📢 Our Dept. of Systems Biology at Columbia University has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the broad area of quantitative biology. Come join our awesome department in NYC! Please circulate. apply.interfolio.com/177622 Suggested deadline: 12/15/2025. @columbiasysbio.bsky.social

Woop another case of cross-kingdom RNA trafficking saves the day 🦠🧬🌱

Wow, Harris Wang et al. achieve a milestone work in microbiome engineering! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I stumbled upon this remarkable organism called Deinococcus radiodurans at the American Museum of Natural History. They are bacteria that can survive 1000 times more ionizing radiation than other organisms. Proposed secret of their success? Donut-shaped genome! 🍩🧬 www.nature.com/articles/nrm...

I think deep learning is a suitable technique to take a crack at synthetic riboswitch design. RNA is complex enough that humans have hard time designing riboswitches let alone predicting/generating 3D structures. I am sure someone is working on them, and I can't wait to use! 🧬

When I saw this, I thought of Ron Milo at Weizmann who co-authored "Cell Biology by the Numbers" with Rob Phillips at Caltech. Of course, it is based on work from the Milo lab 😂 "We love to understand and explain the world using numbers as our sixth sense." -Milo Lab www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

@ellenkuwana.bsky.social gave a fantastic seminar on "AI tools for crafting scientific materials" yesterday! My biggest takeaways were non-AI tools (subtitle of the seminar was "Why to avoid GenAI and what to use instead"): 1. books.google.com/ngrams 2. losethevery.com 3. powerthesaurus.org 1/5

It's always amazing and humbling to learn that there is so much we don't know, and scientists work hard to discover these secrets of nature. For example, I didn't realize that we haven't figured out how bacteria separate their genomic DNA when dividing into two daughter cells! Check out this work 🧬👀

Very well done story on 60 Minutes about the harms of grant terminations and freezes at Harvard with Joan Brugge, Don Engbar, David Liu, and a very compelling young cancer patient, now cured with Liu's technology. Transcript and video here www.cbsnews.com/news/researc...

Am I the only one who feels that the examples of the Gartner hype cycle have become a lot more prominent these days?

I just started listening to @oliverbogler.bsky.social's new podcast about "stories of scientists whose paths deviate from the planned" (does it ever not deviate? 😂), and man... the first story from Dr. Na Zhao hit me hard 🫠 Good luck everyone on the faculty job market... 🍀 youtu.be/9Geinv5p9Xo?...

Thanks @seancj.bsky.social for pointing out that the article is behind the paywall... 🤦‍♂️ Here is my informal summary: -Scientists got cocky thinking "everyone should know the value of science." -Lack of science advocacy created public distrust. -Scientists need to value and reward outreach effort.

Strain displacement in microbiomes via ecological competition Cool @natmicrobiol.nature.com publication by @erikbakkeren.bsky.social @vit-pi.bsky.social @meganleeny.bsky.social @microscape.bsky.social & Kevin Foster www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's short so check it out! "We propose a new model in which public communication and advocacy are considered as essential to our mission as rigor and reproducibility — critical not only for safeguarding science, but also for ensuring that its benefits reach all segments of the societies we serve."

Microbial pirates!! 🧬🦠🏴‍☠️ "Tail piracy" allows these mobile elements sleeping in the bacterial chromosome to "hitchhike" into many different species of bacteria. Sneaky smart! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Absolutely bonkers! DNA origami shell that assembles on lipid membrane surface and rip out (or in) a membrane vesicle 🧬🦠🤯 Check this super cool work from the @hendrikdietz.bsky.social lab, and let's give a round of applause to Michael Pinner. 👏👏👏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NYT obituary of Jim Watson. A long and fairly balanced view of a complicated man who participated in one of the greatest discoveries in biology. [Gift Link] www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/s...

Absolutely this! 👇

8 high level positions at NIH posted including 6 institute director positions (NIMH, NIGMS, NICHD, NIDCR, NHGRI, NLM). Only open for 2 weeks (applications due November 21). Application materials include a) CV b) vision statement c) a photocopy of doctoral degree. hr.nih.gov/careers/open...

Grateful to everyone who joined our Hill visits this week advocating for stronger support of biomedical research. Your efforts to champion increased NIH funding help drive discovery and improve lives. #SITContheHill @immunegirl.bsky.social @cgtgaithersburg.bsky.social @doctweettweet.bsky.social 🧪

Humanity needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Marie Curie 7 Nov 1867🎂 #ScienceSky🔬

I love molecular machines so much 🧬

Happy #WomenInPhysics Day! Marie Curie won TWO Nobel prizes, one in physics (1903) and the other in chemistry (1911). She was the first person to ever achieve this feat in addition to being the first woman to win a Nobel prize. 🐐

I recently finished the book, Empire of AI, by @karenhao.bsky.social, and it was terrifyingly interesting and informative. The book is sort of a biography about OpenAI (technography?). It was exciting, ominous, sad, infuriating, hopeful... I couldn't help myself but to think of Pandora's box.

