Latest #CDlab paper on nanopore protein sequencing on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... Here, Justas Ritmejeris, @xiuqichen.bsky.social, collaborator @albadalab.bsky.social and me developed a conjugation chemistry strategy for nanopore sequencing of natural peptides!

To be effective, data science agents need to be able to read plots reliably. @sara-altman.bsky.social and I wrote about some concerning findings on LLMs' ability to interpret plots when the content contradicts their expectations on the @posit.co blog. posit.co/blog/introdu...

Aurora from Rocky Mountain Arsenal tonight.

We have wondered what a complex archaeal cell might look like ever since 2014. It’s been a long road (and the journey is far from over), but it’s a good time to pause for breath and look. These Asgard archaeal cells are a surprise! And that is the joy of being a cell biologist.

Rare Earth will be back on air soon & in preparation for a programme on Darwin, Wallace & evolution, I found this ace example of evolutionary adaptation. The plant C. argenteum makes seeds that look & smell like dung, so dung beetles roll them away, bury them, then lose interest. Free seed planting!

We live in a tumultuous world. But I take solace in the fact that the 2010 University of Alaska Fairbanks hockey intro video remains the most unhinged thing I’ve ever seen.

Scott Campbell (character designer for Psychonauts) does this ongoing series called Great Showdowns and puts 'em up for sale. He posted this Happy Death Day one today. I have a ton waiting for frames.

How to become a "hot RNA" 🌡️? The answers were kindly provided by hyperthermophilic archaea: rRNA modifications are key! Check out this new publication presenting pan-modification profiling of the epitranscriptome. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex.... (1/3)

Just sent @foodbankrockies.bsky.social the same amount we’d spend on a really nice dinner out to help with the coming SNAP cliff.

If you've been wondering how to tell ring-tailed lemurs apart, Duke Lemur Center has a very wonderful graph mapping individual variations based on ear angle and pointiness Pointiness range is Round to Elf Angle range is Cat (straight up) to Airplane (side-to-side) lemur.duke.edu/catta-ears/ 🧪

A university that signs the “compact” is one that acknowledges its own inability to compete and succeed based talent and merit. It would signal insecurity and mediocrity to current and future students and faculty. Say no. Recruit the best people, protect their freedom and support their hard work.

We have a bunch of new job ads out @arcadiascience.com. If you haven’t checked them out, take a look! www.arcadiascience.com/careers

this is both clever and I object

tRNA-modification mutants in mycobacteria boost antibiotic recalcitrance by activating WhiB7 & coupling alanine metabolism to ribosome rescue and survival, new study reveals. ✍️ @jvaubourgeix.bsky.social & coll. 📖 shorturl.at/86JTs #MicroSky #AMR #RNAsky @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social @inserm.fr

My HPLC was definitely overlooked www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cute little ET discovered 10,000 feet down off the coast of California. (Remember “terrestrial” has two opposites, one of which is “marine”.) Meet the bumpy snailfish! 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/s...

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen. He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

Quoncierge updates: v0.2 adds an alternative, even more opinionated setup with organization and auto-routing of notebook outputs, intended for users who do lots of interactive exploratory data analysis. Sometimes the notebooks ARE the work, so let's make them reproducible. github.com/lkwhite/Quon...

And look at this graphic abstract….. 😱🤯

☕Pan, David, Chevrier & co show that the microbial #metabolites queuine and preQ1 modify the same host tRNA. PreQ1-tRNA reduces cell proliferation, slows #tumor growth, decreases the translation of ribosomal proteins and is cleaved by IRE1 on the ER #ribosome. 👉https://rdcu.be/eJqFc bit.ly/46BPXtJ

My husband was detained by ICE today Juan Muñoz, an American citizen, father of 2, and local government official, was peacefully protesting w. other elected officials. He was assaulted and taken away I have had zero contact or updates since #SOS @duckworth.senate.gov @durbin.senate.gov

Beautiful reconstitution of amino acid stress-dependent ISR activation by my @harvardcellbio.bsky.social colleagues presenting a unifying mechanism for GCN2 activation, which requires ribosome collisions and is enhanced by cognate uncharged tRNA in the A site! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This looks useful.

The grad student organizers of Colorado's long-running RNA Club have been putting together this event to demystify the PhD application process for the past few years. Pass along to folks applying to grad school this cycle 🍁

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Fun fact: the Japanese Spider Crab’s Latin name (M. kaempferi) refers to this 17th century Dutchman who “discovered” it in… a restaurant. 🙄

I think the R01 is basically a non-starter at NIGMS now. Data from NIH Reporter for new and competing awards, comparing number of R01s issued relative to R35s (MIRA). This has major ramifications for basic science and basic science investigators that are not yet in the MIRA pool

Every single one of these leaves is a bug.

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

I have the (dubious) pleasure of serving as the chair of my campus's Academic Senate. This means I have a (sometimes) office on the top floor of the admin building, along with the President, Provost, and VPs. I will share something scandalous with you. This office has a thermostat. AND IT WORKS.

You know things are rough when the AAUP's advice on how to use social media is just "set all your accounts to private."

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change. Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

My most successful outreach effort by far is the "Friends Don't Let Friends Made Bad Graphs" repository. It has 6.8 bookmarks on GitHub. That's just people with a GitHub account, not counting those who have used it but don't have a GitHub account. github.com/cxli233/Frie...

Sorry, what?

Clearly a ton of work in this. I’m excited to finally have more intuitive plot sizing and a clean way to define in margins.

I love every field's hyperspecific variant of this. (Molecular biology's is moving very small amounts of clear liquids from one tiny container to another.)

Only just found this great resource for shell scripting. github.com/dylanaraps/p...

Updated update I downloaded the data from NIH Reporter too soon. The large end of the month update had not occurred. Here are the results as of this morning. NIH grants management staff have been busy making awards. 1/2

minimap2.com is potentially a phishing site. Please don't use anything from that website. github.com/lh3/minimap2...

Our new pre-print from the Greenberg and Churchman labs shows that activity-dependent modulation of RNA stability is a major, and underappreciated, mechanism of gene regulation in neurons. Tutorial below! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/11)

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

CDC ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging. “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” a spokesperson said, echoing a line from a recent editorial RFK Jr. wrote

Another impressive dissection of tRNA modification consequences from Sarah Schultz in Ute Kothe's lab. Her work reveals that even though TrmA, TruB, or now DusA KOs show no overt growth phenotypes, modifications they deposit have real impacts on tRNA charging and codon-specific translation.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

I find it insane that anyone thinks scientists are currently in a position to determine whether science is "politicized" or not. "Passengers fleeing Titanic in danger of looking like they are anti-iceberg actitvists."

LOV-BirA, light regulated biotin ligase, engineered by Song-Yi Lee www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is on the outside of a building by Grady Memorial Hospital and I can confirm it’s every bit as great in person.