1. Last office hours a few people had questions about personal statements for grad school apps. I suggested a template that has worked well in my experience & have also laid it out in the thread below in case it's useful for you all. #AcademicSky #PhdSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc

Big news in hashtag Chromosome Biology: Chromosoma & Chromosome Research will merge in January 2026! The new unified journal will be titled 'Chromosome Research: Biology of the Nucleus', honoring both legacies and advancing a shared scientific mission. bit.ly/3LmaLwY #ResearchPublishing

The TArgeted Cohesin Loader (TACL) paper was just published. Happy that we were able to contribute to this really exciting project! If you want to learn how targeting cohesin to defined loci in the genome affects the local chromatin environment and transcription, look no further! rdcu.be/eLiT5

As the murder of Piersanti Mattarella in 1980 is in the news due to the arrest of a former senior police officer for allegedly hiding or destroying vital evidence, here I explain the background to the killing and subsequent investigations into one of Italy's many unsolved tragedies [Thread] >> 1

Heyyyy we desperately need more archaeologists to volunteer to answer questions from students via video chat through @skypeascientist.bsky.social. We have 80 unmatched teams. We’ve already matched 650 😵‍💫 If you know any archaeologists, please send them here www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

important op-ed from @sarahhird.bsky.social on the need for paid leave for UConn faculty. Private sector employees in CT get 16 weeks of paid leave. I got a discretionary teaching release from my department but those are NOT guaranteed. ctmirror.org/2025/10/21/t...

A summary of training, fellowship, and career development awards Fiscal year 2025 (compared to fiscal year 2024) 1/12

Pervasive suppressors halt the spread of selfish Segregation Distorter in a natural population https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.13.681989v1

No words

A good reminder to save all experiment files and logs alongside raw images to demonstrate authenticity of your data

"This is extortion, plain and simple.... The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education." A sobering analysis of the illegality of the administration's "compact" and its stakes for higher ed. 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

“No self-respecting university could ever accept something like this,” said Lee Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar and former Columbia University president. “Trying to protect conservative ideas against being ‘belittled’ — that’s about as violative of the First Amendment interests as you can get.”

📣 🧪 Update: #GRFP petition went to #NSF and OSTP (w/ the growing* comments list) yesterday. We are now working to get these impacts in front of Congress, so PLEASE keep signing/sharing the petition! *nearly 900! @danielbolnick.bsky.social @joshuasweitz.bsky.social @jasonwilliamsny.bsky.social

On October 7th, learn how to communicate genetics topics to classrooms and informal settings with with @robomalley.bsky.social l from @pged.bsky.social! This is for teachers and all other kinds of educators. RSVP for free here: givebutter.com/8TVNiA

Frequent user of epitope tags? Try ours! IPI epitope tag antibodies & plasmids are now available through our partner @addgene.bsky.social! buff.ly/YEuZDIp

Huge congratulations, @needhibhalla.bsky.social for this well-deserved honor! 🎉

Paper led by @movillome.bsky.social on unbiased detection of (somatic) #TE insertions in #Arabidopsis with @pacbio.bsky.social long reads out after peer review. Thanks to academic editor Leandro Quadrana for shepherding it through the review process. #plantscience link.springer.com/article/10.1...?

If you're a reporter, please stop referring to RFK Jr and his cronies as "vaccine skeptics." They're not skeptical. Skepticism would be fine. Skeptics look at evidence and can be persuaded. These people are extremist anti-vaccine cranks, and that's how news organizations should describe them.

Yes, it was carefully hidden in the New England Journal of Medicine. Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... ) 1/2

Fly labs — Now is the time to show some solidarity and chip in support for this vital resource!

What a gem. A wonderful reminder of why we do this.

If the Supreme Court rules for the Trump administration in this case, biomedical research is finished in this country.

Our new non-denaturing nanoscale 3D DNA tracing technology provides single-cell (and sister-chromatid specific!) readout of chromatin structure with 10kb genomic resolution - Check it out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Congratulations to Kai and Oyvind!!

This is devastating. In addition to the obvious harm to the FlyBase staff, SO many of us rely on this resource!

