Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Ryan Boileau

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 9d

Same as it ever was.

Screenshot of a NYTimes headline and subhead that reads:

"N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Move to Capitalize on Adams’s Departure
Zohran Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa hit the campaign trail on Monday after Eric Adams left the race, while Andrew Cuomo called donors."

Highlighted in blue is "while Andrew Cuomo called donors."

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 14d

HHMI adopts Plan U journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

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Ryan Boileau @bffswithbiology.bsky.social · 29d

It's 2025 and excel still cant open two different worksheets with the same file name. Thank you for your attention to this matter

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Benoit Bruneau @benoitbruneau.bsky.social · Aug 20

New preprint from the lab just dropped! Our continued partnership with Irfan Kathiriya from @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social on gene regulatory networks in atrial disease modeling using iPS cells
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Reduced TBX5 dosage undermines developmental control of atrial cardiomyocyte identity in a model of human atrial disease

There is evidence for a shared genetic basis of atrial septal defects (ASDs) and atrial fibrillation (AF), but it remains unclear how genetic susceptibility leads to these distinct human atrial diseas...

www.biorxiv.org

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Ryan Boileau @bffswithbiology.bsky.social · Aug 15

IDT prices seem to inflate like groceries these days. Highly recommend 10nm scale for >60nt oligos from GeneWiz, best deal on the market I've seen-- even if you have to wait a few days. Cheapest gene block synthesis now from Twist also.

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Dominik Niopek @dominikniopek.bsky.social · Aug 4

Our work on rationally engineering allosteric protein switches is now out in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thanks a lot to @grunewald.bsky.social and @noahholzleitner.bsky.social for the comprehensive news and views: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rational engineering of allosteric protein switches by in silico prediction of domain insertion sites - Nature Methods

ProDomino is a machine leaning-based method, trained on a semisynthetic domain insertion dataset, to guide the engineering of protein domain recombination.

www.nature.com

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · Jul 26

To better treat cancer, we need to understand its underlying biology. Despite decades of research, some fundamental questions remain unanswered. One is why certain key tumor suppressor or oncogenes lead to cancer predominantly in single tissue: e.g. Rb in the retina, or APC in the colon 1/n 🧪

Diagram illustrating the two-hit model of retinoblastoma

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Nature Biotechnology @natbiotech.nature.com · Jul 25

Noncanonical amino acids are efficiently incorporated into proteins by optimizing mRNA codon usage go.nature.com/3MDSSXQ
rdcu.be/exfiH

Efficient genetic code expansion without host genome modifications - Nature Biotechnology

Noncanonical amino acids are efficiently incorporated into proteins by optimizing mRNA codon usage.

go.nature.com

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Benoit Bruneau @benoitbruneau.bsky.social · Jul 23

Cachexia (which I now know how to pronounce) is an awful and overlooked part of cancer. At least reducing this indignity would be great

Doris Kaltenecker @dorie00.bsky.social · Jul 23

Excited to share that our study on the role of the liver in #CancerCachexia is out in Cell! 😀 🧬

We found that the liver plays an active role in driving weight loss in cancer through disruption of the circadian regulator REV-ERBα and secretion of catabolic hepatokines

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

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Benoit Bruneau @benoitbruneau.bsky.social · Jul 21

amazing new discovery by my @gladstoneinst.bsky.social and @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social colleagues, on cell-directed combination therapy for Alzheimer's disease. Although having seen first-hand what irinotecan does, I wouldn't recommend it. Proof of principle impressive. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Cell-type-directed network-correcting combination therapy for Alzheimer’s disease

A multi-cell-type drug discovery strategy targeting dysregulated gene networks in neurons and glia identified letrozole and irinotecan as a combination therapy that significantly improved memory and r...

www.cell.com

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Anshul Kundaje @anshulkundaje.bsky.social · Jul 17

Fabulous post by @randomwalker.bsky.social & Sayash raising the same concern many of us have about whether we're on the right track with how we're using AI for science. Everyone should read it, take a deep breath & think through the implications.

www.aisnakeoil.com/p/could-ai-s...

Could AI slow science?

