PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity. But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing? PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

📣First paper from the lab is out in @science.org‬! 📣https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu3461 It’s well known that HLA shapes the TCR repertoire — but how does this change under immune checkpoint blockade (ICB)?

Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:

"The diminution and marginalization of science are thus central parts of the erosion of democracy itself." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

amazing q&a with paul krugman

No evidence for neutralizing IL1RN autoantibodies in our cohorts of MIS-C, SARS-CoV2 pneumonia or vaccine-induced myocarditis. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Great work by Anish Behere in Nils Landegren lab, Uppsala university

Black people who are diagnosed with melanoma are about five times as likely as White people to die within five years. Find out how and where to look for the disease.

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 h\t @gmeric.bsky.social

Delighted that our work describing a potential novel treatment approach for B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia is published today in @natcomms.nature.com‬. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to share our preprint led by M. Levin @skoyama.bsky.social J. Woerner & with S. Damrauer assessing genome-wide pleiotropy of >1,000 clinical traits across ~1.7M individuals with nearly 30K locus-trait associations! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Delighted to have our work on Polygenic Modifiers of #TelomereBiologyDisorders, led by Michael Poeschla, @sashagusevposts.bsky.social, @mitchiela.bsky.social, @sharonsavage.bsky.social, @tummalalab.bsky.social, + co, published in @jclinical-invest.bsky.social today: www.jci.org/articles/vie...

📣📣 Thrilled to see this cool work finally out in the wild! "Genome-wide analyses of variance in blood cell phenotypes provide new insights into complex trait biology & prediction" www.nature.com/articles/s41... Loads of cool findings including MR for alcohol usage -> increased variance in BC traits

The amount of single use plastic passing through my house is insane. It's mostly food. I don't know how we all got used to this, and fighting it alone seems pointless. We fritter the years away, in politics world, on just getting by. I'd love to see big energetic policy moves to fix big things well.

'Of course Britain could restrict international student numbers. We could halve the number, and make ourselves £10bn poorer every year, concentrated in Labour held seats.' timleunig.substack.com/p/internatio...

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n

I could go on with more examples but instead here’s a message to take home. If you’re curious how your genome helps make you unique, don’t expect neat & tidy answers. Indeed, the richness of this tapestry is one of the reasons why human genetics is such a dynamic & exciting field of science. 11/n 🧬🧪

To celebrate our 30th anniversary, Nature Medicine has commissioned 'Turning points' articles, in which researchers discuss the impact of their scientific discovery that was published around 30 yrs ago. Read this one: PD-L1 and the dawn of modern cancer immunotherapy www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just passing along some friendly advice on how to approach potential changes to the Australian health care system @drruthmitchell.bsky.social

40 Years ago Carl Sagan knew about Climate change and he was so aware of it's impact on Nature more than us we do right now.

I've commented on this before. There's been a lot of interest in the rising incidence of colo-rectal cancer in young adults in many countries. This figure is a plot of incidence and mortality rates in England over time relative to a baseline rate in 1974. I last showed it with data to 2021. 1/n

... cause that became more prevalent and is now waning. Infection seems to be a good candidate for something that changes over time in this way. Colibactin producing E Coli one possibility. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40267983/ 3/3

To restore the gut microbiome after antibiotics, the right diet (rich in carbohydrates, low in fat) was a better approach than fecal microbial transplants (in the experimental model) www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cool story! Fun fact: The original SARS-CoV-2 strain was uncovered using metagenomics in Jan 2020 (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) which was pivotal for vaccine development efforts. Metagenomics has arguably saved many millions of lives already.