Devastating loss for one of the most important research model system

I am really excited to be a part of this team. We took our time writing this, putting a lot of thought into how our journeys as #NativesInSTEM were affected by different aspects of Universities and looking for commonalities across the world. I hope folks in academia appreciate this work.

Meet the 2025 ASCB Award Winners—trailblazing scientists honored for research, mentoring, education, and innovation. Celebrate excellence across all career stages in cell biology. Read more: www.ascb.org/society-news...

So excited to share this preprint from the Rosin lab in collaboration with the Hawley lab and @eelcotromer.bsky.social on moth spermatogenesis! We investigate the meiotic errors that occur during the formation of apyrene sperm (that have no DNA) in silkworms! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

NIH staff are being required to fully fund ~ 50% of their grants. This means that all 4 years of an award will be paid out of this appropriation. This will help them get the appropriated funds spent, but will mean they can only fund (1/2 + 1/4*1/2) = 5/8 has many grants as they would have otherwise.

My #linocut of Italian #neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 – 2012) who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with for her co-discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF) 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬 Youngest of 4 of a Turin Jewish family, she planned to be a writer but the death of a nanny to cancer inspired🧵

NIH will only accept six new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications from an individual Principal Investigator/Program Director or Multiple Principal Investigator for all council rounds in a calendar year. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide....

Grant terminations have grabbed the headlines and have seen legal action, but even more damaging to the US research enterprise has been the massive decrease in number of research grants issued by federal agencies NIH has seen a decrease of 57% in the number of awards & 63% in value compared to FY24

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding. NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

"The state has essentially defunded UConn" -- Jeffrey Ogbar, former president of @uconnaaup.bsky.social on the 34% decrease in CT block grants (from 2010)

Finally out! 🥳 Our paper showing how a transposable element (TE) insertion can cause developmental phenotypes is now published @natgenet.nature.com 🧬🦠🐁 Below is a brief description of the major findings. Check the full version of the paper for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02248-5

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

Check out this new review (with animations, natch) of mechanisms of licensing origins of DNA replication - a wonderful (and continuing!) collaboration with Bruce Stillman @cshlnews.bsky.social and John Diffley @crick.ac.uk! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cannot emphasize enough that, if you dislike doing the things academics do (reading, writing, developing and expressing opinions about things you've read) enough to try to make a chatbot do them for you, there are lots of actual humans who would be happy to take that unpleasant job off your hands

Here's the end-of-workday update, on Day 1 of the United States of Science. A whopping 57% of the map has been covered in the first 24 hours which is *amazing*. Thank you to everyone who filled bubbles! The top 5 states are still open: CA, NY, PA, NJ, FL Fill a few bubbles! givebutter.com/USS2025

“Do you have any advice for aspiring young scientists?” “Do genetics.” *mic drop* #worm25

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

UConn Presidents message just now: “The university is $63 million lower in awards through May 2025 over the same period last year, and has lost $32 million in federal funds due to terminations and cancellations of existing research”

Very happy (and frankly relieved) to see this paper finally out in peer-reviewed form. (Preprint was posted in August 2021, but this is the world we live in now). rdcu.be/erMk6

‘Idiot’ tourists strike again: The moment a man sits on the 'Van Gogh chair' and breaks it. In an Instagram post, Palazzo Maffei in Verona, Italy, said it was “Every museum's nightmare come true”. www.stuff.co.nz/travel/36072... #museums #Italy

New powerful article up in the New York Times on cancelled and delayed grants www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

If you've been thinking about donating in honor of 🌈 #PrideMonth, you can have an even bigger impact on The Trevor Project right now. Every donation is being quadrupled. Not clear how long this will be, so I donated today! www.thetrevorproject.org

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

“Our project was awesome. It was part of the largest investment the National Institutes of Health had ever made in TB. It was honestly the most satisfying science I’ve ever been a part of because it was really working.” But now, “all the data and knowledge” her team has gathered “is gone”.

Who's calling the shots at NIH? Sworn testimonies and internal e-mails reveal for the first time the breadth of DOGE's control over the world's largest public biomedical funder. DOGE has provided lists of hundreds of grants to cut, and DOGE is now reviewing ALL NIH awards before they're released