I ❤️ vaccines!

Reviewer 2 out of 4 has taken on the traditional villain role this round… Are you reading this, reviewer 2? You are being unreasonable.

Got my invitation to the Nobel Prize Ceremony and Banquet. Curious who will be recognized this year in Physiology or Medicine and in Chemistry. Looking forward to celebrating with the amazing scientists. Announcements are coming up October 6 and 9.

I will give the UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences. If you are in London on December 3, come say hello. Registration is required but free: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ucl-prize-...

A favorite sight in Munich is watching the river surfers. I wonder how San Diego surfers would handle these waves.

Apparently, chimpanzees consume equivalent of 1-2 standard alcoholic drinks per day in the wild via fermented fruit!! (h/t Nick Villarino) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Why does @bsky.app keep feeding me posts I’ve already liked? I know I’m getting older, but this feels insulting.

Conformity and refusal: a reminder!

Irrefutable evidence for the labeled line theory of sensory coding. At least, that’s how it feels to the brilliant illustrator @christophniemann.bsky.social

One of the best arguments I have read about DEI: Gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/o...

Boston area on September 17? Come to "The Brain Body Dialogues in Health and Disease Symposium." A lineup of Boston stars, with a few of us outsiders sprinkled in. Plus, free lunch! brain.harvard.edu/hbi_events/t...

What an unprecedented and strong bipartisan voice to sound this alarm. Will the Republican Congress wake up and stop playing politics with the health of the American people?

Cautious optimism warranted!👏

Eerie how timeless this quote is. Came across it while walking in downtown San Diego.

I rarely dive into circuit-mapping papers, but this blockbuster from @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social lab is a doozy! Check it out. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is my 25th year running a lab. 7 students earned a PhD, and 31 postdocs trained with me. Remarkably, 37 of 38 trainees are in science, and 36 do research! Nick Villarino, the 8th student, defends in December, with my 1st student, Lindsey Macpherson, as external examiner. I appreciate them all!

Of course I signed this! Please join us.

Complete this sentence: Reading the news every morning is like…

Can't wait to read this preprint from Misha Ahrens and team. Calcium imaging in larval zebrafish, in every cell in the body! Amazing. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Go Padres! Nothing like a day game.

Can you think of a more gratifying way to spend $3?

The Trump administration, seemingly determined to hobble the NIH, continues to devise new and insidious ways to politicize what has long been considered the crown jewel of US research. My latest for @opinion.bloomberg.com (🎁 link):

Nice! I just saw this Piezo hat in the Nobel Prize museum in Stockholm a few weeks ago.

Nice catching up with @alexchesler.bsky.social while sporting Piezo hats.

Often, scientists can be territorial and unwelcoming to newcomers. Not Jim. He was an early and enthusiastic supporter of our work on PIEZO mechanically activated channels, and I appreciated that more than I can say. I wonder now if I ever told him just how much that meant to me. I should have.

Rest in peace, Jim. The father of mechanotransduction. This photo is from the April @hhmi.org meeting. Despite battling aggressive cancer, all he wanted to do was talk about science.

Today is my 12-year anniversary as an @hhmi.org Investigator. A mentor of mine once compared HHMI to heroin: at first, the rush is overwhelming, then you grow tolerant, and when it’s taken away, the withdrawal is brutal. (I would not know personally, just quoting my mentor.) Grateful for the ride!

It is also a vivid reminder of how difficult it is to translate a basic discovery into a useful therapy. 2002 cloning of TRPM8 2010 demonstration that TRPM8 sustains basal tearing 2024 COMET-2 and COMET-3 trials showed that M8 agonist significantly increased tear production 2025 FDA approves drug

UCSD is holding a town hall with @repscottpeters.bsky.social this Wednesday to urge him to oppose proposed research funding cuts in the FY2026 budget, set for a vote in September. Please RSVP below and share widely. Everyone is welcome. form.laborbase.org/251675765832...

🫣🙄 This is not how I got the Nobel Prize! "Out of the blue, while Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called," Dagens Naeringsliv reported, citing unnamed sources. "He wanted the Nobel Prize - and to discuss tariffs." www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

Over 20 years after Julius’s lab and mine cloned TRPM8, it is rewarding to see this science helping patients. The TRPM8 agonist Tryptyr treats dry eye by increasing tear production. A reminder that NIH-funded curiosity-driven research translates to medicines. tryptyr.myalcon.com?gad_source=1...

Had a great time yesterday discussing music, touch, and proprioception with the humblest of world-famous divas, Renée Fleming. Thanks also to Connor Kim for his blindfolded performance highlighting proprioception. Tonight, heard Renée sing with incredible musicians at La Jolla’s SummerFest.

BIG NEWS: “Senate appropriators on Thursday approved an FY26 Labor-HHS bill that included a slight bump in funding for the NIH, with a strong 26–3 bipartisan vote.” Thank you to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on both sides of the aisle! www.axios.com/pro/health-c...

confession: I often get excited by n=1 results.

San Diego friends! Come check out "Encounter: Music and Mind," part of La Jolla Music Society's SummerFest. Hosted by the amazing soprano Renée Fleming, I'll give a short talk on music and touch/proprioception and join a panel discussion. Register for free here! theconrad.org/events/enc-4...

Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence make a dangerous combination!

Fantastic new study on the role of TMEM63a in oligodendrocyte-dependent myelination in the CNS from the Swetha Murthy lab: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40694323/

The importance of not caring about things that are not important!

These days I wake up, glance at the news, and immediately wish I hadn’t.

No better time to call or email your members of Congress. Next year’s NIH budget is being debated in the Senate. A new nonpartisan campaign is making it easy to defend science and protect America’s innovation. Just follow this link to contact your representatives: www.protectscienceandinnovation.org

Another story on mechanosensitive chondrocyte progenitor cells and role of PIEZO1 in articular cartilage maintenance and regeneration. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Exciting new study on the role of PIEZOs in Chondrocytes! Relevance to arthritis and pain. From: @farsh-g.bsky.social & @kelseyhcollins.bsky.social arthritis-research.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Congrats to Levon Aronian, the Armenian-American super grandmaster, for winning the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour! He earned the title by defeating Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, and Hans Niemann. Here he is, mercilessly humiliating me back in 2022.

I signed the letter to support NASA! Consider adding your name.

New York Times story about the Voyager Declaration is up. [Gift Link] www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/s...

A couple of hairy mammals!

“Compared with no exercise, briskly walking 450 minutes per week was associated with living 4.5 years longer. That evidence comes from a cohort of more than 650,000 individuals followed for over a decade.”

“Dudes in Corollas”! Our friend Loren Miraglia, a scientist and brewer, often shares his latest creations with our lab. Today we sampled four versions of his Belgian-style quadrupel. The barrel-aged one was my favorite.

Amazing news from the Senate Appropriations Committee: no cuts to NSF! “National Science Foundation (NSF): $9 billion for the NSF to maintain U.S. leadership in scientific research and discovery.“