Sabrina Absalon, Phd
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sabsalon.bsky.social
Sabrina Absalon, Phd
@sabsalon.bsky.social
840 followers 770 following 75 posts
Cell biologist | microscopist studying the nuclear and cell division of Malaria parasites | https://www.absalonlab.com/ |Co-founder of Peers in Parasitology | Be who you are 🏳️‍🌈 |Healthcare is a human right
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Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
meadekrosby.bsky.social
Thinking only of Rosalind Franklin today, and what was stolen from her (and so many other female scientists alongside her).
Rosalind Franklin and the damage of gender harassment
Spurred by a recent report on sexual harassment in academia, our columnist revisits a historical case and reflects on what has changed—and what hasn’t
www.science.org
November 7, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
ucsdfacaffairs.bsky.social
Applications for UC San Diego RAPID program's 2026-27 cohort are now open! This highly-rated and effective career development opportunity is for junior faculty researchers in #InfectiousDiseases.

Learn more and apply today at rapid.ucsd.edu!

#UCSD_RAPID #FacultyDevelopment
Applications are now accepted for UC San Diego Raising Advancement and Parity for Infectious Disease Researchers (RAPID) Program. RAPID is a one-year, NIAID-sponsored research development and mentoring program, which includes in-depth training in grant writing for research-oriented junior faculty. Apply by March 1, 2026 @ http://rapid.ucsd.edu. The graphic includes the program logo and a photo of an aerial view of La Jolla Cove.
November 3, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
shaillygupta.bsky.social
Yet another starting example highlighting that countries and communities continue to suffer as foreign aid depletes, first with US cuts and then by other developed countries. Thanks for your relentless reporting on this topic @stephanienolen.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/h...
A Somali Hospital Closed After U.S. Aid Cuts. Fired Employees Reopened It Without Pay.
www.nytimes.com
October 19, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
gavinyamey.bsky.social
Jay Bhattacharya, MAGA world, corruption, & the politicization of science:

‼️🚨‼️He replaced the chief of the NIH’s environmental health institute with a dear friend of Vice President JD Vance without going through any of the usual NIH due processes

More on this ghastliness from @markhisted.org 👇
markhisted.org Mark Histed @markhisted.org · Oct 23
The NIH institute director firing last Friday is very bad.

I made a video explainer about why.

Stay for last post, w link to @science.org story from @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social

1/4
🧪
October 23, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
gelliottmorris.com
Good evening. We estimate that between 4.2 and 7.6 million people turned out for the No Kings Day demonstrations held around the country on Saturday. This makes Oct 18 very likely the biggest single-day U.S. protest event since 1970. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...
Second "No Kings Day" protests likely the largest single-day political demonstration since 1970, with 4.2-7.6 million participants
Here are the initial results from our crowdsourced crowd-counting estimates
www.gelliottmorris.com
October 19, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
nytimes.com
The University of Virginia became the fifth school to rebuff a White House proposal to give universities preferential treatment if they uphold a set of government demands.
University of Virginia Won’t Join White House’s Compact for Colleges
It was the fifth school in a matter of days to refuse an offer of preferential funding treatment from the government, even as the White House has threatened schools that do not sign up.
nyti.ms
October 18, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
odedrechavi.bsky.social
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)
October 15, 2025 at 12:22 PM
sabsalon.bsky.social
"Paper accepted in principle" is the best email to read while being in vacation with the inlaws in Brazil.
October 14, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social
No words
America’s brain drain
May 30, 2025 at 12:23 PM
sabsalon.bsky.social
An absolute diamond of cell biology work. Congratulations 🎉 to all authors #UExM #Parasitesrule #CellBiology #Cilia
mariezelena.bsky.social Marie Zelená @mariezelena.bsky.social · Oct 10
Our collaboration with @mbonhivers.bsky.social is now out in @plosbiology.org! 🎉Using U-ExM, we mapped the formation of the flagellar pocket collar in T. brucei. Huge thanks to everyone involved — one step closer to #PhDone!

