Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Emily Madden

Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 2d

I have a fabulous undergrad who has a lot of experience with QIIME2 & using R to analyze microbiome data. She is looking for a job starting in January. Would love to learn more bench and field skills (will be getting some in her last 2 months). Open to academic, industry, government jobs in the US.

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 6d

Pushing the boundaries of science often means our language can’t keep up. Excited to be part of a team whose work with amazing collaborators advanced the field so much, it demanded a new shared language. Huge congrats to all involved!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A needed nomenclature for nucleosomes

Histone post-translational modifications (PTMs) are crucial to eukaryotic genome regulation, with a range of reported functions and mechanisms of acti…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 9d

I'm glad it's still being used! There is a box full of structure mutants and a couple tables of structure disrupting mutation strategies for a bunch of structures still sitting in the Heise lab. Most are to CHIKV but there was definitely a list of SINV ones before I got access to the BSL3.

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 9d

Hits on all the things that make RNA viruses the coolest things to study in biology. 😤

Tamanash Bhattacharya @tamanash.bsky.social · 10d

New preprint alert! 🦟 <-> 🦠 <-> 🧑

I am thrilled to share our latest study on alphavirus host adaptation. More specifically, on how a single codon helps blunt alphavirus-induced host innate immune responses in mosquito and human cells. Continue reading for more!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Sindbis virus nsP3 opal codon protects viral RNA and fitness by maintaining replication spherule integrity

Most alphaviruses encode an in-frame opal stop codon between nsP3 and nsP4 in their nsP ORF. This opal stop codon mediates a temperature-dependent balance between viral polymerase production and prote...

www.biorxiv.org

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 9d

Got me spending my morning digging up my dissertation and lab notebook to see if this was anywhere on my long list of structures to chase down "eventually." Really nice work @tamanash.bsky.social !

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Jean Cook (DNAtarheel) @dnatarheel.bsky.social · 12d

UNC Biochemistry and Biophysics will soon post openings for tenure-track junior faculty positions! Information about the search is at this website: www.med.unc.edu/biochem/join.... The link to apply will be shared here too as soon as it's live. Join us!

Join Us | Biochemistry and Biophysics

Updated on September 26, 2025. This page will be updated again soon. Why Biochemistry and Biophysics (BCBP) at UNC? BCBP is a premier department for basic mechanistic research into the molecular basi...

www.med.unc.edu

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Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com · 12d

🚀 Ordering lab supplies just got way easier in our lab.
We built a workflow (github.com/farnunglab/N...) where tapping an NFC tag on a reagent bottle automatically triggers an order request in Quartzy. No more scribbling notes or hunting for a computer. Here’s how 👇

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 12d

Our collective knowledge is connected and it's important to be able to track those contributions so that credit can be given where credit is due and to provide data to justify continued public support of our work.

Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 12d

A phenomenal example for why it is important to accurately cite the funding sources that support the work you publish AND why properly citing those published works in everything from other publications, to patents, and news articles is also important.

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 13d

This paper does a great job with a "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario about NIH, supposing the consequences of the bottom 40% of the funding NIH grants never existed.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

tl:dr The world would lose a lot, but directly and indirectly

What if NIH had been 40% smaller?

Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research

www.science.org

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 14d

Another great set of talks!

Also thanks @schvartzman.bsky.social for the (unsolicited!) shoutout to @epicypher.bsky.social products! It's always fun hearing how researchers are using Epi reagents to push the field in new directions.

FragileNucleosome @fnucleosome.bsky.social · 17d

This Wednesday at #FragileNucleosome seminar, we are excited to host Ali Wilkening and @schvartzman.bsky.social to tell us about amazing work they are doing!
Register here for upcoming session and the entire series:
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

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Reposted by Emily Madden

John Ngo @johntngo.bsky.social · 16d

🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com!

Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 16d

This opens the door to use 6mA laebelling for other applications in more living cell types. The authors even hypothesize at the end for how this method could be applied to actively dividing cells so the 6mA mark is not diluted.

Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 16d

CUT&Time combines Fiber-seq's 6mA labeling + CUT&Tag's sc and SRS compatible detection . I'll be very curious to see what the final peer-reviewed version of this study ends up being but it is very nice seeing early evidence that 6mA labeling in live cells doesn't appear to affect cell development.