Confronting the production-progress paradox

www.aisnakeoil.com

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Benoit Bruneau @benoitbruneau.bsky.social · Jul 3

long-time coming, multi-lab paper on the evolution of gene regulation in the tetrapod heart. I actually did the mouse and chick embryo heart dissections for this one! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

The Interplay of Ontogeny and Phylogeny at the Transcriptome Level of the Tetrapod Heart

You have to enable JavaScript in your browser's settings in order to use the eReader.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Gladstone Institutes @gladstoneinst.bsky.social · Jul 3

Biomedical research is facing a funding crisis.

Cuts to federal funding will mean fewer medical breakthroughs, less economic growth, and loss of opportunities for early-career scientists, and loss of our country's leadership in life science.

Here's what you should know about the proposed cuts. 🧵

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Ryan Boileau @bffswithbiology.bsky.social · Jul 1

Just reminded of the new NIH public access policy in effect today-- researchers now required to deposit new publications resulting from NIH-funding into PubMed Central immediately upon publication independent of open access status. No need to pay extra for open access anymore? Smells like progress

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Shawn Harris @shawnforcongress.bsky.social · Jun 30

Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't want you to know the name of her opponent but will try every desperate attempt to save her seat.

My name is Shawn Harris. I am a Democrat, husband, father, Retired Brigadier General, farmer, and I'm running against MTG. Can you spread the word?

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David A. Graham @dgraham.bsky.social · Jun 27

Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

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Gladstone Institutes @gladstoneinst.bsky.social · Jun 30

🚨 NEW PUBLICATION 🚨 "An experimental census of retrons for DNA production and genome editing"

@natbiotech.nature.com
@seth-shipman.bsky.social

An experimental census of retrons for DNA production and genome editing - Nature Biotechnology

Genome editing tools are developed through large-scale characterization of bacterial retrons.

go.nature.com

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · Jun 30

I am very proud that the public, through NIH, has built such a powerful and successful enterprise to understand and treat diseases like cancer.

I am very sad that this research enterprise at NIH is suffering such damage. That’s bad for patients, bad for the economy, bad for all of us.
🧪

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@bilderlab @bilderlab.bsky.social · Jun 30

Happy to share a new publication: an introduction to comparative oncology in @natrevcancer.nature.com‬. Thanks to the leaders in the field for welcoming me as an invertebrate researcher.
rdcu.be/etKdN

Advancing cancer research via comparative oncology

Nature Reviews Cancer - Comparative oncology combines evolutionary biology, ecology, veterinary medicine and clinical oncology to better understand cancer, for example, by identifying the molecular...

rdcu.be

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Ryan Boileau @bffswithbiology.bsky.social · Jun 30

Sure, most value is in the product/function. I think the prompt here was more about ideating new enzyme functions-- In the sequencing industry case perhaps the value would be in new enzymes that catalyze or enable fermentation of fluorescent dyes etc.

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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · Jun 30

Warnock: A budget is not just a fiscal document. A budget is a moral document. Show me your budget and I'll show you who you think matters and who doesn't. And if this awful budget were an EKG, it would suggest that our nation has a heart problem and is in need of moral surgery

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Ryan Boileau @bffswithbiology.bsky.social · Jun 30

Anything involved in the synthesis of reagents towards cheaper next gen sequencing. And whatever g-dang enzymes will, pleaseee, form a nanopore complex with better sequencing accuracy 😮‍💨

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@LaBonneLaB @labonnelab.bsky.social · Jun 28

So unless something changes the NIH budget for FY26 remains at the FY25 levels (which is really the FY24 levels) ~48 billion. Not great in absolute terms but a hella lot better than what the white house and house wanted. Same with NSF - stays at ~9

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · Jun 27

Thanks to WRAL for documenting the tremendous impact of the Trump administration efforts to end important research grants
www.wral.com/news/local/u...

100+ UNC research projects lose federal funding

UNC-Chapel Hill is navigating a significant $126 million reduction in federal grant funding compared to last fiscal year.

www.wral.com

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FlyBase @flybase.bsky.social · Jun 25

MassLive.com recently interviewed several Harvard FlyBase people and wrote this news article about the importance of FlyBase: tinyurl.com/4chpts9f

Why a database of bug genes could be one of Trump’s most devastating cuts at Harvard

FlyBase, the world's only fruit fly database, is in the crosshairs of Trump's attack on Harvard. Here's why it could matter for your health.

tinyurl.com

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