#ExM #oneringtorulethemall #Bilbo1 #trypanosoma #protistsonsky
plosbiology.org PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Oct 10
The flagellar pocket collar (FPC) is a cytoskeletal structure essential for nutrient uptake & immune evasion in #Trypanosome. @mbonhivers.bsky.social &co use U-ExM to provide novel insights into FPC biogenesis, and reveal 2 unknown cytoskeletal structures @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4n3bWi6
October 12, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
drdebhoury.bsky.social
From the 6 Surgeon Generals who served across administrations since President Bush: "Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans."
Opinion | Six surgeons general: It’s our duty to warn the nation about RFK Jr.
We took an oath to declare dangers when we found them. We’re doing that again today.
www.washingtonpost.com
October 7, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
audreytruschke.bsky.social
A Rutgers professor has been forced to flee the country for his safety, after targeting by a far-right student group that was *checks notes* claiming they felt unsafe.

I'm horrified.
I'm angry.

A short 🧵 #AcademicFreedom #Rutgers #violence #antifa

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Rutgers professor moving to Europe after threats over antifa accusations
Mark Bray says threats intensified after a Turning Point USA petition accused him of promoting political violence
www.theguardian.com
October 7, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
karimaj.bsky.social
Our @viroscope.bsky.social Joe McKellar interviewed by The-Scientist Magazine ! Look at all these beautiful cells we have in the lab :)
Boa Constrictor Brain Cells Slither into Focus
From reptiles and Tasmanian devils to humans, one researcher zooms in on unseen features of the brain and liver cells, like the cytoskeleton.
www.the-scientist.com
October 3, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
yorkbioimaging.bsky.social
Happy #FluorescenceFriday. Christophe Leterrier⭐in #TheMicroscopists and reflects on the
make-or-break moment at the end of his postdoc
when he came close to leaving academia before securing his CNRS position
and how these experiences shape the way he mentors others.
Stream: bit.ly/microscopist...
The Microscopists | Christophe Leterrier (CNRS & Aix-Marseille Université)
This time on The Microscopists, we're joined by Christophe Leterrier, team leader at NeuroCyto in Marseille and director of a Nikon Center of Excellence for super-resolution microscopy.Christophe r...
bit.ly
October 3, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
nishaphilip.bsky.social
Delighted to report our publication on a divergent cyclic nucleotide binding protein that regulates malaria transmission to mosquitoes. Great work by Domi Kwecka , @jennyregan.bsky.social @choel Kim #malaria #ookinete #mosquitoes #signalling journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
A divergent cyclic nucleotide binding protein promotes Plasmodium ookinete infection of the mosquito
Author summary Malaria parasites complete their life-cycle within mammalian and mosquito hosts requiring specialised forms to invade and establish infection in host tissue. In order to transmit to the...
journals.plos.org
September 16, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
joshlukedavis.com
woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother
Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.
www.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 10:09 PM
sabsalon.bsky.social
Whoever works with me knows how much I hate doing Western blots. Well today I feel the WB fairy helped me get the most beautiful sodium carbonate extraction samples analyzed with 6 antibodies, they all work amazingly and I have not a single bubble, dirt or weird running. Rebuttal paper looking good
August 29, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
centriolelab.bsky.social
Trouble imaging actin in ExM? Meet HAK-Actin, a probe for U-ExM, cryo-ExM & iU-ExM. Enables post-expansion labeling for max signal. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Soon at @spirochrome.com
Led by O.Mercey and @lreymond.bsky.social, in collab with @dudinlab.bsky.social and @marinelap.bsky.social
August 28, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share
Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu… https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team
August 23, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
simonereber.bsky.social
FINALLY! Challenging to publish but we believe it is an important discovery: rdcu.be/eATFz

