“The goal is to break the Palestinian resistance by affecting the social base that embraces it” (...) Israel aimed to “re-engineer the Palestinian human” into a being whose sole cognitive focus is basic survival, rendering them incapable of political thought."

The way UK govt funds science is in the midst of a major transition, with creation of a much more direct link between government priorities & UKRI research funding. My attempt to set in context the biggest upheaval in UK science funding policy since the 1980s: softmachines.org?p=3252

The last EU Horizon programme lost £330m from UK science funding

Last week, RPN broke a string of stories on significant changes to funding across a number of research councils (see thread below) This morning, UKRI chief executive is appearing at the Commons science committee, where he is being asked about them by MPs Here are some key moments so far 🧵

We cannot rely on “science corrects itself”. We need national independent research integrity offices with powers everywhere. Here is another story about research misconduct——Did a Celebrated Researcher Obscure a Baby’s Poisoning? - The New Yorker apple.news/AO91lC8YBT-K...

The Holocaust survivor judge who issued Netanyahu’s arrest warrant - The Times and The Sunday Times apple.news/AIrDM9zZ1RCK...

What's larger, a protein or its templating mRNA ? > The mRNA is much larger. ⬛ 𝐀 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 -- 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬 -- 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡. The figure shows myoglobin protein drawn to scale next to its mRNA template. The coding sequence of an mRNA ...

Neat RNA papers www.nature.com/articles/s41... (polyamine regulation of splicing by direct binding to U2 snRNP proteins) and www.nature.com/articles/s41... (impact of N1-methyl pseudo U on translation)

Just read an email about a 3 day conference organised by scientists well-known in their field with a capacity of 100 attendees, 33 invited speakers and only 10 slots for selected talks. Conferences are increasingly becoming closed circle meetings.

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

"Results from experiments with N = 4 or less are shown to be highly misleading (...). For a cut-off of 2-fold expression differences, we find an N of 6-7 mice is required to consistently decrease the false positive rate to below 50%, and the detection sensitivity to above 50%"

Happy to share our latest work by Shivani Gahlot and Subodh, published in @febsj.bsky.social. We show that the amino acid Trp is highly toxic to C. elegans, and that this toxicity is driven by bacterial metabolism of Trp into indole. febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

2025 has been terrible with atrocities and indifference. I'm particularly disappointed in my scientific community. How can we claim to care about human life and health in papers and grants but stay silent when children are being killed daily? 1/2

Thanks to all lab members of the lab and our collaborators for a productive year. We had 4 papers, another successful PhD defence and some challenging methods established. Our first paper was in colab with @alexeimaklakov.bsky.social lab on ageing onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

We are pleased to host Prof Ying Wang on Wednesday 3rd December 2pm @johninnescentre.bsky.social . Please join us for this exciting talk. @yiliangding.bsky.social @whaerty.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @rnasociety.bsky.social Lexogen

We are pleased to host Prof Danny Incarnato @incarnatolab.bsky.social on 5th December 9:30am @johninnescentre.bsky.social. Please join us for. @yiliangding.bsky.social @whaerty.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @rnasociety.bsky.social Lexogen

Can we *please* stop rewarding bullying behavior in academic social media?

It’s fellowship season in UK and many postdocs will be looking for host institutions. This is a very critical step. Approach at least 3-4 hosts. Make sure there is genuine interest in hiring you. Many institutions claim to support fellows into long term careers but most actually don’t. #UKRIFLF

Looking for a PhD in RNA biology? The deadline is approaching fast! This is a great opportunity to do a PhD together with an industry partner fully funded by @nrpdtp.bsky.social BBSRC Case studentship.

Katarzyna Hencel, @alperakay.bsky.social, @drsull.bsky.social & co demonstrate an accessible and affordable assay to measure #vitaminB12 in biological samples. doi.org/10.1242/bio....