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

UniProt is changing its reference proteomes resource. Reference proteomes will remain in UniProtKB, while others will move to UniParc. Read more about these changes: www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/u... 🧬 🖥️ Uniprot is a collaboration between EMBL-EBI, @sib.swiss & the Protein Information Resource.

I always loved the reconfigurable DNA origami using "antijunctions" via structural information relay first described by the Yonggang Ke's group at Emory/Georgia Tech. The Tinnefeld lab at LMU in collaboration with the Ke lab has now extended this platform to perform serial computing on 2D surface!🧬🤖

For folks in NYC this Friday: actionnetwork.org/events/nyc-n...

Synthetic Cells By The Numbers doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

I know it feels very gloomy (ask me how I am doing in the faculty job market this year), and it's times like these we need hope more than ever. I also want to thank everyone for sharing their stories! @daniellafodera.bsky.social @annadarling.bsky.social youtu.be/yLvO070E_dI?...

"Pimp My DNA Origami" (my interpretation of @ameliehj.bsky.social's description of this work) 🧬💎🚗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I wouldn't want to lose a job under any circumstances. I would feel pissed if I were fired illegally while doing my job properly. open.substack.com/pub/sciencea... 1/2

The NIH has insisted there are no banned words But, an analysis by @jeremymberg.bsky.social found over 700 hundred grants changed their titles from '24 to '25 Some see it as a small price to pay to keep their grant, but others are worried about what comes next www.statnews.com/2025/10/29/n...

New story up on the non-existent banned words from NIH grants (based on my grant title, word cloud analysis) www.statnews.com/2025/10/29/n... 1/3

I do love the concept of filamentous phages as agents for sharing economy and cell-to-cell communication! 🧬🦠 www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Have you heard of optical nanocircuit? It's analogous to RLC circuit that picks up radio signal, but this nanocircuit picks up and focuses light like a nano-magnifying glass useful for sensing molecules and building quantum computers. See the work from Seungwoo Lee's lab! 🧬🔍 arxiv.org/abs/2508.05440

I recently pushed an update to the #oxDNA to PDB converter which makes the backmapped structures work out-of-the-box with all-atom simulation tools (the previous version didn't correctly remove the phosphate from the 5' end). Here's a 2-minute demo on how to prepare an oxDNA structure for GROMACS! 🧬

No one wants to do a postdoc anymore, they all want to rob the Louvre

Tariffs can't be that great if Ronald Reagan was against it and instead promoted free and fair trade, right? "[T]ariffs or trade barriers and restrictions of any kind are steps that I am loath to take. [...] [O]ver the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer."

It turns out that mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 also help cancer patients who are getting immunotherapy that use the natural immune system to clear tumors. mRNA vaccine is like the giving tree 🧬🎁🌳

Fred Hutch's Human Biology Division is recruiting an Assistant or Associate Professor to lead a laboratory-based research program focused on the biological mechanisms of solid tumor cancers and their clinical translation. Learn more and apply: https://apply.interfolio.com/174007

We are responsible for protecting lives of ourselves, our loved ones, and our community. www.statnews.com/2025/10/22/a...

"Well-established researchers sometimes say that they built successful careers with limited attention from their supervisors, and note that if they could do this, the present generation should be able to do the same." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Spending more than 60 hours a week on their PhD correlates inversely with satisfaction." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Karl Leif Bates presented a workshop on "Virtual Science Communication & Public Engagement" through @aimbe-official.bsky.social yesterday and said that @erictopol.bsky.social is a science communication warrior (not Karl's words but my understanding). I guess I am a SciComm fledgling 🐥🧬

I want to use AI to do things that humans can't. @sendhil.bsky.social explains why we should consider this path more rigorously for practical reasons like more jobs, less energy usage, and not stealing from human artists, writers, and creators. 🧠 🚲 www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZW8...

Hey @odedrechavi.bsky.social, Springer Nature is trying to scoop you!

Holy ****!! In hindsight, it is so obvious why this virus looks like a bullet. I remember looking at the cartoon depiction of HIV for the first time and thinking "why the hell does it look like that?" Crazy biology 🦠🧬

Wow, this DNA origami shell is >10 µm in diameter! The @simmellab.bsky.social built upon their previous work on "Dipids" (DNA origami subunit that acts "like" membrane lipid monomer) to accomplish this feat, using lipid vesicle as a template. 🧬🟢 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It's nutty that we are at this stage of protein engineering. It's essentially DNA strand displacement but at a protein level, right? (says a DNA nanotech guy 🧬🤯) 👏👏👏 @adambroerman.bsky.social @mlichtenstein.bsky.social @flopraetorius.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...