💚 Thanks to the team ‪@biswashere.bsky.social‬, Omar Muñoz, ✨Q✨ C. Hoege, B. Lorton, R. Nikolay ‪@matthewkraushar.bsky.social‬ @dshechter.bsky.social @gucklab.bsky.social @vasilyzaburdaev.bsky.social‬ 💚
Conserved nucleocytoplasmic density homeostasis drives cellular organization across eukaryotes
Nature Communications - Cells can regulate their mass density. Here, the authors demonstrate how eukaryotes establish and maintain a lower density in the nucleus than in the cytoplasm via pressure...
rdcu.be
August 15, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
philmandelbaum.bsky.social
4 new quick-guides to help you help your friends and fam STAND UP FOR SCIENCE and protect democracy

www.standupforscience.net/activate-eng...

www.standupforscience.net/inform-activ...

www.standupforscience.net/team-science

www.standupforscience.net/calling-values

@standupforscience.bsky.social
A cutout of protesters in grayscale over a dark blue background, with the following text in white, all caps: (line 1; larger) ACTIVATE AND ENGAGE; and (line 2) THE TIME IS NOW. A closeup of a polluted river filled with trash, in grayscale, with the following text in white, all caps: (line 1; larger) INFORM AND ACTIVATE; and (line 2) THE TIME IS NOW. A cutout of three lab scientists looking at an iPad over a red background, with the following text in white, all caps: (line 1; larger) TEAM SCIENCE; and (line 2) THE TIME IS NOW. A cutout of a side view of a bronze justice statue over a maroon background, with the following text in white, all caps: (line 1; larger) CALLING ON VALUES; and (line 2) THE TIME IS NOW.
August 11, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
harmitmalik.bsky.social
If RFK Jr approach to develop a vaccine against all viruses involves sequentially exposing himself to each of these viruses and letting his amazing body develop a vaccine the natural way, then I highly endorse this approach.

I would start with something easy like Nipah or Hendra virus
colincarlson.bsky.social Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Aug 8
RFK has announced that he is developing a vaccine against all viruses. Yes, every single one. The whole, uh, "phylum"
RFK Jr: “We're developing a universal vaccine at NIH which is a vaccine that addresses the entire phylum of viruses.” “It's a vaccine that mimics natural immunity and it is effective against any kind of mutation.” “We believe it's gonna be effective against not only coronaviruses but also flu.” “And it's gonna be a much safer and a much more effective vaccine.”
August 8, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
nature.com
Nearly one-third of all retracted papers at PLoS ONE can be traced back to just 45 researchers who served as editors at the journal

go.nature.com/3UITVts
Exclusive: retraction-prone editors identified at megajournal PLoS ONE
Study says small editor group handled many problematic manuscripts — and a Nature investigation finds out who they are.
go.nature.com
August 5, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
standupforscience.bsky.social
“To the scientists wondering if there will even be an NIH by the end of this administration, this committee’s resounding message is: ‘Yes, Congress has your back’,” said @murray.senate.gov

We’re not near the finish line yet - but this is a strong step in the right direction.

zurl.co/AzSK7
‘Congress has your back’: US senators tell scientists they want to protect NIH budget
Senate budget bill includes small increase for the health-research agency — but faces a long road before being signed into law. Senate budget bill includes small increase for the health-research agency — but faces a long road before being signed into law.
www.nature.com
August 4, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Sabrina Absalon, Phd
smhsci.bsky.social
Online now in @science.org
Cryo-EM structure of endogenous Plasmodium falciparum Pfs230 and Pfs48/45 fertilization complex | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Cryo-EM structure of endogenous Plasmodium falciparum Pfs230 and Pfs48/45 fertilization complex
Malaria parasite fertilization occurs in the midgut of a female Anopheles mosquito. Blocking fertilization within the mosquito can prevent malaria transmission. Plasmodium falciparum Pfs230 and Pfs48/...
www.science.org
August 1, 2025 at 10:48 AM