Thinking about the soft money problem in science. My institution will send 100 emails to faculty list serves guilt tripping someone to volunteer to teach before offering a dime of compensation.

Reading the Mike Lauer interview. A very informative take from an insider on the state of NIH. www.statecraft.pub/p/whats-wron...

Likewise, Congressman Cole from Oklahoma is the chair of the overall House Appropriations committee. If you can, reach out to his office as well. It is noteworthy that OMB is willing to veto a bill over a minor-seeming NIH operational issue. This makes me think this is part of a bigger plan...

The Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis trade looked bad from the get-go for the Mavericks, and it is aging even worse.

I think I have reached the point in my career where I have reviewed more grants than I have had grants reviewed.

This is probably overkill, but when reviewing grants, I randomize the order in which I read them. I worry that order matters. E.g. for the first grant, you do not have an overall sense of the quality and possibly err on the side of an average score.

We (U.S. citizens) literally pay the tariffs. I bought something from Etsy from an international seller. UPS guy came to my door holding the package and gave me two options. 1. Write a check to UPS for the tariff or 2. refuse delivery and send it back.

Great to see research on tanning bed and cancer risk from @bishaltandukar.bsky.social @shainlab.bsky.social on today’s @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social Town Hall www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/12... #UCSFCancerProud

I know for me sports talk was the only thing I missed about Twitter until I found this list. If you're missing having NFL memes and analysis in your feed in-between the politics and whatever reason you made a Bluesky account in the first place, Mina has an A+ list of peeps to follow.

Proud to share our new paper in Science Advances. We show that indoor tanning beds cause widespread mutational damage across the skin to increase melanoma risk, especially in body sites that rarely see sunlight. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #Melanoma #SkinCancer

Hitting 1800 elo in style with a smothered mate!

What drives the earliest steps of skin cancer development? In keratinocyte cancers, the first selected mutations almost always hit TP53 and NOTCH genes—plus occasional hits in chromatin remodeling genes or the Hippo pathway.

I remain stunned by this finding -- melanocytes have 5x more mutations than keratinocytes, despite the fact that the cells are next to each other in the basal layer of the epidermis, [theoretically] experiencing the same doses of UV radiation.

I am thrilled to share the latest manuscript from the Shain lab, describing the genetic changes that transform a keratinocyte into cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (and everything in between). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Too small!

Today at 4pm: Cancer Center Friday Seminar | Ashley Kiemen, PhD, Johns Hopkins Inst for NanoBioTechnology "Integration of histology and multiplex imaging for targeted understanding of pancreatic cancer progression" cancer.ucsf.edu/seminars Host: @shainlab.bsky.social @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social

Nancy Pelosi is retiring after decades of service. I still remember when I received my first R01, and she sent me a congratulatory letter!

1/ Should you get feedback on your grant proposals? Sure — but do it right. And take positive feedback with a grain of salt. 🧂

What is your favorite gene expression deconvolution software?

Hey @bontahill.bsky.social , who are you rooting for? Stanford or FSU?

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

Best team.

A bundle of interesting papers just dropped on Nature. Collectively, they describe the somatic mutational landscapes normal tissues.

🚨 New paper alert! Sex and smoking bias in the selection of somatic mutations in human bladder www.nature.com/articles/s41... by @raquelbmi.bsky.social, @ferriol.bsky.social et al (in collaboration with Rosana Risques lab in @uwmedicine.bsky.social)

Dear collaborator, I am writing to confirm support for your grant. Before I write one sentence describing my tiny role on your project, please read 3 paragraphs about how awesome your grant is, which I definitely wrote myself.

What a satisfying mate!

Can Nicotinamide Lessen the Risk of Skin Cancer Development? ascopost.com/news/septemb...

I felt it #moderate

Earthquake! Bay Area

RFK said he would determine the cause of autism by "September" and Trump has pre-announced a major announcement on autism to come on Monday. 🍿

STmut is now working on Visium HD data! Infer copy number from spatial transcriptomics data at unparalleled accuracy and resolution

Does anyone else have dogs that ruin their sleep score? I was all good till 7am, but then an intermittent Mastiff with a HrV of 300 took over

After clearly saving changes to an NIH RPPR form, the system inevitably gives this warning.

Serious question for the crowd: has a K-awardee ever actually done the coursework/mentor meetings they promised in the training plan? Or is it just a rite of passage?

1,333 Notices issued by the NIH in the past week. Including 116 new R01 projects. reporter.nih.gov/search/6lVq4...

Politicized research comes and goes, but it always leave behind a legacy of permanent paperwork.

Very happy to share our work on signature SBS5. See Molly's thread for a short summary

I HAVE BEEN SILENCED and CENSORED BY OUR GOVERNMENT!!!! My latest… sciencebasedmedicine.org/vinayprasadl...

Top FDA official demands removal of YouTube videos of himself that criticized Covid vaccines www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

BREAKING: per email sent to agency staff NIH will _NOT_ reterminate the ~900 grants which were reinstated. "[W]e would strongly recommend against re-terminating such grants, because it will likely be viewed as a reapplication of the now-vacated Challenged Directives."

Microcolony-Seq. This paper is in the setting of bacteria, but it very accurately describes our experience in sequencing microcolonies of skin cells. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Shutting down the NIH guide for grants was a bad idea. Sure, the grant postings were redundant with grants.gov, but grants.gov posts ALL grant opportunities across the government. My inbox is now flooded with irrelevant calls from the Department of Labor

I feel the most sympathy for scientists with grants scored within the historical payline, but they will not be funded. But what about all the reviewers, too? They just wasted their time critiquing grants for, essentially, no reason.

I have NIGMS R35, impact score 12 NIHGRI R21, 4th percentile NHGRI R01, 7th percentile (co-I) and it seems like none will be funded. 0/3. PO (who has been very helpful) said "Unfortunately, I do not expect this application will be selected for funding in FY25." 😭

Here is my hot take of the day. Most pre-tax accounts are upper middle class tax breaks that can be done away with. Even the people who benefit could be doing something more productive with their time rather than navigating bureacracy.

This sums up the MAHA movement well. "Unfortunately, from my standpoint, what’s happened is the worst of both worlds: The changes on the food side are minor, performative and irrelevant, while the changes on the vaccine side are enormous and terrible. " www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/o...

Is there a way to simplify progress reports while still being respectful to the fact that funders deserve to see the outcomes of their projects? The current NIH movement towards multi-year awards would suggest that they do not care much about interim progress reports.

One thing I wish that Blue Sky had was a breakdown of interactions on your posts. E.g. how many views does your post get?

How awesome is it that we are less than one month away from finding the cause of autism!