ #WinRS #WomenInReproductiveSciences

New Year, New Chapter for the @srfsocietyuk.bsky.social journal, Reproduction. Greg Johnson (Texas A&M) and I bring some Texas flair as new co-Editors-in-Chief, with our new publisher, Oxford University Press. January issue is out! #science #research #stem #academia academic.oup.com/reproduction...

Happy Thanksgiving. Sundance is not on the menu.

Pub of the Month! 📄💜 This month’s feature: “Comparative analysis of human and mouse ovaries across age” from the Laird Laboratory @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social Celebrating the research (and researchers!) moving science forward. 🔬🥼✨ #ReproRocks #WinRS #NewPublication #Research #SSR #Science

🚨ONE MONTH AWAY🚨 #womeninstem #reprorocks @ssrepro.bsky.social

Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Such an icon. I had the pleasure of attending her lecture once- it was beyond inspiring.

Even the dog was excited! #fishing #bass

RIP, Robert Redford.

Raising a pair of turkeys has been fun this summer. This is Sundance, my male Black Spanish heritage 🦃

Reproductive #aging is associated with declining #fertility and increasing #inflammation. @spangas.bsky.social &co explore a @plosbiology.org study that uses cutting-edge tech to characterize the role of multinucleated giant cells in #ovarian aging 🧪 Paper: plos.io/3T84WE0 Primer: plos.io/3HXKN1b

Science + babysitting

Something new at the house! 🐝🐝🍯

feed one crow suddenly it’s a murder #DailyHaikuPrompt #Haiku

Lovely end to to a successful Section I @mblscience.bsky.social Frontiers in Reproduction Course, Woods Hole. Good luck section 2 Director @schindlerlab.bsky.social

Sometimes you find the weirdest things on your doorbell camera. This was mine last night.

Gave a talk at my parents’ retirement community to describe how science is done, and what is at stake. There was a ton of interest, and anyone can do this. Get the word out about how science affects everyone. I’m happy to share slides with anyone who asks- just get in touch! youtu.be/BY_SFgi-Cig

The cutest jumping spider came to say hi today in the garden ❤️

The pipevine swallowtail tail cats are also here!

30th Anniversary of the Texas Forum for Reproductive Sciences, Houston TX, April 10-11 hosted by Baylor College of Medicine. Keynote speakers, Drs Mariana Giasetti (Baylor Univ) and Rama Kommagani, )Baylor College of Medicine)

First monarch cats this spring #monarch #texas #zone9

ASMR timeline cleanse. Ginger eating celery.

NIH termination notices arrived today for our Postbaccalaurate Education (PREP) and Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) grants. Students trained from these grants for over 26 years and have gone on to outstanding careers in biomedical science. So many future careers in jeopardy.

Baylor College of Medicine's uncertainty over health research funding is prompting the school to scale back research and reduce its incoming class size. trib.al/0iKhLwa

Mugging for her favorite treat #horses

Seems like summer, corn on the cob and all #chickens

Chicken and yogurt

For those near the Texas Medical Center, Stand Up for Science will have 2 rally locations - one at Baylor College of Medicine at the NRI building and one at Rice Univ. Noon Friday March 7 standupforscience2025.org/local-event-...

Six award-winning female scientists highlight women who have inspired them by pushing innovative research and creating opportunities for others https://go.nature.com/43n0J5R

It’s been a stressful week and it’s not looking like it’s getting better for the near future (🤞) so I decided to double my garden space.

While I love all creatures, I’m thinking my rooster did me a favor in the garden and took care of this.

Reminder that Europepmc.org exists. In case anyone should need it for any reason.

*Tenured full Professorship in Genetics and Molecular Cell Biology* at the University Of Cologne, Germany It's an opportunity to rebuild the place that used to be home to luminaries including Benno Müller-Hill, Max Delbruck, Campos-Ortega, Diethard Tautz Maria Leptin, Thomas Langer

Pretty happy with the hen crosses last year to get these colors! #chickens

DOGE By The Numbers theonion.com/doge-by...

This excellent Nature paper from 2015 discussed multiple ways that sex is not binary, and why the idea of two sexes is simplistic. Required reading right now - please share! www.nature.com/articles/518... 🧪👨‍🔬🧬🖥️

Check out our latest paper in Science Advances, in which we built a constriction-based microfluidic device to measure the deformability of oocytes to assess their mechanical properties with minimal impact. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

After a long journey, Segment Anything for Microscopy is now published in Nature Methods! We significantly improve SAM for interactive and automatic segmentation in light and electron microscopy and build a user-friendly tool. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Let me know if you think this calculation is accurate. If Texas receives $2.5B from NIH, NSF, USDA, and DOE annually and the ave IDC goes from 50% to 15%, they lose ~$507 million/yr. So, if $1 in R&D research funding generates $2 dollars, that’s about a $1B hit to the Texas economy. 🧪

View from Canada: the IDC rate for research intensive unis is about 20%, and it's killing us. International student fees subsidize research, our deferred maintenance burden is out of control and buildings are substandard (some are dangerous), support for common equipment / cores is pratically nil.

Cool paper using LLM to discover a protein sequence code for subcellular localization 👏 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

When the world sucks, I’m glad I have chickens.

Educate your students! I did this last week & will continue Tuesday, explaining the role of "indirect costs" in scientific research & in all that happens at a University like UNC. FASEB's data on state-by-state impact is a great resource www.faseb.org/science-poli... www.faseb.org/science-poli...

Fellow Texans: When you write to your senate and congress today about changes to NIH, here are some important economic numbers. From www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

Congratulations 🎉 to the talented Clayton Baker and Minhoo Kim for the publication of their review of known #sexDifferences in #immune #aging, and the rodent model toolkit to study them, out today at Trends In Molecular Medicine! 🧬🧪 #GeroSky #ImmunoSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Society for Developmental Biology has released a statement on the Unprecedented Disruptions to Biomedical Research in the United States.