A new email to Director Bhattacharya this morning. 1/n

"Head down focus on the science" folks: here is one super easy thing you can do today.

An email to Director Bhattacharya to start the day 1/6

Super cool work from our institute!

Geometry first: how positional cues dictate fate in bilayered epithelia thenode.biologists.com/geometry-fir...

Top-Down Individual Ion Mass Spectrometry Reveals 85-110 kDa Catenin Phospho-Proteoforms Regulated by Actomyosin Contractility https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.06.674621v1

I'm more than a little excited about this interstellar visitor 🧪 The images keep getting better and the insights deeper PS this is just some of the science funded by the NSF that is threatened by devastating budget cuts--speak up and call Congress. www.sci.news/astronomy/in...

We had #four interdisciplinary teams, integrating dev-bio, evolution, tissue mechanics, and biophysical modeling, all going full throttle to understand the #CF. Still, it took more than 7 years to publish two papers back-to-back (10/12) www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

α-catenin phosphorylation is actomyosin-sensitive and required for epithelial barrier functions through Afadin https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.21.671625v1

NIH progress on new R01s in FY 2025 drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/18/n...

Indirect cost fun facts (from FY2024) 3 of the top 5 institutions in terms of negotiated indirect rates are pediatric hospitals. The University of Kansas Medical Center had a higher negotiated indirect rate that Stanford.

This thread below is criminally under-liked and under-shared! Young #Drosophila researchers (PhDs, postdocs, and early-career Drosophilists): fill out the survey by Sept 1st to get matched with a mentor who can support you with your career. Established Drosophilists, like/share Shefali's Thread ;)

bioRxiv bat signal going up. We have a big backlog of submissions. If any affiliates have time to do some screening, we (and all the authors) would be immensely grateful! 🙏

Post Sunday morning shows Bhattacharya email...

To better treat cancer, we need to understand its underlying biology. Despite decades of research, some fundamental questions remain unanswered. One is why certain key tumor suppressor or oncogenes lead to cancer predominantly in single tissue: e.g. Rb in the retina, or APC in the colon 1/n 🧪

Getting closer to the “if proteins could talk…” moment of biochemistry

New preprint. ATF4 activation is thought to lead to longer lifespans. However, our study shows that suppression rather than activation extends lifespan in the fly. New Qs: how we can target ATF4 or its downstream targets to gain targeted longevity benefits. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congratulations to @stefanosala89.bsky.social , with help from @shreya-c.bsky.social al‬ on the optogenetic experiments, for the awesome story! Read the full preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and thanks for listening!

Excited to be starting my research group as a tenure track Presidential Young Professor at the Mechanobiology Institute @mbisg.bsky.social, and the Dept of Physiology at @nusingapore.bsky.social in the fall! More about our work on vascular mechanobiology in health & disease mechano-medicine-lab.com

SARCOMERES divide! Mechanism how muscles grow while contracting - daughter sarcomeres appear everywhere. Seen live, registered on our cover. Pioneered by @clementrodier.bsky.social @friedrich-group.bsky.social Ian Estabrook @ibdm.bsky.social $ by @hfspo.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share our paper on deciphering the design & control principles of tissue scaling w/ Luisa Arispe! Amazing work by co-first authors Danielle Pi and Jonas Braun. We show *differentiated* endothelial cell proliferate in waves with ultrafast cell cycle time of ~5h www.cell.com/cell-systems...

I am so grateful to @hypothesisfund.bsky.social for this honor. I am excited about the work we will be doing to decode the decisions that cells make: Should they stay or should they go? Phenomenal to be chosen alongside @drstarbird.bsky.social! 🤩 #DevBio #CellBio #NeuralCrest

The story describes the history of Northwestern, some of its biggest accomplishments, and the funding freeze around the pretext of antisemitism. It describes how Northwestern has tried to keep its research programs going, even without being given information of what is happening or why. 2/n

www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... How Trump Blew Up Northwestern’s Business Model - WSJ

A lot is going on but one of my grad school peeps who is still in Seattle sent me this snap from The Allen Institute and now it’s raining on my face. 🥹

In case you needed a smile this Tuesday: 10-month-old baby KJ, who received a bespoke gene-editing therapy after a six month scientific sprint - "graduated" from the hospital @childrensphila.bsky.social today and went HOME! YAY SCIENCE! Here's his story: wapo.st/451ZQjT

Quote Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence. Louis Pasteur

A new #ScienceSignaling study interrogates crosstalk between mechanical and biochemical signals in epithelial cells, illustrating how mechanical stretching activates a kinase that regulates cell growth, migration, and differentiation.