“The Guardian reported on Tuesday that British military equipment licensed for export to the UAE had been used by the RSF and found on battlefields in Sudan, according to documents seen by the UN security council” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

I can now vibe code, use HPC and analyse RNA sequencing data at large scale. LLMs are amazing for this. On the negative side, now I can see how bad some(most) of the published RNA-seq datasets are. We really need to insist that all sequencing datasets should come with their QC data.

This is a super interesting paper by @conradlab.bsky.social lab on METTL16. They separate METTL16 function on U6 and MAT2A allowing more accurate analysis. Their results cast serious doubt on hundreds of papers claiming METTL16 methylates vast number of mRNAs. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This ceasefire or more accurately the “pause in genocide” will not last if the UN soldiers don’t get involved. Not that the UN has a great record in preventing genocides but thats still the best option. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

“Many of my students are now dead” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I’m not surprised. I tried this with REF21 case studies by giving chatGPT 5 4* and 5 1/2* case studies and ask it to decide if the further case studies for likely 3/4* or 1/2* and it did a really good job matching known scores.

Congratulations to Aykut Shen, one of my first PhD students, who has successfully passed his viva yesterday. Many thanks to examiners @conradn.bsky.social and @adamcribbs.bsky.social and co-supervisor/collaborator. @whaerty.bsky.social. @nrpdtp.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social

New BBSRC funded PhD opportunity in my group with Inspiralis Ltd and @conradn.bsky.social. If you are interested in RNA - protein interactions and RNA modifications check the details below for how to apply. @nrpdtp.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social tinyurl.com/bdzvn4dr

‘Golden triangle’ institutions snap up 80% of AI supercomputer time. Exclusive: Oxbridge and London dominate early stages of government programme to expand AI-powered research. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

“The reading, which was done in order of the ages of the deceased from youngest to oldest, began at 7am and, by the time the march reached it at around 13:45, still had notfinished the names of toddlers.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Super successful workshop! Thank you very much to all the speakers including all the talent postdocs and students! @norwichrnaclub.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social

The @molbiosystems.bsky.social was an absolutely fantastic meeting. So many amazing people doing so much amazing research. I learned many new things, made new friends and hopefully will have new collaborations and more excuses to return in two years. Big thanks to organisers and everyone else!

Can’t tell I am in Chile looking at the food I am eating.

This Thursday AI in RNA biology event organised by @yiliangding.bsky.social @norwichrnaclub.bsky.social! Don’t miss!

Ready for the @molbiosystems.bsky.social conference at amazing Puerto Varas, Chile. What a wonderful location.

Super frustrating story on how NHS missed lyme disease and how ME/CFS has become an umbrella diagnosis for doctors. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

New cures feel sudden, but the seeds were planted decades ago by basic scientists. Which seeds will turn into cures? Unpredictable looking forward, a straight line looking back. 🧪🧬 🧵

Removing portability of outputs has been very damaging to early career researchers as there is less incentive for universities to make new hires. Equally universities ca do mass lay offs beyond census window and still benefit from outputs. This is very damaging to research culture. @ukri.org

Our crab apple tree fruits every 2 years and we make yummy jelly! I’m not sure if anyone found C. elegans on rotting crab apples though.

It was great catching up with past and present @miskalab.bsky.social members to celebrate 20 years of Miska Lab. Thank you, Eric!

It is my pleasure to share with you the latest from @jsvejstrup.bsky.social lab, where we look at how the reduction of RNAPII levels has a severe, yet organized transcriptional response in the cell.

portlandpress.com/biochemj/art... PhD student Jacquie Mills has been getting to grips with RNAcapology. She has written this review on everything you wanted to know about m7G cap methylation and more....

Because there is good track record of politicians and civil servants predicting the next scientific breakthrough like GFP or RNA modifications or CRISPR or …. 🙄🙄🙄🙄

The percentage of children identified as acutely malnourished in screenings across Gaza increased to 13.5 per cent in August, from 8.3 per cent in July. www.unicef.org/press-releas...