Opinion from a plant science PhD. student in Wisconsin who grew up in Sacramento, attended UC Davis, and is worried the Trump administration is killing science "STEM careers at risk: NIH funding cuts impact the sciences | Sacramento Bee" share.google/BfnM7qnrFt1j...

not the main issue here but i'd really appreciate it if democratic politicians spoke out in support of big-city life and culture with the same energy and reverence that all politicians have for small towns los angeles is "real america" and so are all the other big cities the president hates

Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪 www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy. Details found here👇 www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

I’ve been studying gene regulation in primates for over 20 years, and using RNA-seq since 2008 to compare expression across species. We thought we were being careful. We used curated orthologous exons to minimize alignment bias and focused on biologically meaningful comparisons. We were wrong.

🧪 White nose syndrome in North American bats appears to have been introduced from a cave system in the Ukraine back in 2006. Fantastic new research shows that European bats are affected by two separate clads of the fungus, but only one clade has (so far) been introduced to N-America: rdcu.be/epN7x

We're thrilled to announce that the FIRST International Conference on Palaeogenomics will happen in Stockholm, Sweden, June 23-26 2026! Topics will span from humans to wildlife and sediments 🧬🦣💀🦠 bring it on! Save the dates! Follow @palaeogenomics.bsky.social for news 👉icp2026.palaeogenomics.org

Marvel could pay for my healthcare for the rest of my life for a fraction of 1% of profit from Spider-Man Noir, a character whose original comics I edited. For Peter David to die in medical debt, co-creator of Spider-Man 2099 and writer of countless seminal Hulk and X-Factor comics—that's a disgrace

We're looking for TWO lecturers (in Conservation Biology & Evolutionary Ecology) to join us in this beautiful corner of the world! Come join our pretty awesome (if I do say so myself!) department! 💚 @zoologyotago.bsky.social otago.taleo.net/careersectio... otago.taleo.net/careersectio...

tl;dr — this EO co-opts the language of open science to implement a system of political control wherein presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate any number of reasonable scientific activities and inferences as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.

As of yesterday using publicly available data via Grant Watch grant-watch.us/nih-data.html: 05/24/2025 word cloud depicting 165 unique words or phrases, flagged 10904 times, within 2118 terminated NIH grants. @standupforscience.bsky.social @altnih4science.bsky.social

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday 📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

The @upshot.nytimes.com has put together a vivid illustration of how the Trump administration has hollowed out American science. Gift link: nyti.ms/4kBTVql

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team! Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05... Open Access Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Who's calling the shots at NIH? Sworn testimonies and internal e-mails reveal for the first time the breadth of DOGE's control over the world's largest public biomedical funder. DOGE has provided lists of hundreds of grants to cut, and DOGE is now reviewing ALL NIH awards before they're released

The Trump administration is pausing NSF’s 15% overhead restriction pending the results of a lawsuit filed by AAU. Waste of everyone’s time.

Happy 21st birthday to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts (and thank you)! 🏳️‍🌈🍾🍻

It's official. I filed a Senate Resolution of Disapproval. RFK is CLEARLY in violation of his constitutional oath. He must resign.

Postdoc job opportunity! We're looking for ECR in evolutionary genomics to study the relation between intra-specific gene expression variability, polymorphism, and macro-evolutionary rates. We have the data in 3 fishes & amphioxus, just waiting for your expertise and enthusiasm! tinyurl.com/3aewk286

Teachers, we've partnered with Evolutionary Studies at Vanderbilt (@evolutionvu.bsky.social) to offer a workshop on evolution in celebration of the Scopes Trial 100th Anniversary. Please join us in Nashville on July 11! forms.gle/wECR4X2q5KCQ... #ScopesSymposium #iteachbio #EduSky #edchat

THE NSB (NSF Board) announced the existence and exploration of a pilot program to privatize the GRFP graduate fellowship (my wording). This includes branding opportunities for the companies sponsoring fellowships. This is short sighted and self-destructive, and threatens the mission of the NSF. 1/

I am so heartened to this seriously AWESOME #SaveNSF website go up today!!!! Has a take action toolkit with: 1. Press outreach templates 2. Social media toolkit 3. Elected official outreach 4. Talking points Check it out and share widely!!!! Likely more to come. www.savensf.com

FYI “Spencer Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation and Kapor Foundation are providing quick turnaround grants of up to $25k for education scholars impacted by the abrupt NSF grant cancellations.” www.spencer.org/news/meeting...

