Looking forward to sharing this story in person at #RNASociety on Friday! I'm giving a talk at the RNA and Disease session and Liza will have a poster (ID 528) on Friday evening.

🚨The lab's first research paper is In Press at JBC! Congrats Liza and Magda!! Pontocerebellar Hypoplasia linked mutations of the deadenylase Target of EGR1 (TOE1) impair thermal stability, ribonuclease activity, and oligomerization - Journal of Biological Chemistry www.jbc.org/article/S002...

1/8 I am excited to share a new paper from the education side of the lab. There is a lot of anxiety that genAI tools will jeopardize learning gains from homework assignments. Using Bloom's Taxonomy, we analyzed where genAI succeeds and where it struggles. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Heads up all Junior RNA Scientists - March 31st is the deadline for poster abstract submission and early bird registration for the 2026 Annual RNA Society Meeting in Montreal! Don't miss out, we have an exciting panel and fun events planned!

As a child, @phosphotig.bsky.social dreamed of being an astronaut, but her curiosity led her to scientific research. Now, she leads her own lab at UNC-Chapel Hill, & studies oxidative stress to find better therapies for triple-negative breast cancer. #WomensHistoryMonth www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/...

NIGMS is signed onto the F31 NOFO. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

A piece of good news for basic scientists in training!

Got my first conference attendee scam. Assume they targeted names on the website for: #RNASociety See lots more of this lately.

I was on Capitol Hill today with @asbmb.bsky.social urging lawmakers to support strong federal investment in scientific research and training. Also to support : predictable and sustained funding. #ASBMBAdvocates #ScienceServesUsAll

Folks from @rnasociety.bsky.social advocating for basic science research funding #ASBMBAdvocates @uwmadisonrna.bsky.social @cassandrahayne.bsky.social

New and competitive renewal awards Fewer than 40 new awards were made in the past week, compared to over 100 the previous week. 5/9

This flattening may be due to the apportionment issue covered in the recent Nature story. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 3/9

All projects The fiscal year 2026 appears to be flattening out a bit in the past week. 2/9

New preprint alert! We share some of our recent insights about sequence similarity in IDP protein families and find that conservative substitutions in well-conserved binding motifs of the CITED proteins have big impacts on their ensembles and functions. Take a look! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new community-driven lab handbook for reducing conflict and creating more positive and equitable work environments gets strong support from a survey of 200 researchers. buff.ly/K7CGFLV

Are you looking for female speakers in CryoEM for seminars and conferences? Are you a woman in CryoEM and not yet on the ‚woman in CryoEM‘ list? Find your speakers and add/update name and affiliation! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

What are people using for calling m6A from pacbio revio data? This is for analysis of fiberseq library. Any suggestions appreciated, we are newbies with m6A analysis!

Listed are some of the many NIH research training programs that were terminated! Together, these programs supported thousands of trainees, whose careers are now in limbo. Such a great loss for discovery and innovation. We must protect our next generation of scientists! #HandsOffNIH #ProtectScience

It bears repeating that nearly the entire US enterprise in science and technology has been irreversibly gutted. This is shocking. All this loss has occurred without any real benefit to the average US citizen. Except we now have the biggest, best funded secret police force perhaps ever. Yay for us!

I’ve had a lab for less than 3yrs. In that time the costs of many science reagents have grown faster than inflation. I ordered an antibody today that I paid $383 for in 2023- today with a good promotion, I paid $467. Tariffs on top of that. Other easy examples: Grids are up about 30% Gloves up 25%

A joint statement with @savehealthresearch.bsky.social on the supreme courts decision today that will pave the way for hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH grant terminations. We are heartbroken and stand with the extramural community during this devastating time.

There is no solace for NIH funded researchers in this Supreme Court decision. Grants that were ripped away on dubious grounds, restored by a reasonable judge are now again terminated by an out-of-control Supreme Court. Labs will shutter, people will lose jobs. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

Why would anyone want to be a scientist? Check out our new Essay from Martin Schwartz: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

I think a good rule of thumb is to spend at least as much time thinking about your data as you did obtaining it. It's common for people to spend a lot less time thinking than doing which gives rise to all kinds of problems.

New Notice about No-Cost Extensions... grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

There’s a nonzero chance you will die from a cancer that could have been curable because people who couldn’t pass 7th grade biology and are scared of things like “mRNA” and “riboflavin” and “walkable cities” decided to make their ignorance everybody else’s problem

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

A big thanks to NC Sen. Thom Tillis for being the first signature on this bipartisan letter urging the Senate to maintain a strong commitment to funding for NIH in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education FY 2026 Appropriations bill. Is your Senator here? www.aamc.org/research/adh...

Please share widely with friends, family, and foes. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...

*International students represent about 15% of all higher ed students. *They subsidize US students, so expect domestic student costs to increase *Trump complains about tariffs but he is destroying an industry where the US is a huge net exporter www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/u...

Excited to be headed to San Diego for my first *in person* RNA Society meeting. ☀️ Looking forward to great science and time with great scientists. See you there #RNASociety #RNASky

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

New Forbes story about the economic consequences of science cuts. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr... Thoughtful and thorough analysis. 1/n

Congrats Max, Stephanie et al!

ICYMI: The FDA wants to restrict access to Covid vaccines, even though they are safe, effective, and have saved millions of lives. Even ppl in high-risk jobs wouldn't get access. We can push back by submitting public comments here: www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD... www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/h...

Thinking of this post today

HAPPY 75th, NSF! We’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of NSF’s most transformative accomplishments—innovations that have shaped our world and continue to drive progress in health, technology, the environment, and beyond. Read on 🧵(1/11):

I updated the Resources page of my blog, and made it easier to find, so that you can more easily find go-to content....

Welp, it begins. Sigma Aldrich.

I could be wrong about this but I really think most Americans do not want to be forced to “do their own research” about food & drug & product safety and would rather that the government agencies that have been sorting that all out for them for decades not be obliterated in the name of “efficiency.”

At first glance, it looks like most terminated grants from the NIH are R01s, which are awarded to established scientists to fund the work of their labs. The next most common grant category is the F31, a training grant supporting the professional development of outstanding graduate students.

Science article with perspectives from NIH insiders www.science.org/content/arti... 1/n

RFK Jr. ordered the NIH’s Integrated Research Facility in Frederick to stop all research on serious infectious diseases yesterday at 5:00 PM. They study pathogens like Ebola there. You may be familiar with it from The Hot Zone. www.wired.com/story/hhs-ni...

Solicitation changes and new solicitations must be personally approved by the three permanent DOGE members, who now stay in the Office of the Director, and by OMB (Vought). DOGE has total access to the grants management system, and has installed what amounts to spyware on NSF work machines. 3/5

Deaths from heart disease down 75%, that’s NIH. Deaths from stroke down 75%, that’s NIH. HIV/AIDS no longer a death sentence, that’s NIH. 99% of FDA approved drugs in the last decade, that’s NIH. Please show this video to anyone who doesn’t understand why the NIH is so important.

"The grant was created by the first Trump administration to foster a new generation of diverse scientists in biomedical research, then defunded in the second Trump administration's ongoing purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs." www.wxxinews.org/2025-04-28/a...

In its ongoing mission to shrink the federal government, the Trump administration is now proposing a more than 40% budget cut to the National Institutes of Health - the crown jewel of American medical research. 60 Minutes, Sunday.