Nice day for a stroll! 70 and clear. Not bad for November.

Nucleosome socks from the 5th biannual @epicypher.bsky.social meeting! I have had the (perhaps dubious) honor of giving the final talk at last four. Great meeting as usual. Thanks to Michael and the gang for putting it together.

Raise a glass for Rosalind Franklin tonight and honor her memory and scientific contributions

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...

In case anyone is wondering if Watson was really THAT bad, @lpachter.bsky.social compiled a list of quotes that are absolutely not for the faint of heart. liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/j...

Vivid reminder that HHS sec is not an MD.

Absolutely, this. I did not intend to bury the lede in my data nerdiness.

Sad news indeed. I only knew Zara at ‘smile, wave and say hi’ level, but she always smiled, waved and said hi and always I did the same.

Pitt faculty taking a stand against the higher education "compact" www.wesa.fm/identity-com... I know of a few other news stories about similar faculty action. Please share them here.

From Senate hearing on Wednesday www.medpagetoday.com/washington-w...

Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term www.gov.uk/government/p...

Good to see Nature recognize fundamental research. Honestly, it’s the only kind that has ever floated my boat. Everything else just seems boring to me and I would rather live an interesting life. And, of course, as argued in the piece, it has an outsized impact.

Interesting to see new papers connecting Pol II stalling to heterochromatin formation. www.cell.com/molecular-ce... Reminiscent of our work in S. pombe: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Trouble in paradise...

Nice day for a stroll—saw some local coyotes.

R.I.P Hamilton Smith, 1978 Nobel Laureate for the discovery of type II restriction-modification systems (HindII).

Another former UCSF Tetrad program student does good!

After a long break from social media, I’m finally on Bluesky and have a preprint alert from my lab! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

For a second, I thought this was about the complement system.

In my dealings with administrative types I am sometimes reminded that some do not understand how hard it is to be a scientist, especially the level of uncertainty we cope with and responsibility we shoulder in the service of discovery. (Yes, today was one of those day).

Check out our new publication, a collaboration with Giovanni Luchetti and Vishva Dixit @ Genentech. We show that the E.coli effector NleL inhibits intestinal epithelial cell extrusion after #inflammasome activation via degrading the kinases ROCK1 and 2!! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Explainer 1/8

Amazing!! Congrats to the team for uncovering this link We are all phages … Regular reminder to the “The frustrated gene” article from @hitenmadhani.bsky.social

white house has joined bluesky click here to block all official us government accounts instantly bsky.app/profile/did:...

A university that signs the “compact” is one that acknowledges its own inability to compete and succeed based talent and merit. It would signal insecurity and mediocrity to current and future students and faculty. Say no. Recruit the best people, protect their freedom and support their hard work.

VERY TROUBLING NEWS REGARDING NIH INSTITUTE DIRECTORS A new appointment for NIEHS 1/3

‘Economics Nobel prize won by researchers who showed how science boosts growth’ by @philipcball.bsky.social in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Faculty time is free." -Every administrator everywhere.

Perfect day for a ride!

For those who don’t know: Herb isolated EcoRI, invented recombinant DNA and founded Genentech. Mike discovered cancer genes with Harold Varmus, a Nobel prize winning discovery. Rutter cloned insulin, developed the Hep B vaccine, and isolated Hep C, the latter two at Chiron, his biotech.

I’m a mom. I’m a scientist. I’m an activist. I’m not going to stand by while unqualified, Quack, fringe-ass conspiracy theorists make decisions about my family’s health that is going to kill people. Join me outside of HHS on 10/16 at 3pm. @standupforscience.bsky.social

Today was UCSF’s celebration of life for Bill Rutter who built our Department. I had the good fortune of having dinner with both Herb Boyer and Mike Bishop—two major figures in our institution’s history (and the history of science). What a treat!

Pres. Kornbluth articulates such moral clarity in this rejection of the proposed “compact”: “the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone” orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

Thread: A year ago yesterday was a very happy day for me. I had lost my prostate. It was good riddance, as it was riddled with cancer. I’m now cancer-free — and thankful for the tax-funded technology that saved my life.

Our Department is recruiting as well. As a public institution we can’t afford professional quality videos so this post will have to suffice😱.

Very excited to share our very exciting story on how misinherited chromatin affects individual cells to cause a behavior defect in C. elegans (a thread👇) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Every university leader should read this.

NUCLEOSOME NOMENCLATURE JUST FINE! WHY BE SO CRAZY! {[("H3meLIKEY2"])} www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Two groups are calling for new leadership at HHS after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s actions on substance abuse treatment and mental health medications, among other issues.

Nice day for a ride!

The Trump admin has been targeting whistleblowers, from the #FEMA36 to the countless other patriotic public servants and scientists across NIH, CDC, NASA, and more who spoke out about the danger posed by the chaos in our federal agencies. This is an concerted, autocratic effort to silence dissent.

Today is October 3rd, another day where we are calling to #ImpeachtheQuack!

@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social ‘s speech at the Capitol on Monday. “As a federal worker, I am here to tell you that every awful thing that would happen in a shutdown—shuttering programs that Americans rely on, damaging our economy, firing federal workers—all of this is already happening.”

We introduce here the emerging concept of vibe coding, in which AI accelerates coding by converting natural language or abstract intent (a vibe) into functioning software modules, shortening development cycles biodatamining.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #vibecoding #bioinformatics #coding

Your data is lying to you. Here’s how technical artifacts distort biology—and how to see the truth. 👇 1/ Beautiful t-SNE? Shiny heatmap? Look closer. Technical artifacts can fake whole cell types. Here’s where the ghosts hide.

A thread with some interesting (at least to me) observations on multi-year funding, past and present... 1/8

Very nice reporting on the importance—and the vulnerability— of model organism databases www.nature.com/articles/d41...

👇👇👇👇👇

The data and evidence are clear. Over the past 8 months, the egregious actions of President Trump and his enablers have caused real harm to people and communities across the country.