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

Another reminder to keep sciencing!!!

Let's talk about a party—where drugs don't hit the dance floor but finely tune #EpithelialMechanics by hitting actomyosin cortex! 🧬💊 Here's our guide to doing drugs 🧵

It's a demoralizing time to be a US scientist but that is part of their strategy. My friend Jeff Dangl just emailed our faculty reminding us that NSF and NIH grant review panels are still being held and staff there want us to keep submitting. Stay engaged and keep fighting! 1/n

Currently at the GRC on Fibronectin, Integrins & Related Molecules in Barga, Italy. Sad to see so little US participation, and particularly to see speakers cancel. Current US Government policy is harming scientific progress and hopefully it will be reversed.

The EU recognizes the critical moment for science. The US must, too. “We are choosing to be the continent where universities are pillars of our societies and our way of life…where innovation serves humanity, where global talent is welcomed.” ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Ending a program that literally pays students salaries with four days notice is emblematic of the sadistic and joyful cruelty of the approach of the Trump/Musk fanatics. The same thing happened earlier this spring to RISE, MARC and PREP, leaving students high and dry 4/n

"If NIH budget money, designated by Congress to be spent on medical cures, doesn’t go out over the next few months, all US scientists are looking at budget cuts that will not just take away cures but harm local economies." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...

NSF Funding supports PEOPLE - our two terminated grants supported 6 postdocs, two program managers directly…and fiscal officers, HR folks, contracts experts indirectly…plus multiple communities who we have to scramble to support continuing work - dozens of people all told, left in the cold

1/14 “Epithelial” & “Mesenchymal” aren’t binary categories—they form a spectrum, or better yet, a multidimensional space. This becomes especially clear in collective cell migration, which often depends on a finely tuned degree of “mesenchymal-ness”. #cellbio #devbio #cellmigration

Northwestern just announced that the university will meet the funding needs of any research that is being impacted by stop orders. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO! #edusky #academicsky wgntv.com/evanston/nor...

Striking new study from @archaeon-alex.bsky.social's lab just out in @science.org on multicellular development induced by compression in Archaea: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is a great piece on how acting NIH Director Matthew Memoli and his MAGA cronies at HHS are twisting the story on indirect costs. @insidehighered.com www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Bluetorial: Women, courage, and leadership What follows will include some generalizations based on population averages of what I have experienced over the course of my career. There are, of course, exceptions in every group who are substantially more to one extreme or the other.

Bruce Alberts: The world badly needs you in whatever way you chose to use your scientific expertise in the future – research, teaching, policy, communications, administration, advocacy or just spreading rational thinking in a world threatened by magical thinking. @standupforscience.bsky.social‬

#ProudBlue #BlueSkyResistance I broke this video up into two parts because it’s too long to post as one video. This creator, Jonzie703, on IG is sounding the alarm about science & research in the health arena. The pure negligence is astonishing. We all must push back against this.

"Pan-cytoskeletonist, indeed!" And wonderful @tgsatnu.bsky.social Driskill Graduate School Alum!

It's been a whirlwind of a month for me, but I want to take a moment to say I am so excited for this paper to be out! If you are interested in how the lung responds to injury and how it regenerates (or doesn't...) please go take a look! tinyurl.com/4r4zttkv

“I don't think we have two years to plan and fight back. I think we have months.” Senator Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator, Connecticut

I spent time today talking to local reps who sell equipment and supplies to my NIH-funded lab. They need to know how the NIH works and what the new changes mean for my ability to PAY THEM. Remember, scientists salaries are only small part of the economic impact of science. 1/3