shel silverstein was a prophet

More news (not good) from NIH The renewal request from National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke Director Walter Koroshetz has been denied. I guess the NIH_leadership™ needed another position to fill with their time-tested recruitment process.

Dr @lucygossage.bsky.social was the first keynote at our 2025 Retreat. Oncologist, professional Ironman champion, and founder of 5K Your Way, Dr Gossage also did her PhD at @cruk-ci.bsky.social. Recalling this time, she said "completing a PhD and training for an Ironman are remarkably similar!"

Words of wisdom from a trusted Nobel Laureate…most of science is troubleshooting failure. Perhaps this is true of the rest of our lives as well, where success overcoming internal and external challenges, while keeping a positive spirit = contentment.

Known for decades as the Big Three of Groundbreaking Research - and now first in line for federal grants

This is heartbreaking 💔 to read. Thank you 🙏 for sharing this with us. I want to apologize to you on behalf of real Americans. It’s a painful reminder that we must keep resisting these harmful policies so we don’t lose more people like @wwenneuro.bsky.social, whom we spent over a decade training.

A thought article written by a thoughtful human, touching on the essential nature of human language. “Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

I can’t wait for the day we get to call him Mayor Mamdani.

The authors suggest this may have allowed “speech-relevant neurons to accommodate elevated levels of FOXP2 without toxicity associated with protein aggregation”. This reminded me of the discussion of Parvalbumin in this paper on vocal learning by @erichjarvis.bsky.social

ICYMI: “And now, a response from the leader of the frog resistance...” 🐸 🎵 #Colbert

Congratulations to Princeton's Tom Muir, one of the most creative and thoughtful scientists I know, for being awarded the BMS Enzyme Chemistry & Chemical Biology Award chemistry.princeton.edu/news/tom-mui...

An entirely unnecessary fold. Adding “this celebration is open to everyone” - as we have done for all affinity events and celebrations at Princeton - makes these events legal.

Thanks for posting a path to directly "chat" with Jay Bhattacharya-encouraging everyone to submit comments/questions! Here is mine: "A Physician's credo is to do no harm. Either step up and be a Physician, stop ripping apart the efforts of so many to do good, or look in the mirror and step down."

Went for a walk to Central Park, New York and ran into a massive protest. Decided to join and document. Thousands of marchers were protesting everything the Trump administration and his supporters represent, walking around Trump Tower and then onto the park. I post the messages that resonated most.

Massive protest in New York against the current administration.

Shout out to @asiepel.bsky.social and his team for their extremely thoughtful collaboration, helping us solidify findings of human-specific NOVA1 variants-RNA regulation's contribution to the origin and contribution to human vocalization -- either I missed your original handle or welcome to Bluesky!

Thank you Mai You also shone with your insightful work & beautiful presentation 😊 Nice to be able to some of my Social sensibility @ an #RNA symposium! The PG version of my socks underscore my deep belief that Hate will Lose (& heartfelt thanks to @jenjennings.bsky.social for the Social Socks)!

Attending a March for mRNA wasn’t on my lifetime bingo card, but at this point… it feels like it needs to happen. @darnelr.bsky.social @adarnell.bsky.social

Can't help but be proud of the outspoken wisdom and bravery of the amazing Nobel Laureate @ardemp.bskyverified.social ... a role model for scientists everywhere www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/h...

Orange muppet shouting out for inseparability of science and truth

A study from Richard Lifton and @yale.edu colleagues in @pnas.org finds that a mix of inherited and de novo mutations in 60 genes contribute to 10% of congenital heart disease cases. Many of the same mutations also contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders.

Scrubbing #mRNA from grant proposals is a five-alarm fire. Thanks to pioneers including @drewweissmanlab.bsky.social & Kariko, millions of lives have already been saved. Silencing mRNA research now would be a catastrophic step backward. @erictopol.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com @carlzimmer.com

My husband studies mRNA, so it’s time for a rebrand: Republican Nucleic Acid. It's going to be tremendous. Just incredible, believe me. Everybody's talking about it. The best nucleic acid, maybe ever.

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have ), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA

It just gets too painful sometimes… Trump Administration Ends Tracking of Kidnapped Ukrainian Children in Russia www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/u...

