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Reposted by Doug Kojetin

Stephanie Wankowicz @stephanieaw.bsky.social · 12d

TTPD #7 with @fraserlab.com.

We chatted about the recent meetings, news, preprint engagement notifications, and the point of rotations.
wankowiczlab.com/2025/09/27/T...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0JCB...

The Tortured Proteins Department, Episode 7

This is the official web page for the Stephanie Wankowicz Lab at Vanderbilt University.

wankowiczlab.com

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 14d

Since there is some discussion that NIH institutes should not simply use paylines to determine which grants to fund, I thought I would share some old data.

These are plots of funding probability fas a function of percentile score for 9 institutes.

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Graphs of funding curves for nine NIH institutes from fiscal year 2012.

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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 24d

So that adds up to 340 new R01 that were not funded in this past week alone, due to the multi-year funding mandate. sorry, "strong suggestion".

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Stephanie Wankowicz @stephanieaw.bsky.social · Aug 12

I am all for journal caps but $2000 is too low. As @peiferlabunc.bsky.social said, it costs $ to run a journal.

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · Aug 11

NIH is considering changes in supporting publication costs--some ideas are quite radical and would endanger our ability to publish at all. I don't love the cots from the big for-profits but it does cost$ to run a journal. Please repost. Comment at:
osp.od.nih.gov/comment-form....

Dear SDB Members,

NIH is planning to cap APC (Article Processing Charges) from grant funds for publications, starting in January 2026.

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-138.html

Proposed Policy Options for Keeping Publication Costs Reasonable:

Option 1: Disallow all publication costs.
Option 2: Set a $2,000 limit on allowable costs per publication.
Option 3: Set a $2,000 limit on allowable costs per publication and allow up to $3,000 when peer reviewers are compensated.
Option 4: Set an 0.8% limit on the total amount of an award that can be spent on publication costs, up to $20,000. For example, $250,000 direct cost grant = $2,000 per year for publications.
Option 5: Set a $6,000 limit on both the per publication cost and the total amount of an award (0.8% up to $20k) that can be spent on publications.

The NIH is requesting comments by Sept 15.

It is also possible to contribute comments that are not about any of the 5 options.

Comments should be submitted electronically to the following webpage: https://osp.od.nih.gov/comment-form-maximizing-research-funds-by-limiting-allowable-publishing-costs/.

Responses are voluntary and may be submitted anonymously.

The SDB encourages you to submit your opinions on this important issue.

Best,
Richard Behringer
President, SDB

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · Jul 30

Today #NIH leadership were told no funds can go out for research project grants, R&D contracts or training grants.

We have just a couple weeks to get funds out the door before Russel Vought attempts a #PocketRescission on Aug 15.

Even if this ends up being temporary, it’s time we don’t have.

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Seth Tomchik @sethtomchik.bsky.social · Jul 26

I wrote a commentary for the Sun-Sentinel about training as a scientist in South Florida and the role/importance of federal funding for biomedical research. While focused on Florida, it applies broadly. Gift link, feel free to share:

www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/06/14/d...

Don’t let the light of science dim in the Sunshine State | Opinion

Seth Tomchik received his undergraduate and graduate training in South Florida and went on to run a Scripps Florida lab before moving to the University of Iowa. Federal funding for scientific resea…

www.sun-sentinel.com

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Doug Kojetin @dougkojetin.bsky.social · Jul 24

Last night we heard a scream + "I burned chocolate in the microwave!".

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Doug Kojetin @dougkojetin.bsky.social · May 27

my group says "We think it's a lot more precise than the nanodrop we used previously (which was admittedly pretty old). If we read the same sample multiple times with the Implen, we generally get near identical values."

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Doug Kojetin @dougkojetin.bsky.social · May 27

we have the implen and have been satisfied/happy

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Fabien Ferrage @fabferrage.bsky.social · May 17

In France, we are very grateful for the support of @cnrs.fr and #Infranalytics that allows us to access the 1.2 GHz spectrometer in Lille for free (upon selection of proposals of course).

Magnetic Resonance News @nmr900.bsky.social · May 16

National Gateway Ultrahigh Field NMR Center gateway-nmr.osu.edu #NMRchat #NMR 🧲
External Academic: $25/hr
Industry: $200/hr

National Gateway Ultrahigh Field NMR Facility | Ohio State

gateway-nmr.osu.edu

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Nicholas Fitzkee @fitzkeelab.bsky.social · May 14

Anyone have a lead on replacement syringes for Malvern VP-ITC instruments? They no longer sell them, and they want me to upgrade to the PEAQ system. Unfortunately, we have a PEAQ-ITC, and it doesn't work with the concentrations needed for nanoparticle experiments. #chemsky #biophysics #ITC

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Kevin Gardner @nmrkaygee.bsky.social · May 14

Basic science saves lives and fuels the economy, which is why I’m advocating for:

➡️NIH & NSF to spend FY25 funds
➡️$51.3B for NIH, $9.9B in FY26
➡️Restoration of many canceled NIH & NSF grants

Act now. Contact your lawmakers today: asbmb.quorum.us/campaign/123....
#ScienceServesUsAll #ASBMBAdvocates

Urge Congress to re-establish the U.S. as the Leader in Innovation

American Society For Biochemistry And Molecular Biology

asbmb.quorum.us

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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · May 9

No-cost extensions of NIH grants are no longer automatically approved drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/05/09/n...

