📢📢Apply now for GRS/GRC on DNA Damage Mutation & Cancer in sunny Ventura CA.

This data is really striking - mRNA vaccine priming ICI response in several tumors

Today I kicked off No Kings Day with hundreds of fired up patriots at NIH who are standing up to this lawless president. Together we said NO to his attacks on public health. NO to his assault on our Constitution. NO to kings in America. And YES to standing up for our democracy.

No Kings! In Pasadena

Registration is open for the 2025 SoCal Genome Stability Symposium. Free registration. All talks by trainees. www.cityofhope.org/genome-stabi...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... saw @lablegube.bsky.social present this last week. Provides important clarity on RNA at chromosomal DSBs. Including rigorously debunking the nascent synthesis idea.

Exciting to have 3 days to focus on this pathway.

It’s been a long time coming! Grateful to all co-authors and colleagues who supported this study, especially @yilanfan.bsky.social 🙌 We have been working on this complex for nearly 3 years together and finally managed to tame it. MRN gave us Many Restless Nights, but we’re More Relaxed Now 😎

L1 insertion intermediates recombine with one another or with DNA breaks to form genome rearrangements https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.17.676864v1

I’m using this icon for my talk at nhej2025.sciencesconf.org Guess the topic

Gearing up to head to Paris for nhej2025.sciencesconf.org but indulging in some LA delicacies before I go.

I’ve met many raw milk is healthy, we already have the cure for cancer, immunizations are dangerous, HIV isn’t the cause of AIDS people. As a scientist I thought it important to counter with respect and logic, and wonder how we are failing at public health. No more. New response - “that’s stupid!”

I am delighted to announce that the UW Department of Biochemistry has opened searches for TWO tenure-track positions. Descriptions and links in the following two posts.

JOB ALERT 🚨 We are hiring TWO principal investigators in cell, molecular, systems, or chemical biology in Toronto, Canada at @sinaihealth.bsky.social. We provide a generous startup, fully funded salary and academic appointment at U of Toronto. www.nature.com/naturecareer... Please repost!

We have openings for a postdoctoral training program on DNA Damage and Oncogenic Signaling. Our past trainees have been very successful. Apply by Aug 31 for full consideration. See link for details. www.imgs-coh.edu/postdoctoral...

this is so wonderful and so critical right now

Advertisements for 2 tenure-track assistant professor positions at Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences: www.nature.com/naturecareer... www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Beyond BRCA status: machine-learning assisted multichannel imaging platform for cell-by-cell analysis of HR competency, enabling patient stratification. “Editor’s Choice” in NAR Cancer. academic.oup.com/narcancer/ar...

Our sister journal, Nucleic Acids Research, has opened a search for an Executive Editor. Great opportunity for mid-career or senior investigator looking to be part of a great team, handle 100-150 papers per year, and attend the annual EE meeting. Details at: academic.oup.com/nar/pages/ex...

I was thinking about this too as I'm a standing member at NIH and review did the DoD. The amount of time and effort for no monetary benefit that is expected of us is unreasonable even at a 10th percentile funding rate. But at 4%.... what are we even asking of scientists?

4% payline demoralizing for reviewers - review 9 grants each taking 3-4hrs (total reviewed by all is 90) flying to DC, a hotel conference room to discuss the top half of grants (45) 15 min each, 3x a year for 4 yrs. Paid $300. 4% = maybe 3/90, 0-1 that you reviewed funded. I couldn’t.

Our new review on how the initiation of DNA replication is coordinated with transcription is now online! Congratulations to @syedshahidmusvi.bsky.social! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

😢 RIP. Still to this day my favorite experiment in molecular biology.

Excited this study is out - we helped with an experiment on Paxx www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Seems a good time to invite Sen Britt to watch an NIH review panel (aka study section) analyze piles of grants over several days to identify the <10% that win funding. Applications that scientists spent months preparing, whose peers spent weeks poring through in advance of review mtg at NIH.

