Turns out even when your institution has an agreement with Springer Nature that covers gold OA publication fees, they can just decide not to honor that agreement and refuse to make your paper available unless you pay up! No more reviewing for or submitting to GeroScience for me @springernature.com

Our NIAAA funded Post-DoctT32 has received its NoA (non competing renewal). Are you looking for a post-doc and interested in joining our amazing center? If so, reach out! Here is a convenient form that you can use to upload CV and a cover letter! unc.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

NIH is WAY under schedule in obligating its external research funding. Halfway through the fiscal year they're only at 15%! #AcademicSky #ResearchSky www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Untangling mechanisms underlying #CancerDrugResistance www.nature.com/articles/s41... @jess_ljx @arjunraj.bsky.social #Cancer #DrugResistance #TranslationalScience

Here is the "effective payline" for each institute, estimated (by Claude) as the percentile where one can expect 80% probability of funding from a logistic regression fit. The effective payline has gone from a historic ~12% to 6% in 2025.

Cool!!

Now that we're settled at @unc-cbp.bsky.social I'm excited to share the lab's latest preprint tinyurl.com/y8755f2n From 1st author Kendall Kanakanui (@kkanak.bsky.social an @emory-gmb.bsky.social student) it represents a years-long effort to define heterogeneity among biliary epithelial cells (BECs)

Happy International Day of Women & Girls in Science! Today & everyday I am grateful for the opportunity to work alongside & learn from this talented group of women scientists. Funded by grants from the NIH, this team is working to understand how the gut microbiome affects our digestive health.

In our new poll with the Boston Globe of NIH funded scientists in Mass ... - 72% say they have delayed or cancelled projects - 66% reduced research scope - 56% paused experiments or students. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/09/m...

The beauty of the kidney arterial tree for this #FluorescenceFriday. Evans Blue dye labels the vasculature. Image courtesy of postdoc Sarah McLarnon.

My department at Washington State University is recruiting an Assistant or Associate Professor in vector-borne disease 🕷️🦟🦠 Full job description is linked below. Come join us on the Palouse!

Wiley: "We’re supporting responsible research assessment practices" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1520... Also Wiley: "Prove that your article is a good fit for this journal 😉😉😉😉😉 by citing at least two of our articles in your manuscript before we will even consider reviewing it" 🤡

I heard a lot of similar stories last year, and more this year. Lots of 4th rotations. This is devastating for the future of science. We reject many superb applicants to PhD programs every year, because spots are limited. Now we struggle to find labs for admitted students.

Follow up to Doug Hanahan’s visionary article about the stages of cancer development from back in the 1990s www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

If you, as a scientist, cannot be bothered to engage in the intellectual work of science, please quit your job and leave it to someone with skill and integrity.

Whoa…interesting

The constant succession of administrative crises undermining science in the US is exhausting.

From Meghan Mott on LinkedIn 1/2

The language on multiyear funding (MYF) is ineffective. Final bill anchors MYF to 2025 instead of 2024. This means MYF will likely continue at the same rate we saw last year, where NCI's payline from ~10% to 4%. This is incredibly harmful to the US research workforce - especially early career.

FINALLY out in AJPath - the second manuscript from @hannahhrncir.bsky.social’s PhD at Emory! Hannah developed a novel pipeline for quantitative 3D light sheet microscopy of bile ducts that will hopefully be a great resource to the community. ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S000...

HUGE problem!

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I still think if you have a completed story you believe is ready to submit then there is no disadvantage to pre-printing. We always pre-print first and then decide where to submit. As stressed above this in effect mitigates ‘scooping’. Revision requests in every field have got out of control.

When I was the DGS of an umbrella-type PhD program, I worked to put in a rule that PhD students needed a minimum of one 1st-author research paper to graduate. The main intent was to protect students from advisors that were slackers about publishing. No 1st-author pubs really hurts students. 1/3

If you are submitting an NIH grant in February, you will be required to use SciENcv to prepare you biosketch. IT IS MUCH WORSE THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. Set aside *at least* 4 hours just to transfer an existing an biosketch into SciENcv.

