While everyone in my lab is a bit heartbroken. It’s been a good moment to come together to celebrate how fucking awesome Zara was. I know she meant so much to so many people at ucsf, in pharmacology, cell biology, and synthetic biology, the leading edge community, and really across science.

Zara’s impact on my life will stay with me forever. She was insanely insightful, wonderfully kind, and sassier than myself. I will miss our weekly coffee walks and making her laugh until she coughed. My heart has broken in a new way this week, but I will carry her forward in my heart and career.

Come join us at our #sfn2025 Nanosymposium for Cilia in the Brain! What can’t these little organelles do! Excited to co-chair with @elinakosty.bsky.social 🧠🔬

📣 PSA for those going to this Foggy #Folsom: You still need sunscreen when I'm around - otherwise you're gonna end up with a very weird sunburn for a very long time

I regularly think I was just born in the wrong era. So to keep that going, happy Earth Wind Fire day! May you have something to dance away this 21st of September day to! m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs06...

A good day in lab, followed by a nice rainbow as I stepped off the train home. ❤️

Thanks @cilialab.bsky.social for organizing as usual!

‼️🚨Preprint alert! 🚨‼️ Excited to have some of my first works as a postdoc, and first corresponding author (!!), on biorxiv! This was a fun side quest of a project marrying a few things I deeply love, development, cilia, and hormones in the pituitary! Happy reading! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is your occasional 🧪 reminder that you test a hypothesis. You don't prove a hypothesis. 🤓

Cilia Alert! So excited to finally have this paper on the CPLANE complex out in @natcomms.nature.com! We show that RSG1 is a human ciliopathy protein and links CPLANE to the transition zone. 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

Just your typical temperate range for a city that's only 7x7 miles

I once asked a scientist whom I respect enormously her advice for a successful career and life in science. Her advice: Leave every place better than you found it. It surprises me that many people would try hard to do the compete opposite … and we would elect them to run the country.

I always like to reference this comparison chart that @rrbehringer.bsky.social made awhile back. Hope it helps put things in perspective! -KT

Unlike eggs & mitotic cells, in adherent interphasic cells the centrosome is NOT positioned by a balance of forces along #microtubules, but by cell shape organization around the #centrosome: rupress.org/jcb/article/... @lblanchoin.bsky.social @manuelthery.bsky.social @gelinmatthieu.bsky.social

Finally out! Brittney Voigt et al show the shared role of Inppl1a expansion of notochord vacuolated cells and also for hypertrophy of chondorcytes and bone lengthening. @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

An honor to have gotten to play a part in this one from the talented Thi Nguyen in the Reiter lab, @reitergroup.bsky.social, hope people enjoy it! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to be headed to Austin to watch an old friend defend her thesis, catch up with old friends, and chat science with old mentors! See yall soon! @neftaliv.bsky.social @jbwallingford.bsky.social @slewzeus.bsky.social

Alex Long, the last postdoc from my lab at Stanford, is starting her own lab, continuing her beautiful work on evolutionary cell biology using chytrid fungi as a model. Check it out! alonglab.org

On the Caltrain into lab this morning. Overhearing some teenagers talk about cuts to science and how it scares them gives me a little hope for the future. ❤️

Five weeks into what has been a constant onslaught on science, working on a paper seems like such a privilege, which many of our recently fired colleagues no longer have. And a rebellious act. But mostly it's self-care. (Give yourself permission to turn off the news for the weekend.)

Elon Musk and his 19-year-olds have now disrupted the approval of medical devices that save lives. Every member of Congress bears a responsibility to stop this right now.

Preprint Alert! Juyeon Hong in the lab has dissected the molecular organization of distal tips of vertebrate motile cilia. She even found a new compartment in the extreme distal tip marked by Ccdc78 and Ccdc33. Give it a read! @biorxiv-cellbio.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Do you want to support the American spirit of discovery? Read this inspiring call from Harold Varmus:

"This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear the most.” PS.- Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Hex

Today is International Day of Women & Girls in Science. Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Her contributions have left an indelible mark on the world of science & health & continue to inspire generations of scientists & innovators. 🔬 #WomenInScience #WomenInSTEM

I am done being sad about anti-DEI measures & am solidly back in the succeeding-by-spite mode. It got me through undergrad, & grad school, & my postdoc & my first asst prof position. Want me to jump through hoops for funding? Fine. I'll jump over the hoops & teach the next gen how to do it too.

A useful tool and a great thing to do... 5calls.org/issue/nih-ns...

“We’re going to save the federal budget 4 billion”- NIH MEANWHILE….. We have truly gone wrong in every sense in US society.

A nice last glimpse of sunset on the way home from lab, grateful for the little things

Love when you get to ✔️ off a to do list item and fill in that figure box with data.

Spent the day meandering the Alma mater with some college friends and partner. Time gives you a sense gratitude that can only come with years passing by. I feel it today for having my scientific start at a place that has had so so many great scientific minds walk its grounds. Berkeley, ❤️❤️❤️

Well, this place got a lot more…active…recently! Hello fellow nerds! Let’s chat science!!

Competition and criticism are the essential core of what we do. So, yes, we must collaborate. Yes, we must pull others up the ladder. Yes, we must live lives of empathy and compassion. We should strive to be kind in our criticism, kind in our rejection. 3/n

Super excited to be guest editing a Journal of Cell Science 🌟special 🌟 issue on our favourite organelles #cilia & #flagella with awesome Lotte Pedersen. Reach out to discuss your ideas- we want to hear from you! 🫵 🗓️Submission deadline: 01/03/2025 Read more: journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/ci...

chaser: "institutions routinely fail to support [women's] career advancement or value their input. For an equitable and intersectional future faculty, definitions of excellence must evolve to better value women’s contributions." 🧪