New twist on BRCA1-mediated DNA recombination repair and tumor suppression

Senator Durbin noted that some (I believe Republican Senators) had indicated the US had been doing more than its share of biomedical research and it was time for other countries take a turn. I felt I had to interrupt to respond...

NCI paylines drop to 7%ile for established investigator applications. It’s at 9%ile for Early Stage Investigators. www.cancer.gov/grants-train...

We have a new study out - Distinct functions of PAXX and MRI during chromosomal end joining: iScience www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Delighted to share that the results of my main postdoc project are now published in @nature.com 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Last week I learned that all my NIH awards were terminated due to perceived acts of antisemitism by Harvard. My understanding (which may be incorrect) is that this has been extended to literally every grant to grad students, postdocs and faculty throughout the university.

Excited to share our new paper on Nature - how Ku accommodates Alu expansion in primates by binding to dsRNA, providing a clue for both the high levels of Ku and its essentiality in human cells. Thank @chaolinzhang @hchung03 @LenaSteckelberg More to come www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint from the lab @kaelamakins.bsky.social Genetic interactions between 53BP1-RIF1 and DNA-PKcs for DSB repair outcomes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dr. Carlos Mendez-Dorantes @carlosmendezphd.bsky.social from Dr. Kathleen Burns' lab @danafarber.bsky.social is telling us about the LINE-1 retrotransposon and its causal role in genome instability and chromosomal rearrangements in a wide variety of cancers. 41/

Check out Dr. Mendez-Dorantes' recent preprint for more details on his exciting research! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 42/

Please see our latest paper on the role of EXO1 in meiosis: "EXO1 promotes the meiotic MLH1-MLH3 endonuclease through conserved interactions with MLH1, MSH4 and DNA". Congratulations to both first authors, Megha Roy and Aurore Sanchez and thanks to all our collaborators!

Decided to drop a big op-ed project to help in this effort instead! (Sorry for those heavily invested lol 😬) Super collaborative effort from STUDENTS @ Cornell, Penn, UNC, UCLA, UAB, Hopkins, Georgetown, UCSF, Stanford, Yale, Florida, Notre Dame, Cold Springs Harbor & more @sciforgood.bsky.social

I am a professor at Columbia University. All of the student NIH training grants have been canceled and now there are reports that ALL funding will be frozen. Why are Universities not banding together and speaking out publicly and forcibly about governmental attacks on biomedical research?

I ❤️ this new paper on RAD52 at replication forks, just published @nature.com. Cryo-EM reveals a unique double-ring structure that blocks reversal of replication forks. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BREAKING: We're suing the National Institutes of Health over their politically-motivated purge of research grants. This is an unlawful attack on scientific progress that puts lives at risk.

We polled Nature readers to ask if they were thinking of leaving the US for jobs abroad. Three-quarters of them (who said they were US-based scientists) said yes. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Really excited to share my co-first author paper with @cejkalab.bsky.social looking at how/which nucleases are involved in resecting ssDNA gaps generated by PARPi! Can’t wait to talk about our work at the DNA Replication Gaps, Cancer and Disease meeting in South Korea next month!

“The result is going to be the systematic removal of women and people of color from the act of research. At the end of this, we’re going to end up with an academy that is more white, more wealthy, more male, more cisgender, and it’s going to reinforce the same problem.”

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/o...

Congratulations to @nebanovich.bsky.social, his team and collaborators on earning the cover of @nature.com Genetics 🧬 🫁 👏

“You don’t take these jobs that pay worse and have insane hours and are really stressful unless you care about helping others and taking our love for science and translating that into something that can improve people’s lives.”

🚨🧪 Are you a researcher affected by the recent cancellation of federal grants and contracts at Columbia University? I'm working on a story for @Nature.com. If you want to chat, your identity will be kept private. Signal: humbertobasilio.24 Email: [email protected] Repost please!

Today! See you there Sacramento👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