ayyy new pape from my superworm homie @celjauebel.bsky.social

A colleague received bad news from her NIH program officer today: my colleague’s grant got a great score, but NIH still can’t pay it, and my colleague will have to closer her lab. The call ended with the program officer (not my colleague) crying. Awful on so many levels.

A repressive regulatory cascade shapes temporal patterning of activity-regulated gene expression in a defined sensory neuron type https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.14.725236v1

The International C. elegans meeting #worm27 is going to Kobe, Japan in 2027! genetics-gsa.org/celegans/ Organizers: Erik Andersen @erikandersen.bsky.social, Johns Hopkins University Kavita Babu @kavita-babu.bsky.social, IISc Bangalore Suhong Xu, Zhejiang University @genetics-gsa.bsky.social

This mesmerizing timelapse captures the nonstop motion inside an animal cell. Red/orange streaks are the growing ends of microtubules, tiny “highways” that can rapidly assemble and disassemble to move proteins & other molecules within the cell. 📸: Andy Moore, HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus

Hi folks! @bu-biology.bsky.social is hiring two (!!) lecturers in Cell and Molecular Biology. It is a sweet gig in an awesome department. Come join us! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32034

My summer NSERC USRA student suggested this new addition to the family - baRACK obama 🥰

If you want to know what 3′UTRs with long conserved sequence stretches do, check out our BioRxiv preprint doi.org/10.64898/202.... They form functional intermolecular 3′UTR-3′UTR interactions that enable co-folding of proteins to rapidly induce transcriptional programs.

We're recruiting! We're looking for two graduate students to join us at UBC in Vancouver. Fully funded and open to global applicants, with flexible start-date. Topics include theory, bioinformatics, and microbiology. More details: asherleeks.com/apply #socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪

We are saddened to share the passing of Don Moerman, a valued member of the genetics community and a former editor at #G3Journal. Don, a longtime researcher at the University of British Columbia, was an integral part of the Worm community. He will be deeply missed. Read more: buff.ly/qXY007J

Out in @natmethods.nature.com: More dyes. They work. Quite well. And blink. Pick the one that fits your target, your technique, and your labeling density. With too many collaborators and institutes to list, but anchored at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

abstracts back in the day were crazy work. Ed Hedgecock, 1981 #Celegans meeting at CSHL.

☕Hodgson, Huang, Lang et al. show that TDP-43 limits ribonucleoprotein particle condensation into paraspeckles in a concentration- and polymerization-dependent manner. They also link paraspeckle condensation to stress response and neuroprotection. bit.ly/3QBQmXa

Science is good. We should fund it.

Whole-organism spatial transcriptomics at single-cell resolution in C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.09.717568v1

The worm community has lost a true legend with the passing of Don Moerman. Don's impact on C. elegans research is beyond measure. A friend to many of us here in MN, his work has been invaluable, contributing >5,400 strains (VC & DM) to the CGC, 20% of our collection!

It is with great sadness that I'm sharing the news that Dr. Don Moerman passed away this weekend. He was such a legend in the #Celegans and Canadian science community.

Why would I use "AI," I actually know how to fucking write

"genAI can be used to create podcasts from a paper to teach st-" Let me stop you right there. Before you feed somebody's paper to a slop machine, invite that somebody to talk to your students about their paper. We're right here. We academics won't shut up about our work, man. 🧪

Download our database of free database of postdoc fellowships. 276 funding opportunities. For entry, we provide eligibility/requirements, amount, deadline, link, description, etc. Download database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

Happy #WorldFrogDay!🐸 We apologize to all frogs and toads, for not having nearly enough of these amazing animals on our covers. We will do better.

pretty new to teaching but students love these scratch cards for doing worksheets in class! 10/10 highly recommend!

"[...] we’re worried about what it means for universities and, especially, our early-career colleagues." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

In class today, we reread this nice article about scientific community doi.org/10.1073/pnas.... We talked about the ways in which the #C.elegans community helps research move forward and reach other scientists.

I have had a few people ask me who Mark is - it’s Mark Edgley! He used to be the curator of the CGC. Did you know that the CGC was at the University of Missouri before? Take a look at this Research Resources issue from the NIH in 1986. #celegans

😭😭😭😭😭 the worm community is the best. welp, holler at ya girl if you want a Riddle strain not in the CGC 🙏

In our new poll with the Boston Globe of NIH funded scientists in Mass ... - 72% say they have delayed or cancelled projects - 66% reduced research scope - 56% paused experiments or students. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/09/m...

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

Pretzel raccoon (by Evan Lovett) is still my favorite mural in the neighborhood.

what a treat to have @dougp.bsky.social give a talk today!

teaching is wild y'all

first day of teaching, pray for me

reasons to visit ubc: go to the UBC WINE LIBRARY (!!!), visited by prominent worm folk such as sydney brenner and bob waterston

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

current biology ftw

these travel cases get more sophisticated every year, big chonker

Calling all Canadian prospective grad students! Domestic PhD & MSc application deadline = Jan 9 for EEB @ U. Toronto! Great community of researchers! Guaranteed funding >$40k/y! Join us! eeb.utoronto.ca/education/gr...

we’ve come a long way from 20 labs! #celegans

The thing that annoys me is how the idea of "AI competency" is either hilariously empty OR an impossible bar for most undergraduate students. The weak version of this seems to be "showing students how to use ChatGPT and telling them that it can hallucinate." The strong version is an MA in ML.

quite possibly the best tshirt I have bought this year 🙏, linking it here, you’re welcome. octopiedmind.com/en-ca/produc...

At #CellBio25? You should attend the 'LGBTQ+ Ally Session' featuring panelists from the ASCB LGBTQ+ committee. Session is TODAY, 11-11:45 in room 126A. Don't miss out and come get to know the committee! #outinstem #LGBTQIA #LGBTQ #queerinstem #cellbio #cellbiology #ascb #CellBio2025

trying the 5% DMSO freezing solution, here’s goes nothing!

This is great. More please! The more folk who rely on LLMs for funding planning means my chances go up even before I submit!

First, obviously, ban all gen AI tools for the creation of academic text and images. Punish violations with immediate rejection. AI tools are neither accurate nor transparent, and science doesn’t need them. Kick them all out. 4/6

Worm people are the best

I was lucky enough to inherit a bunch of racks where a graduate student had labelled all of them with Rack jokes 😂, perfect. I am dead at Racksputin.

I am really enjoying the no context “NO” on top of this one. December 1973 Nematologica. #celegans

When asked to draw a scientist, school-age kids in the United States are increasingly sketching women, according to a study from 2018. Read more on #STEMSTEAMDay: https://scim.ag/4qFrPON