No-cost extensions of NIH grants are no longer automatically approved

The no-cost extension (NCE) allows the recipient of a NIH grant to continue to spend on the project after the original award interval has expired. This NIH website explains the way NCE used to work…

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · May 9

Heavy water isn’t water. That goes for protein NMR experiments and for a lot else besides:

Heavy Water in Your NMR Experiments, And Elsewhere

www.science.org

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Vanderbilt Center for Structural Biology @vanderbiltcsb.bsky.social · Apr 11

Here @cameronicohen.bsky.social dives into the new findings from the @dougkojetin.bsky.social & the John Yang labs ... "From activation to repression: decoding the impact of PPARγ ligands on ligand-binding domain conformation"
bit.ly/43P7xJG
@vubasicsciences.bsky.social @vanderbilt.edu

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boehninglab @boehninglab.com · May 2

NIH adds about 100 billion/yr to the economy

Josh Chesser @jchesser.bsky.social · May 2

This needs to be framed beyond academia, as most on the right want to see it suffer.

This needs to be framed for how devastating this will be for the economy, at all levels (local/state/fed) as these budgets send billions across the country in people’s salaries/etc.

boehninglab @boehninglab.com · May 2

Budget released today:
40% cut to NIH
50% cut to NSF
If enacted, this will destroy academic research in the United States. It will also have a major trickle down effect on the entire academic ecosystem

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boehninglab @boehninglab.com · May 2

Budget released today:
40% cut to NIH
50% cut to NSF
If enacted, this will destroy academic research in the United States. It will also have a major trickle down effect on the entire academic ecosystem

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · Apr 28

Burnette lab graduate student, Zach Sanchez, won the Steve Hann Outstanding Graduate Student Award! He then gave a fun talk on blebbisomes! You can read about his work here:
nature.com/articles/s41...
@vubasicsciences.bsky.social

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Apr 27

TV watching recommendations

The lead story on 60 Minutes tonight is about NIH and concerns about damage done and continuing during the current administration.

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Doug Kojetin @dougkojetin.bsky.social · Apr 25

Looking forward to digging into this new @natchembio.nature.com review article by my colleague @stephanieaw.bsky.social (and @fraserlab.com)! @vanderbilt.edu @vumedicine.bsky.social @vanderbiltcsb.bsky.social pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40275100/

Advances in uncovering the mechanisms of macromolecular conformational entropy - PubMed

During protein folding, proteins transition from a disordered polymer into a globular structure, markedly decreasing their conformational degrees of freedom, leading to a substantial reduction in entr...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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ML for Protein Engineering Seminar @ml4proteins.bsky.social · Apr 22

Next Tues (4/29) at **4:30PM** ET, we will have @ginaelnesr.bsky.social @hkws.bsky.social present "Learning millisecond protein dynamics from what is missing in NMR spectra"

Paper: biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sign up on our website for zoom links!

Learning millisecond protein dynamics from what is missing in NMR spectra

Many proteins’ biological functions rely on interconversions between multiple conformations occurring at micro-to millisecond (µs-ms) timescales. A lack of standardized, large-scale experimental data ...

biorxiv.org

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Apr 20

Some new language appeared in the HHS Grants Policy Statement last week.

It doesn't apply to NIH grants (yet)

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a man is sitting at a table in a kitchen with the words ermah-gerd written on the screen behind him .

ALT: a man is sitting at a table in a kitchen with the words ermah-gerd written on the screen behind him .

media.tenor.com

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Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · Apr 20

In science, we don’t give negative data nearly enough love. Showing with genetic precision that CGRP and Substance P aren’t needed for different kinds of acute and chronic pain? That’s huge.

Alex Chesler @alexchesler.bsky.social · Apr 19

www.science.org/content/blog...

Pain Continues to Be a Pain

www.science.org

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Matt Sikora @mjsikora.bsky.social · Apr 19

Peer networks are so important. We built @nrimpact.bsky.social for this reason, and while we did not anticipate *waves hands wildly* when we put the group together in 2019, the 46 faculty in our group lean on each other in times of personal and professional challenges.
www.nrimpact.com

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Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences @vubasicsciences.bsky.social · Apr 18

Congrats to Kelly O’Rourke, the Department of Biochemistry's Trainee of the Month! 👏🏾👏👏🏻👏🏽 Kelly works in the lab of @dougkojetin.bsky.social and her advice for other students Make self-care a priority. "When I have balance in other areas of my life, I feel more productive and motivated in the lab."

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