Congratulations to Devika for her amazing images of GUVs with tethered liposomes which now appears on the cover of Autophagy.

Happy to share the latest from the lab, led by Daniel Alvarez, in collaboration with @lizconibear.bsky.social‬. In this AA-MD tour-de-force, we delve deep into the mechanism and energetics of lipid uptake by bridge-like lipid transfer proteins, and we learn a few interesting things along the way...

🚨🚨🚨 The Trump administration has laid it out: comply with their ideological agenda or else… This is how we lose free thought in American higher education.

Just a few days left to apply! If you do cool molecular/cell biology things and want to start a lab in a supportive department in New England please check out our ad.

📢 Pre-print alert 📢 We are excited to share the lab's first research article! We used our artificial cortex system to investigate how membrane composition regulates self-organized cortical dyanamics. Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share the first paper from the lab! 🥳 The ATG9 and lipid droplets saga continues! Open source!

I'm very excited to share out latest work now published in Autophagy. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... This work was led by Dr. Devika Andhare and demonstrates the membrane binding and clustering capabilities of Atg11 using a new reconstitution system.

ICYMI: New online: Structure and activation of the human autophagy-initiating ULK1C:PI3KC3-C1 supercomplex

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

My ongoing request: If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here. NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h... NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h... Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.

As anticipated, the White House has officially requested an $18 billion cut to the FY2026 #NIH budget (among lots of other cuts). The full guidance from the White House to the appropriations committee is linked. NIH is on page 12. #braindrain #sciencexit www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

In 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science. This has included terminating more than 1,000 grants in areas such as climate change, cancer, and HIV prevention. Will US science survive Trump 2.0? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Many congratulations to @pallavisgadgil.bsky.social for being awarded the Lucille Smith award for excellence in Biochemistry. This award is in honor of the memory of Dr. Lucille Smith. The first woman at Dartmouth to attain the rank of full professor!

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM Implementation of Schedule F This is what a lot of us have been worried about. This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs. BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD... 1/n

Over 200 people laid off or furloughed on my campus due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding NIH funding. We can expect this number to grow. I warned people of this in an op-ed in February, but was told I was being alarmist. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/16/b...

Exclusive: Weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered NIH to pull $250 million in biomedical research grants to Columbia University, the agency is freezing all remaining grant money owed to the university until further notice. scim.ag/4if5Rg1

I have learned that the directors of ALL: PREP, IMSD, and IRACDA programs across the country have received similar cancelation notices. This follows previous cancellations of MARC and URISE programs. This further dismantles the mechanisms that enable scientific training opportunities for SO MANY.

Today I received notice that our IMSD T32 has been terminated. This program was the culmination of ~10 years of work we put into building our community. I don’t quite have the words. 💔

Dr. Richard Youle was fired today. He is an eminent scientist who has done important work on brain diseases like dementia and Parkinson’s. Musk and Trump are stopping NIH research into cures, for diseases from cancer to Alzheimer’s. Americans did not vote for this.

In situ cryo-ET visualization of mitochondrial depolarization and mitophagic engulfment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.24.645001v1

We just had our first grant terminated. This was a U19 AViDD grant (grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...). It was set to end next month, although many in the consortia were hoping for NCEs.

All institutions across the U.S. should band together now to protect freedom of speech and scientific integrity. We can not wait any longer we have already lost so much. www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...

Here at Princeton, we’re amplifying our university president’s leadership. It’s time for everyone - faculty, students, staff - to speak out. tl;dr: rights can’t be blackmailed. From me and science colleagues: www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...

Major update over the weekend to our spreadsheet tracking terminated NIH grants. 👇 Improvements include: - more grant metadata, including Congressional reps and their phone numbers - data from more sources to complement PI-submitted information - better data integrity and reproducibility 1/

Columbia’s Capitulation Will Hurt Us All www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/o...

Bare bones dashboard is up... (Including the first Advisory Council meeting posted in the Federal Register) jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

I just heard that a Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) grant from the NIH, with several years still remaining on the project, was terminated. PREP has existed for 25 years and trained thousands of scientists. The potential loss of PREP is a huge loss for the scientific community.

Last week @standupforscience.bsky.social rally at Dartmouth I spoke with a colleague about the deletion of critical training programs from the NIH's website including the PREP program. PREP has been around since 2000 and has trained thousands of scientists but now its gone from the NIH's website.

This is a helpful set of actions to take from someone who seems to be on the inside. www.reddit.com/r/academia/c...

From my fabulous colleague: "Worst of all, patients and their families who rely on UMass Chan scientists to develop new therapies will be left with no options, no hope and nowhere to go."

Very important to get this word out!

I’m a standing member on the Chemical Biology and Probes (CBP) NIH study section that was supposed to meet tomorrow. It just got postponed this afternoon with a date yet to be determined….

I was hoping that my first bsky post would be more cheerful. I recently joined NIH (NIEHS) as a PO. I fought hard for this position and was so excited to support health science from a new vantage point… I picked up my life and moved to NC. Unfortunately, my time at NIEHS was short lived.

Our manuscript describing the role of Atg11 in binding and clustering vesicles during selective autophagy is updated on bioRxiv. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It's all gone. They've taken down all the CDC datasets from data.cdc.gov Data that's critical for public health & research. Data paid for by citizens. That the government now censors. "Do not fear those who tell the truth. Fear those who try to hide it. They are willing to sacrifice other things."

With the simultaneous onslaught on all US Govt institutions, it’s striking to see the institutions comply so readily. “The strength of a country depends on the strength of its institutions.” Econ Nobel Prize ‘24.

Several Graduate T32s (G-RISE, IMSD, Bridges to the Doctorate) and the MARC T34 (for undergraduates) training grants now have expiration dates of today, 1/30/2025.

Recipients of CDC funding have started receiving some, uh, interesting letters. I’m told that some (health departments, university medical centers, etc) have asked for clarification or pushed back, since contracts may require 30 days or more for changes to be made. But, well, here we are.

Agree! The NIH and academic institutions are rushing to implement changes and freezes in response to executive orders that could be illegal or rescinded in days. Maybe we should push back a little, yeah?🧪

We get so focused on research it can be hard to take a step back and listen to other peoples stories. Check out Dartmouth postdoc Sukrut Kamerkar's excellent perspective on supporting one another, published in Science. www.science.org/content/arti...