Professor Umberto D’Alessandro, #MRCG Unit Director shares insights on the first malaria medicine approved for babies. “Babies have been systematically excluded from clinical trials assessing the safety and efficacy of antimalarial treatments….” Read more: tinyurl.com/mwftby5h #EndMalaria

First federal grant submission in the bag! I need a beer and some junk food!

Plasmodium apicoplast genome contains the fewest known tRNA isotypes, making the apicoplast an ideal model to study minimal translation machinery. Such minimal systems depends heavily on posttranscriptional tRNA modifications for accurate protein translation. @jhmrimalaria.bsky.social 1/2 🧪

Is that Katy Perry? 🙄

Just really grim news from all over. I just want a world that values empathy over hate. We could be addressing climate change or global poverty or any other number of issues, but the US, UK, and others are spending their energy making it legal to harass an already-vulnerable group of people.

A stage III and a IV gametocyte in a red blood cell? That's a first for a gametocytes culture newbie like me! #Plasmodium 🧪

Accepted!

Look at these mero babies! #Plasmodium #Malaria 🧪

tRNA lysidinylation is essential for the minimal #translation system in the #Plasmodium falciparum apicoplast. -> www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... First characterization of a TilS enzyme that functions in an endosymbiotic organelle.

Amid all these turmoil in our lives, a good news! A paper just came online on @emboreports.org. in this paper we describe an essential apicoplast tRNA modifying enzyme. 🧪

Accepted!

but but... I don't want my money in the form of taxes to save lives. Simple! 🙄

Everyone who ever got funding through NIAID should be aware of this bill and start sending messages to their US legislators. The bill intends to dissolve NIAID. This is Project 2025 www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

NIH research grants still frozen despite lawsuits challenging Trump order The administration is exploiting a loophole to keep a funding freeze in place, leaving researchers in limbo 🧪 #AcademicSky @nature.com @natureportfolio.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Thanks to all of the NIHers and their friends who reached out to me. I am still here (DM me or Signal jeremymberg.78) I still have a very incomplete picture but based on what I have been told, the damage to NIH and to many wonderful people who work(ed) there is/was impossible for me to imagine 1/n

Good news is Congress is at work! 🤷‍♂️

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a huge funder of biomedical research, has cut a $60-million initiative to boost diversity in science education.

Idaho State University has an indirect rate of 44% and also no multi-million $ endowment. We will be devastated by this.

Executive wants to frame the NIH indirects cut as $4B in savings. But given that NIH returns $2.5 on every $1 investment, this would actually cost US economy a net $6 BILLION (per year!). Not to mention the human costs of wrecking education and research sectors and the communities they serve.

⚠️ Effective Monday 2/10/25, NIH indirect rate capped at 15%. Applies to existing & future grants. —> Deep budget cuts & program closures coming to a university near you. Is this the break the glass moment for university administrators who have been silent so far about the attack on science?

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Do you work on parasites and reside in an LMIC? Consider applying for a 2025 MPM LMIC award. The deadline is March 3rd, 2025—details on the website. www.parasitesrule.com/mpm-xxxvi/tr...

Plastids & mitochondria arose from separate endosymbioses of prokaryotes.Their prokaryotic ancestry makes them susceptible to antibiotics. Antibiotics kill pathogenic protists by targeting their plastids or mitochondria. Here we review the lop sided inheritance. journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

xm5s2U #tRNA modification is crucial for proper protein #translation, especially in a translation system with minimal components. We have described the players of xm5s2U34 biosythesis in #Plasmodium #apicoplast. Read the story to find out why parasites need this and how we did it. 1/6

Received very good comments back from all three reviewers! 🤓