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 16d

I missed this earlier this month, but Eldred et al, use a non-specific 6mA-MTase to label accessible chromatin and map historical chromatin accessibility during development in single cells.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

CUT&TIME captures the history of open chromatin in developing neurons

Chromatin structure plays a central role in defining cell identity by regulating gene expression. During development, shifts in chromatin structure facilitate changes in gene expression needed to spec...

www.biorxiv.org

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Sofya Garushyants @garushyants.bsky.social · 23d

hey bluesky 👋 visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!

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Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 20d

This is a helpful guide for students new to the publishing game. A step-by-step guide to getting your manuscript across the finish line, from start to finish.

I appreciate how it doesn't assume hidden curriculum and is informed by the author's experience with English not being his first language.

Martin A. Nuñez @martin-nunez.bsky.social · Aug 12

🚨Big news🚨

A Pocket Guide to Scientific Writing and Publishing is out🎉

This is the book I wish I’d had 20 years ago — short, practical, and designed to help researchers write & get their papers published

I hope it helps many
Please share with anyone who might benefit!
👉 mybook.to/ScienceGuide

cover of a "pocket guide to scientific writing and publishing"

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Reposted by Emily Madden

Liz Wayne @lizwaynephd.bsky.social · 20d

What does hope look like for you today?

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Jonathan Wosen @jonathanwosen.bsky.social · 28d

If you run a life science lab where research has either significantly slowed or shut down completely due to Trump administration policies, I’d like to hear your story. I'm a biotech and life sciences reporter for @statnews.com, and you can reach me at [email protected] #journorequest

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 29d

I looked a grants where the title was different between the original award and the noncompetitive renewal and limited the analysis to grants with no subawards so there was no ambiguity about what to compare.

There were 777 such grant pairs.

2/4

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Emily Madden @emadden.bsky.social · 28d

Great talks today! Want to wish the @creminslab.bsky.social an early Welcome to STL!

She closed her talk with a reminder that her lab is moving to WashU to continue her lab’s spatial neurobiology work.

FragileNucleosome @fnucleosome.bsky.social · 28d

We're getting started in ~90 minutes!

In addition to watching the seminars, remember you can join us on Discord to chat about transcription and chromatin whenever you want! discord.com/invite/dXqT89r

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Reposted by Emily Madden

Marketa Novotna @marketanovotna.bsky.social · Jul 6

I used inducible CRISPR/Cas9 to make Trypanosoma brucei cell line that allowed me to edit originally muti-copy histone gene. We uncovered a novel role of H4 histone tail in gene regulation. I enjoyed working on this exciting project with @joanarcf.bsky.social, a great mentor.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Precision-edited histone tails disrupt polycistronic gene expression controls in trypanosomes - Nature Communications

Transcription in trypanosomatids, such as Trypanosoma brucei, is predominantly polycistronic and involves unconventional RNA polymerase II promoters. This study uses precision gene editing, site-satur...

www.nature.com

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The Associated Press @apnews.com · Sep 9

A new mural by elusive street artist Banksy showing a judge beating an unarmed protester with a gavel will be removed from a wall outside one of London’s most iconic courts, authorities said Monday.

New Banksy mural of a judge beating a protester to be removed from outside London court

A new Banksy mural showing a judge beating an unarmed protester with a gavel will be removed from outside a London court.

bit.ly

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Reposted by Emily Madden

Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia.bsky.social · Sep 7

'David Baltimore, a biologist who in 1975 won a Nobel Prize for a startling discovery that seemed to rock the foundations of the fledgling field of molecular biology, died on Saturday at his home in Woods Hole, Mass. He was 87.'
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/s...

David Baltimore, Nobel-Winning Molecular Biologist, Dies at 87

www.nytimes.com

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Benoit Bruneau @benoitbruneau.bsky.social · Sep 7

A titan.

Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · Sep 7

Legend David Baltimore died yesterday. He understood the way things should work: "the real contribution of MIT is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. It takes ideas seriously, but the people are relatively informal. They are not self-aggrandizing the way academics can be."

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FragileNucleosome @fnucleosome.bsky.social · Sep 5

Let’s kickstart new series of #FragileNucleosome seminars! We are delighted to have @gracebower.bsky.social from Kvon lab and @creminslab.bsky.social to present their work!
Register here for upcoming session and the entire series:
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

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