Profound respect to Princeton’s Chris Eisgruber’s articulation of the admin’s threat to academic freedom A call to “demand a stop to the government’s unwarranted intrusion on academic freedom-scholars, those whom the world most needs, are rarely bland.” Be Spicy www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Yes, your local public school is at risk. What happens next: 1) No personnel left to administer categorical K-12 funding 2) Those funds get block granted 3) Red states funnel the money into vouchers instead of supporting America’s most disadvantaged kids

I heard some folks try Bluesky, don’t get enough engagement, and go back to Twitter! Be generous with posts you like—it doesn’t cost a dime!

Leaving lab for NYC @standupforscience.bsky.social Message to current policy drivers: science identifies relative certainties in a world of uncertainty. Purified Penicillium mold extract saved millions, purified castor bean extract (ricin) is lethal. Who knew? Oh, scientists. FAFO, budget cuts kill

Good morning 🌞 Do you know about the #standupforscience2025 rallies on March 7? Find one near you here👇🏽

Fun audio here of NOVA1-humanized mice vocalizing ... melodic to my ear :) Thanks again to @lauraungar.bsky.social for this nice piece apnews.com/article/spee...

Single Amino Acid Mutation May Have Helped Shape Human Language Ability scienceblog.com/single-amino...

The breadth and scope of cowardice amongst our scientific leadership is staggering.

Very interesting study by @a-urciuoli.bsky.social & colleagues, offering insight into the derived morphology characterizing the Neanderthal clade. Reduction in bony labyrinth disparity linked to underlying genetic variation resulting from bottleneck events H/t @chrisbstringer.bsky.social

Optimism in the face of [fill in feelings of the day-for me, I’ll run with agitated frustration], a nice summary of hope here: open.substack.com/pub/robertre... My own means to humbly helping humanity: medical science. Not to say that I don’t believe in being politically active-I do & I will

#ScienceIsPeople 🧪 👇 Thread

Therapy by modifying #RNA alternative splicing continues its successful journey from the bench to the clinic and now to the uterus. Root cause analysis—go #AdrianKrainer @cshlaboratory.bsky.social

Fascinating new study led by Yoko Tajima and @darnelr.bsky.social, revisiting the impact of the ‘sapiens’-specific protein-coding mutation in NOVA1 — here showing that vocalisations are impacted in a humanised mouse model 🧪🧬🧠🐭 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lovely article by @emilyfcooke.bsky.social describing role of human-specific NOVA1 amino acid variant as impacting vocalization when “knocked in” to mouse genome, suggests key role in human language development www.livescience.com/health/genet...

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/s...

NOVA1, a neuron-specific RNA binding protein & splicing factor, likely impacted language function in human evolution. Human NOVA1 is unique (vs mammals, Neanderthals), & it changes vocalization in CRISPR’d mice! TY @NatureComms @RockefellerUniv team, collaborators @erichjarvis @asiepel labs 🧵👇

Thanks to all of the NIHers and their friends who reached out to me. I am still here (DM me or Signal jeremymberg.78) I still have a very incomplete picture but based on what I have been told, the damage to NIH and to many wonderful people who work(ed) there is/was impossible for me to imagine 1/n

As wiser people have pointed out to me--simple action to take every day with your coffee: New York Senator Chuck Schumer 202-224-6542 Senator Kristen Gillibrand 202-224-4451 You’ll just get a voicemail box but they count them

Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

1/4 The National Academy of Medicine rethinking US Biomedical Research in this new piece--Great points made, but concern that even with publication date (Feb 2025!) things are moving so fast that this already needs an update dealing with new realities: www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/...

Thank you again to @rbreich.bsky.social for articulate, action oriented and thoughtful support for--all of us--struggling with "what to do" ... robertreich.substack.com/p/what-you-c...

Taking refuge from the not so sweet smell of tweet-musk here.

Excited to publish PNAS our Rockefeller University finding that Nova1 acts as an oncogene in GBM, up regulating cholesterol synthesis, which ASOs may block. Kudos to Yuhki Saito, all coauthors esp Viviane Tabar, & reviewers Ben Blencowe & @Adrian Krainer for thoughtful critiques & @hhmi.bsky.social