The suitability of different AAV capsids for gene therapy is assessed in human livers go.nature.com/3PWpD4o rdcu.be/eUK3m

Can’t wait for this one!

In vivo gene editing of human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells using envelope-engineered virus-like particles - @uclpophealthsci.bsky.social go.nature.com/4a39S6X

Great question! 1) First and foremost, we evaluate a candidate based on the departmental guidelines and expectations provided. We don't hold the candidate to arbitrary standards, or even to those of our own institution unless asked to do so. We assess the materials against the guidelines provided.

🚨 NIH F31 fellowship Sponsor❓- prior versions of the Sponsor document, there was a table of sponsor's & co-sponsor active or pending awards but this section is gone - should I beef up this area in my sponsor biosketch? Or am I missing where to include this information? Do we do a other support doc?

Me leaving the lab after seeing bands the right size in my colony PCR gel

Thats 216 biomedical PhD students for their whole degree, or 140 2 year R21 grants, or 30 5 year R01 grants, or one fired football coach...

A tragedy for America tech and biotech. “Statutory authority for SBIR/STTR lapsed on September 30, 2025, so agencies cannot issue new SBIR/STTR awards or NOFOs until Congress passes an extension or broader reauthorization.” www.sbir.gov/node

A toxin-secreting gut bacterium may fuel ulcerative colitis by killing protective immune cells that maintain intestinal homeostasis, according to a new study in Science. The findings suggest potential for new treatment strategies. https://scim.ag/4rjvjqA

Wait this is kind of wild…so there’s a chance that some applications will be funded but ND?

You are correct. In the past, it was okay to say that the application was funded because it received a 4th percentile and the payline was the 10th percentile. Now additional justification must be provided. But, in the past, if a 4th %ile app was not funded, documentation was required. Now, nothing

UNC's Center for Molecular Medicine has up to three open-rank positions for faculty conducting research with relevance to gene therapy, including: novel iPSC and animal models of disease and basic cell biology. Join us in beautiful Chapel Hill! Deadline 1/31/26: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/309...

Congratulations to Dr. Nic Janto, who defended his PhD in the GMB Program at Emory earlier this week! Nic is headed off to postdoc with Edan Foley at The University of Bath. It’s the end of an era for the lab, but very excited to follow Nic’s journey into zebrafish models of intestinal biology! 🐟

PSA for people with NIH grant periods starting January 1st (including most NIGMS MIRAs): your RPPR is due Saturday, but they haven’t sent out the usual automated reminders, presumably due to the shutdown

Amen to this! I just reviewed a revised manuscript where the rebuttal was 40-50 pages long. We’ve got to let go of this collective delusion that any individual paper must be and is “the complete story”.

wait, wait, what 😱 Direct targeting and regulation of RNA polymerase II by cell signaling kinases in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

In @elife.bsky.social: Sox9 prevents retinal degeneration and is required for limbal stem cell differentiation in the adult mouse eye doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

This is interesting, surprising, and I’m having a hard time getting my head around it…

#microsky #mevosky The UNC Chapel Hill Biology Department is hiring 2 Teaching Assistant/Associate Professors with expertise from any area of biology. Individuals with expertise in microbiology are particularly encouraged to apply. Read more and apply at unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

If you are asking about the mechanics of submitting a NIH grant, as far as I can tell (having put one in during the shutdown) these are accepted and go into Recent/Pending esubmissions as usual. I assume (ymmv) that these will be stuck there in "pending verification" until the gov opens up again.

Number I heard was 164 canceled by end of this week, approximately 12000 applications.

Sure - folks will argue any tool that makes this easier is an improvement. But I'd argue it does not make it easier. It emphasizes the armchair science part and diminishes the actual experimental work. Without which the armchair part doesn't have any value. YMMV.

We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3