I taught Genetics again this year. We need to include discussion of the problematic history of our field, especially as the claims of eugenics are once again centered in our political discourse. Last year I wrote this piece, explaining my reasoning and approach 🧪 1/n www.cell.com/trends/genet...

A new reporter mouse for visualising Hedgehog/GLI signalling activity This Research Highlight showcases the work from Hannah Schrader Dear, Nicole Franks, Benjamin Allen and colleagues: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

I gotta give it up to the writers tho. If NYC elects a Muslim mayor on the day Dick Cheney died, that is one hell of a slow played story arc. Every time you want to fire 2025's writers room they give you a little narrative resolution as a treat.

Look at those tail crescendos!! Another amazing example of disproportionate elongation of mid-tail vertebrae, and they note it is distal to the more functionally-constrained proximal tail.

C'mon people, mustard gas is chemical warfare...

This perfectly encapsulates what the GOP position is on the shutdown.

If SNAP benefits vanished tomorrow, feeding 42 million Americans for a month would cost about $7.8 billion.That’s less than 1% of the combined net worth of the three richest men in the U.S. A reminder of how obscene inequality has become and how easily hunger could be solved if we chose to.

Surely there's no problem for the long term stability of university procurement systems, right?

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Dear @nytimes, It is entirely possible to write a story about education without seeking comment from Chris Rufo. Sincerely, An actual educator

Please read and share this ⬇️ journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Dems really need to be cutting ads with wall-to-wall messaging of “trump and his billionaire cabinet don’t fucking care about you”. All the clips are out there! “Trump is laser focused on his ballroom while SNAP benefits expire” “Bessent fancies himself a farmer, but he is really just a landlord”

Everyone needs to read the book Robopocalypse to see where this could go...

Biology PhD program directors who want to join the conversation, my email and DM are open.

I still contend that >90% of the benefit of writing a review isn't the audience. It's for the author going through the literature, finding gaps in knowledge, learning how experiments are done, etc. It really isn't about writing a review. It's about doing the review yourself. AI can't do that for you

As I work on my own grant resubmissions I have to wonder- is it worth it or will mine sit there unreviewed for months while my lab slowly loses students and eventually folds as well? 2/

Really excited to share the pre-print of my first paper! It details the computational method we used to identify uncharacterized metabolites along the developmental gradient of maize roots, I hope you find it interesting! 🌱🌽

I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.

Also applies to grant writing...

Here, we use the jerboa and mouse to understand the temporal growth dynamics that establish adult vertebral proportion, the cellular drivers of differential growth, and candidate genetic mechanisms that determine and diversify vertebral proportion. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Extremely proud of @ceriweber.bsky.social and team and the newest paper from our lab!

Lab’s 1st preprint! Menstruation is understudied due to societal taboos + a biological challenge: mice (a key system for research + drug discovery) don’t menstruate. @cagricevrim.bsky.social made menstruating mice + used them to discover early events in menstruation. He is on the job market!

My HPLC was definitely overlooked www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Strong statement today from UC's Academic Senate:

Hugely problematic that 2nd year PhD students are no longer eligible. It also seems that concurrent BS/MS students are considered graduate students during their senior year of the BS and so would have one year of eligibility.

Signed. I was also a GRFP recipient.

I was on H-1B after my J-1. This new fee is terrible. Forget going home for a family emergency. Forget fieldwork. Forget conferences. Living abroad on a job-tied visa is stressful enough already. I hardly recognize the country that was my home for 9 years.

So excited!!!

Hearing rumor of a 2/3rds reduction in admissions to a graduate program. “The rest are made up by direct admits.” This is an inevitable response to financial pressures caused by unionized salary gains, NIH chaos and overall funding uncertainty.

I'm a bit late to the party over here. I'll be advertising a BBSRC-funded postdoc position soon. So if anyone wants to solve some outstanding questions in limb development - please get in touch. We have a variety of models and approaches (everything from stem cells to sharks). towerslab.weebly.com

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool

Look I don't know much about the world of undercover informants, but it seems like one requirement would be the ability to shut the fuck up, right? Does our boy Donnie check that box?

I miss the old brand #CDC

This paper is a 'must read' it's a beautifully comprehensive analysis of the human pelvic growth plate, ossification, and musculature. An incredible example of making the most of precious samples.

1) I am delighted to present this terrific tour de force research conducted by my post-doc Dr. Gayani Senevirathne @gayani.bsky.social and published today in Nature - www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey, my fellow biosci PhD program directors... How're we doing out there?

And at the same time, four species of albatross are projected to become extinct in NZ within 5 years because of invasive mammals.

These are some of the quotes from the media surrounding Colossal’s recent moa de-extinction announcement. New Zealand conservationists would rather save existing species from extinction than bring back those that are now gone 1/3.

the USA built a system of higher education so good that smart/rich people from across the world came here, spending billions to learn here, subsidizing education for Americans while spending money to live in our cities and towns. our government arbitrarily decided we should stop doing that

Yes, so much. This is at the core of my concerns about Colossal.

It is fucking insane that we had a decade of people complaining about the dangers of cancel culture, and now literally hundreds of thousands of people are being purged from government jobs for ideological reasons, but that is not cancel culture.

We have one of these on deck now, and I'm actually excited to publish it.

The models can develop all they want to but *they can’t go out into the world and collect new information*.

I don't know if you need to hear this, but let me remind you that you can grab a mug and in a few minutes, make a teensy cake, just for yourself. www.allrecipes.com/recipe/24103...

I think we have a new celebratory lab prosecco @ceriweber.bsky.social

On behalf of the University of California faculty, and UCSD in particular, thank you for your service friend. But you know you and I will both be back :)

“It comes back to the whole Make America Great thing again. How did we make America great? It was through science.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/u...

An excellent explanation of why Colossal is not only disingenuous but also dangerous.

Reposting every time I see a science news headline about the genetics of macroevolution that makes my eye twitch. Looking at you @nytimes.com