Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kaia Mattioli

@kaiamattioli.bsky.social

570 followers 290 following 180 posts

K99/R00 postdoc, 24/7 feminist @ Harvard/BWH // generally fascinated by genomes // big fan of reality tv, good writing, crosswords, and cats // obsessed with my e-bike // she/her

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · Mar 26

our work on the molecular differences between transcription factor isoforms is out now in Molecular Cell!

key point: 2/3rds of TF isos differ in properties like DNA binding & transcriptional activity

many are "negative regulators" & misexpressed in cancer

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

7 70 160

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 6d

ever since i was a little girl i have wanted to spend all day changing the length of my research proposals to be in compliance with different arbitrary page number requirements

1 3

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 6d

yes true, but they can't really do that if they're hired to be fully dry... (seeing a lot of solely computational posts)

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 6d

tepid take: a lotttttt of job postings for bio-AI researchers, not enough job postings for generating-the-extremely-necessary-data-for-bio-AI researchers

1 2 4

Reposted by Kaia Mattioli

Jeremy BOO! Yoder 🎃💀🕷️ @jbyoder.org · 13d

Really cool, conceptually simple approach here: cross-referencing grant proposal scores with literature citations and explicit acknowledgments in drug patents to identify patents linked to projects that wouldn't have been funded given a smaller budget

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 13d

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

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

What if NIH had been 40% smaller?

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

www.science.org

1 45 78

Reposted by Kaia Mattioli

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 14d

More about @drwendieberg.bsky.social and self-advocacy leading to early cancer detection in her dense breast tissue.

More than 10 years ago now..

www.auntminnie.com/clinical-new...

She channeled the lessons from this experience to launch densebreast-info.org

Follow her to keep up with this field

A radiologist confronts her own breast cancer

University of Pittsburgh radiologist Dr. Wendie Berg, PhD, was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2014, after discovering that she has dense breast tissue and undergoing a breast MRI. In this articl...

www.auntminnie.com

8 29

Reposted by Kaia Mattioli

Jesse Engreitz @jengreitz.bsky.social · 20d

Excited for a major milestone in our efforts to map enhancers and interpret variants in the human genome:

The E2G Portal! e2g.stanford.edu

This collates our predictions of enhancer-gene regulatory interactions across >1,600 cell types and tissues.

Uses cases 👇

1/

2 36 84

Reposted by Kaia Mattioli

GenomeTDCC @genometdcc.org · 20d

New video! Discover how transcription factors find their way through tightly packed DNA. 🧪🧬💻👩‍🔬

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOta...

Luca Mariani & Martha Bulyk introduce PIONEAR-seq, revealing how DNA flexibility shapes gene regulation.

Recently published in @natsmb.nature.com

DNA Bendability Regulates Transcription Factor Binding to Nucleosomes (PIONEAR-seq)

YouTube video by GenomeTDCC

www.youtube.com

2 3

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 21d

my twitter algorithm is completely overrun with the AI for bio hype machine and I would like to see other things sometimes

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 21d

are there any gene regulation/genomics paper/preprint-aggregating accounts on here I should be following?

1 1

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 22d

editorial manager: your manuscript status is none of your business, actually

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 23d

happy postdoc appreciation week to all who celebrate <3

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 23d

what postdocs actually want:
- to not have their grants canceled
- reasonable chances at getting an academic position
- job security
- a thriving private sector so the entire research system can flourish <3

higher ed institutions in 2025:
- best i can do is an origami night

1 9 74

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

Decades of progress in science, engineering, & medicine will allow me to live a long & meaningful life, but there's still so much to do. I'm proud to be contributing to progress. And for my family's sake, I hope our country continues to publicly fund life-saving research. /end

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

I’m dreaming up future directions that leverage my expertise in genomics to study how aberrant splicing affects GRNs in breast, ovarian, and other solid tumors. I’ll be on the job market soon 🤓; if you’re interested in this type of work (& hiring...), please reach out!

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

I love thinking about gene regulation & RNA processing, & I’m newly motivated to study how these fundamental processes go wrong in cancer. Alternative isoforms add a layer of complexity that we must understand more deeply in order to effectively detect & treat cancer.

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

Eerily/serendipitously, before all this, I was awarded a K99 to study the role of alternative isoforms in breast cancer. Our prev work found hundreds of TF isoforms that are molecularly distinct & associated with cancer -- are they contributing to tumorigenic phenotypes in cells?

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

I’m so thankful to be a patient at MGH Cancer Center, seen by physician-scientists who have been studying this for decades. And I’m thankful for the BioBank for reaching out to me & giving me an opportunity to control what I can.

1 1

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

But now that I’ve been sitting with this for a while, those initial emotions (which are v much still present in my brain) have been joined by gratitude & determination. I’m so thankful we sequenced the human genome! I’m so thankful for PARP inhibitors! I’m so thankful for science

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

Then I got diagnosed, & I suddenly found myself consumed by worry, wishing I didn’t know The Statistics. I'd already been dealing with an onset of an autoimmune condition postpartum & parenting a toddler, all while trying to be a productive postdoc. It was (& still is) too much.

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

Since finding out, I’ve been scared, sad, angry... I almost wished I didn’t know. It’s kind of crazy: if you had asked me before diagnosis if I would want to know, I would have 100% said absolutely of course, this is what genetics is for, slot me into those screenings baby!

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

Of course, breast cancer is the poster child for early detection; the situation is much grimmer for ovarian cancer, which has no effective screening yet. The recommendation is to get a prophylactic oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) around the age of 45.

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

As the pic above shows, I’ve been slotted immediately into high risk screening. I’ll get yearly mammograms & breast MRIs. I just completed my first round & everything was clear, to my huge relief. I may opt for a mastectomy at some point, but I’m not ready to make that call yet.

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

(Side note: there’s a longer version of this story that involves a missed opportunity for me to have detected this variant myself when I had my whole genome sequenced in 2017 because I failed to analyze the **indel** vcf file…....... and 23&Me false negatives...)

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

Follow up tests showed a single nucleotide insertion in exon 11 of BRCA2. A frameshift! Upstream of the DNA-binding domain, even. A textbook pathogenic mutation if I’ve ever seen one.

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · 28d

The letter advised me to follow up if I wanted more information. I decided I couldn't NOT know the details, so I reached out to the incredible Molecular Medicine team at
Mass General Brigham for clinical validation. I have a small family, so our health history is a bit sparse.