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NIH cancels participation in Safe to Sleep campaign that decreased infant deaths. Exclusive via Ismael M. Belkoura for @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2025/04/30/n...

First primatology episode of the year with @fuzzyatelin.bsky.social! This interview has everything! Epigenetics! Fieldwork! Colorful monkey genitals! Listen now: open.spotify.com/episode/6vOZ...

A horrible story but god bless this woman so accurately reading the ICE goons for filth here

The National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, has fired 1,300 employees and cancelled more than $2 billion in federal research grants. https://cbsn.ws/4daiCrv

Good segment about NIH on 60 Minutes. Please have a look. #NIH

My life as a reader will not be complete until I get hold of one of these 18th Century book wheels, designed to allow a person to keep seven books open at once.

We visited the golden lion tamarins at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence the other day - they have a great exhibit where they're free ranging - and Kyle was very full of himself. I haven't seen scent marking like that in years! 🐒⚱️🦊

When I use Google now I just automatically scroll past the AI summaries like they’re banner ads

Please consider making a public comment opposing the possibility of making NIH directors, program officers, and other staff (e.g. SRO, GMS) political appointees. This only took me ~90 seconds. Please repost. Thanks 👍

The rest of Mendel's alleles characterized! So, out of 7 traits, 3 caused by TE insertions!!! (though apparently there are two different green alleles, one cause by a TE insertion, but another a promoter deletion allele) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March, the fate of its vast genetic database became unclear. In today’s episode, we look at what might happen to the genetic data of 15 million 23andMe customers as the bankruptcy process unfolds.

This has never been about efficiency. The NIH is a remarkably efficient organization. No, this has all been about destroying our investment in science and academia.

"Understanding the well-studied science of the developmental process of sexual differentiation is especially important now, given widespread misinformation about—and the politicization of—sex and gender." 🧪 on @thetransmitter.bsky.social

Thanks to the good folks at Radiolab for having me on their latest episode to talk about the current decimation of science. (I bring the bad news at about 35:00) radiolab.org/podcast/the-...

#MorningReads Drawing on multilevel modeling and building on the evidence that demonstrates the importance of system-level protections for LGBTQ + individuals, they find protective state policy is associated w/ lower odds of suicidal ideation among LGBTQ + college students. #LGBTStudies

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM Implementation of Schedule F This is what a lot of us have been worried about. This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs. BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD... 1/n

In #sheep, long-term success hinges on the first year of life—especially for males. In PNAS Journal Club: www.pnas.org/post/journal... #ecology #EvolutionaryEcology #Scotland

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... Quite an indictment of some of the current single cell "virtual cell" foundation models. Even for the relatively mundane applications, cell labeling, batch correction etc, they are poor compared to much simpler & cheaper methods.

Please enjoy this small photo dump from nearby a fruiting Ficus in the tropical dry forest, Costa Rica

🚨Report your NSF grant terminations! 🚨 We are starting to collect information on NSF grant terminations to create a shared resource as we have for NIH. The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! Please share widely! airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

We used 18 years of data to assess the influence of relatedness among mates on reproductive success and offspring fitness in eastern chipmunks: Frappier-Lecomte et al. @denisreale.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Join us at the Royal Society in London 14 November for a day on Ancient genomes, human biology and medicine! Many slots are reserved for talks from submitted abstracts related to the topic, alongside speakers Svante Pääbo, Priya Moorjani, @mathiesoniain.bsky.social and Lluis Quintana-Murci.

Women anthropologists, please apply! www.anthropology-news.org/articles/cal...

Nature research paper: Complete sequencing of ape genomes https://go.nature.com/3EfWwqk

A project five years in the making, we've now published complete "T2T" genomes for six additional ape species! It turns out that finishing (and analyzing) six genomes is slightly more work than one... doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Thread for U.S. Scientists - important resources for knowing grant policies, sharing your story, and talking about the ongoing political chaos 🧪🧑‍🔬🧬💻🐙