New paper claxon! 📢 In this paper we draw on care ethics to show how moral decision making around healthcare's environmental impact occurs in the context of relationships with others, not simply via top-down principles commonly discussed in the theoretical space. More info/thoughts in thread👇

www.theguardian.com/society/2025... Obligatory daily coffee/alcohol good effects story. Here it's champagne. No possible confounder then. @theguardian.com covering themselves in glory with prominent coverage naturally!

www.nature.com/articles/s41... 'Altogether, our study underscores the crucial role of T-bet+ CD8+ T cells in driving ICI responses and offers strategies to overcome the current therapeutic bottleneck of poor ICI efficacy in MSS gastric cancer'

Review: Epstein–Barr virus pathogenesis and emerging control strategies www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super to work with Oriol Pich, Elsa Bernard Maria Zagorulya, @PapaemmanuilLab exploring how the age related process CHIP might impact tumour biology; incredible team. Thank you to all our funders, CRUK, Crick, BCRF, Rosetrees Trust, Mark Foundation+ Royal Society www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Why you should know your viral exposure status (i.e CMV) if you're going to undergo immunotherapy for cancer (but almost no one knows) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New @jama.com Another new report (natural experiment) shows the link of a vaccine vs shingles to less dementia jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... this is the 3rd natural experiment to show the effect

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Proud of my group and collaborators for this work published today in Nature Medicine. We find Cytomegalovirus, which has a profound impact on T cell immunity, is associated with distinct clinical outcomes in patients receiving checkpoint immunotherapy for melanoma.

NEW from the Fairfax Lab (@bpfairfax.bsky.social): 🧪

The cost of Trump’s attack on American science Researchers fear the US is dismantling its post-war model of publicly funding innovation to tackle disease, boost the economy - and track existential threats. Register to read free: www.ft.com/register www.ft.com/content/67fd... @financialtimes.com

#newPI and time is running. It has already been a month since I officially joined the University of Warwick as Assistant Professor. I am excited to announce and build the Fluorescence and Membrane Dynamics (FMD) Lab: warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/med/...

A new #ScienceImmunology study in mice suggests that bacterial skin infections can imprint eosinophils with innate immune memory and enhance allergic inflammation in the lungs.

The strategy behind one of the most successful labs in the world www.nature.com/articles/d41... Dissecting the culture & management of MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology…a model thats been widely replicated with hot/cold results. The secret sauce? Simply may be a critical mass of brilliant people

Once widespread, smoking is now uncommon in Great Britain 🧵

If we take regional averages, genes associated with education predict height better than genes associated with height. Why? On a regional level, education-associated genes pick up environmental differences between richer and poorer neighborhoods 🧬💰 From www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Carl Sagan explains how the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was round and calculated its circumference over 2,000 years ago.

#WorldLiverDay We live with a huge & neglected burden of disease from viral #hepatitis. We have the tools for prevention, diagnosis & treatment... now we must fight to keep using them. @crick.ac.uk @ahri-news.bsky.social @cnwlnhs.bsky.social @uclhresearch.bsky.social #CDC #PEPFAR #NoHep #HBV 🧪🌍

Harvard University: “We have informed the [Trump Administration] through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 view.hu.harvard.edu?qs=351b45ebf...

Why should I be bothered reading something no one could be bothered writing?

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

📰 Check out our March #NatureMedicine editorial! I'm so proud to be an editor at this journal. "We will continue to work with all authors to preserve the integrity of scientific research in our pages in these turbulent times." www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natureportfolio.nature.com #MedSky

Congratulations Ying-Han Chen and Kim Zaldana for showing how B cells are altered when lab mice 🐭 are released outdoors! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Here’s some context for the paper followed by how gov’t 💰 + other sources combine to make these types of studies possible 1/n

The 5G trial, developed by Dr Richard Mair & Dr Juanita Lopez is testing therapies proven in other cancers to treat glioblastoma, offering more options to UK patients. Learn more ➡️ zurl.co/NNIsK @icr.ac.uk @cancerresearchuk.org @minderoo.bsky.social

For International Women's Day tomorrow, we asked some of our female scientists, including @agoriely.bsky.social & @sumanasharma.bsky.social, to reflect on why this day is so important, the barriers and biases women can face in their careers, and which women have inspired them. #IWD2025

The loss of TBK1, or both TBK1 and the related kinase IKKε, results in uncontrolled cell death–driven inflammation. We show that TBK1/IKKε prevent premature cell death by limiting the activity of multiple death pathways in myeloid cells. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Brilliant new paper from Jie Yang @jieyang437.bsky.social and Rahul Roychoudhuri @roychoudhurilab.bsky.social linking aspirin to immune-mediated prevention of cancer metastasis. www.nature.com/articles/s41...