Jamie Cate
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jhdcate.bsky.social
Jamie Cate
@jhdcate.bsky.social
Ribosomes and RNA language models.
Professor at UC Berkeley.
https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/cate-lab/home
Pinned
RNA language models and ribosome engineering. Built from a hackathon sponsored by @innovativegenomics.bsky.social with @cgemcci.bsky.social. What a great experience!

doi.org/10.1101/2024...
RNA language models predict mutations that improve RNA function
Structured RNA lies at the heart of many central biological processes, from gene expression to catalysis. While advances in deep learning enable the prediction of accurate protein structural models, R...
doi.org
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Check out our latest work on how collided ribosomes activate the MAP3K ZAK! 💫

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A fun collaboration with @beckmannlab.bsky.social @doubleshuang.bsky.social
ZAK activation at the collided ribosome - Nature
The kinase ZAK is activated at collided ribosomes to mediate the ribotoxic stress response.
www.nature.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Work I co-led with @jnoms.bsky.social is now online at
@cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social ! We revealed a previously unrealized diversity of viral immune-evasion proteins that selectively destroy different cyclic nucleotide signals used in bacterial immunity.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Divergent viral phosphodiesterases for immune signaling evasion
Cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs) and other short oligonucleotides play fundamental roles in immune system activation in organisms ranging from bacteria to …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 25, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth!
#protistsonsky 🧵
November 25, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Check out our latest published manuscript: SurFlex microscopy, a new technique to measure molecular flexibility. Congrats to Aymeric, @sid592.bsky.social, @blenackmon.bsky.social, and Andres! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
SurFlex microscopy: Measuring flexibility of surface-tethered biomolecules | PNAS
The flexibility of tethered molecules, such as those bound to biological membranes, is an important property that can influence molecular height, m...
www.pnas.org
November 25, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
This month, 57% of voters in Colorado approved a referendum raising taxes on the wealthy to fund school meals and food stamps.

The Trump administration has rushed to cut food aid for those who need it — but regular people still want their neighbors fed.
November 25, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Our paper is out! Analysis of 30K+ genomes revealed that CPR bacteria assemble their ribosomes in unconventional ways, and that these assembly processes appear to have co-evolved with ribosome structure. doi.org/10.1093/molb... #Ribosome #Evolution #Patescibacteria #MBE
November 24, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Insightful piece by Larry Lessig on the need for more transparency in Harvard faculty members’ ties to Epstein

The 2020 Harvard Epstein report now looks like a big joke

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
The First Epstein Report Ignored Summers. Harvard Must Do Better. | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
How could Harvard have allowed this production of Hamlet without the Prince? And will it now commit to a practice that will not protect the elite among us, while shaming those not quite elite enough?
www.thecrimson.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Frontier structural biology chases low occupancies: weak binders in drug discovery & fleeting intermediates in time-resolved studies. When squeezing SNR, confirmation bias looms – you can see what you hope to see in the noise! Enter METEOR ☄️, our denoising+phasing framework! 1/8
November 24, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Walked out of “The Phantom Menace” and didn’t watch any of the rest until ”The Last Jedi” and that was enough to be done with them.
haven’t seen ROS or Solo but this seems like a pretty ball-knowing list from Pritzker, particularly if he volunteered the name “Star Wars” rather than “A New Hope”
November 25, 2025 at 2:49 AM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Every biologist knows the story of Fleming's chance discovery of penicillin. But is it true?

Here, with @asimovpress.bsky.social, I write about inconsistencies in the canonical story, and explore a few alternative theories about what really happened in that St. Mary's lab in the summer of 1928.
The Penicillin Myth
Competing theories seek to explain inconsistencies surrounding Alexander Fleming’s famed discovery.
press.asimov.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
And now, the case against Letitia James is dismissed too, same rationale but minus the statute of limitations complication.
November 24, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Evolutionary Flexibility of Ribosome Biogenesis in Bacteria | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/11/msaf288/8340222?login=false
Evolutionary Flexibility of Ribosome Biogenesis in Bacteria
Abstract. Ribosomes are essential for protein synthesis and require ribosome biogenesis factors for assembly. To uncover the evolutionary diversity of ribo
dx.doi.org
November 24, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
I don't understand how anyone can watch how blatantly Grok is manipulated to answer the way ownership desires it to and then act like the other LLM chatbots couldn't possibly be similarly but less obviously compromised to produce responses in whatever way corporate interests and priorities dictate.
November 23, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Recurrent evolution of selfishness from an essential tRNA synthetase in Caenorhabditis tropicalis

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Recurrent evolution of selfishness from an essential tRNA synthetase in Caenorhabditis tropicalis - Nature Ecology & Evolution
In Caenorhabditis tropicalis, three toxin–antidote elements arose via gene duplication from the essential tRNA-synthetase subunit FARS-3. The ancestral antidote probably acquired affinity for FARS-3, ...
www.nature.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Results are in for Iowa City’s two-year pilot of free public transit…

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/c...
Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air.
www.nytimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe
"The humanities really are a resource — a confidence for living in our times.” Dean Sara Guyer on the modern utility of humanities degrees
This interview originally appeared on the Division of Arts
bit.ly
November 23, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Such a privilege to see my summer mentee present her work at #ABRCMS2025!
November 23, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
An honor and dream come true to perform alongside Yo-Yo Ma, presented by Celebrity Series at Boston Symphony Hall. 💜

🎼Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod)
November 22, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
America putting most of its eggs in the generative AI basket, China going hard into green tech. When history looks back on this period, someone is going to look awfully stupid.
November 22, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
First Solar just opened a $1.1 billion integrated solar PV manufacturing plant in Louisiana capable of producing 3.5 gigawatts of panels each year. The plant will employ >700 people electrek.co/2025/11/21/f... 🔌💡
First Solar opens a Louisiana factory that’s 11 Superdomes big
First Solar opens a massive $1.1 billion solar factory in Louisiana, adding 3.5 GW of new US capacity and more than 800 well-paid jobs.
electrek.co
November 22, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Periodic reminder to the media and the Dems and the Universities that standing up to Trump and sticking to your guns earns you a lot more respect from this guy than just handing your money and balls to him in a shoebox
This might be the single funniest thing that has happened during this incredibly cursed year
November 21, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by Jamie Cate
Crying at Ronald Reagan bearing silent witness
November 22, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Called it.
Trump in a room with a very charismatic person results in like half a day of Trump agreeing with everything that person said, so this has the potential to be very, very funny.
Trump says he’s meeting with “communist” Mamdani at the White House on Friday
November 21, 2025 at 11:04 PM