Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Keith Robison

Maryn McKenna @marynmck.bsky.social · 6d

Oh look, AMR
warriors, a beer for us.

1 13

Reposted by Keith Robison

Ian Holmes @ianholmes.org · 13d

Missed opportunity to call this movie “And now for something completely typeless”

Jeffrey Perkel (he/him) @jperkel.bsky.social · 13d

It was a real pleasure to speak with @numpy.bsky.social creator Travis Oliphant about NumPy, SciPy, and #Python: the Documentary! New @nature.com 🧪🐍 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Python, the movie! The origin story of the programming language comes to the silver screen

The creator of the NumPy and SciPy libraries reflects on their supporting role in the story of Python, now the subject of a documentary.

www.nature.com

2 4 13

Reposted by Keith Robison

Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · Aug 7

The Trump administration has deleted all previous National #Climate Assessments from government websites and fired the scientists working on the next report. Now they say they're going to rewrite the previous ones.
This is scientific sabotage and a rewriting of history.

www.cnn.com/2025/08/07/c...

Energy chief suggests Trump administration is altering previously published climate reports | CNN

Wright said the Trump administration is updating the National Climate Assessments that have been previously published, which the administration recently removed from government websites.

www.cnn.com

13 95 160

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Aug 8

omicsomics.blogspot.com/2025/08/10x-...

🖥️🧬

10X Scoops Scale

News broke this afternoon that microfluidics single cell genomics leader 10X Genomics has bought out split-pool single cell company Scale Bi...

omicsomics.blogspot.com

4

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Aug 7

www.genengnews.com/topics/omics...

10x Genomics Scales Up, Agrees to Acquire Scale Biosciences

An exclusive interview with Serge Saxonov of 10x Genomics and Giovanna Prout of Scale Biosciences on what the acquisition means for single cell genomics.

www.genengnews.com

2 2

Reposted by Keith Robison

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Aug 3

My quote of the day

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

Warren Bennis

2 16 110

Reposted by Keith Robison

Chris Greening @greening.bsky.social · Jul 25

Our article showing energy production from air alone is in PNAS today. This paper provides an ultimate biochemical proof that microbes can survive simply by 'making' energy from air (making two ATP per molecule atmospheric H2 consumed) and has biotech applications. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

ATP synthesis driven by atmospheric hydrogen concentrations | PNAS

All cells require a continuous supply of the universal energy currency, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to drive countless cellular reactions. The un...

www.pnas.org

4 55 120

Reposted by Keith Robison

Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · Jul 24

After 15 years of controversy, @science.org retracts ‘arsenic life’ paper

After 15 years of controversy, Science retracts ‘arsenic life’ paper

Science has retracted a 2010 paper describing a strain of bacteria that purportedly substituted arsenic for phosphorus, an element present in all known life. Science/AAAS Fifteen years after publis…

retractionwatch.com

1 19 61

Reposted by Keith Robison

Noel Dickover @noeldickover.bsky.social · Jul 24

"Higher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself."
#AcademicSky

6 13

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jul 24

For a top pharma partner, CIRQ doubled the duration of expression of one protein to 14 days and tripled another to 28 days (vs. 7 days with linear, modified mRNA).

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jul 24

rna.ginkgo.bio/blog/circula...

CIRQ has launched!

Customers can now order our circRNA to screen in own lab (10 designs, starts at $50,000), or 3 month long design and screening project at Ginkgo (50 designs, starts at $300k)

Ginkgo RNA Solutions - CIRQ Platform

R&D solutions for mRNA & circRNA.

rna.ginkgo.bio

1 1

Reposted by Keith Robison

Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · Jul 23

"In the letter, the signatories warned that National Science Foundation grants now underwent a 'covert and ideologically driven secondary review process'...”

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/s...

Amid Fear of Retaliation, N.S.F. Workers Sign Letter of Dissent

www.nytimes.com

100 2.1K 6.3K

Reposted by Keith Robison

Alex Crits-Christoph @acritschristoph.bsky.social · Jul 22

Well that's interesting.... here "pooling" refers to cofolding multiple proteins all at once and then assessing their pairwise ipTMs as shown in this figure from the preprint, never thought of doing that before and remarkable that it actually works *better* (I guess you'll need lots of VRAM though)

2 1 10

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jul 22

Ginkgo has launched an E.coli-based Cell Free Protein Synthesis reagent!

reagents.ginkgo.bio/products/cel...

Cell Free Protein Synthesis (E. coli)

Ginkgo’s cell free protein synthesis (CFPS) kit is an E. coli transcription/translation system optimized to produce proteins from a T7 RNA Polymerase promoter. Reactions consist of a bacterial cell l...

reagents.ginkgo.bio

4 9

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jul 8

NYT reported the passing of Franklin Stahl

Invest 20+ minutes of your time in this masterful documentary on “the most beautiful experiment in biology” as two friends joyfully relate how as young graduate students at they were entrusted with testing the Watson-Crick model

youtu.be/7-tnuAqEp9g?...

The Most Beautiful Experiment: Meselson and Stahl

YouTube video by Science Communication Lab

youtu.be

2 3

Reposted by Keith Robison

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · Jun 30

You hear this a lot on the left but it isn't true. USAID did not "fail to tell its story to Americans," the right targeted the agency with lies and misinformation.

Ultimately this narrative turns conservative attacks into even more calls for the left to reform.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/o...

I Worked at U.S.A.I.D. for Over 8 Years. This Is Our Biggest Failure.

I worked for U.S.A.I.D. in East Africa over the past eight and a half years, selling the story of American foreign aid to people in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya. Our inability to tell this same story to Americans is our great failure. It is what put the agency into the Department of Government Efficiency’s wood chipper first. It’s what allows Secretary of State Marco Rubio to get away with insisting that lifesaving humanitarian aid would continue while the administration drastically slashed its funding. And it’s what I fear will let this presidency cast the deaths from the next preventable catastrophe as unstoppable or inevitable.

140 800 4.4K

Reposted by Keith Robison

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · Jun 30

Seriously. You know who has *great* messaging? Cancer researchers! Literally curing cancer! Sells itself!

Still got fed to the DOGE woodchipper.

FEMA and the National Weather Service got fed to the DOGE woodchipper, too. Nobody thought poorly of them until the right did the thing they always do.

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · Jun 30

You hear this a lot on the left but it isn't true. USAID did not "fail to tell its story to Americans," the right targeted the agency with lies and misinformation.

Ultimately this narrative turns conservative attacks into even more calls for the left to reform.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/o...

18 480 1.6K

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jun 30

Coukd It Have BEEN Found With Short Reads?

🧬🖥️

omicsomics.blogspot.com/2025/06/coul...

Could It Have Been Found With Short Reads?

Initially, the ESHG program was overwhelming. With the exception of the official opening and closing sessions, every timeslot had multiple ...

omicsomics.blogspot.com

2 5

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jun 26

Food For Thought On ONT's Proteomics Push

🧬🖥️

omicsomics.blogspot.com/2025/06/food...

Food For Thought On ONT's Proteomics Push

This year, instead of touring London after the Nanopore confab I headed to Italy for the European Society of Human Genetics meeting. Upon h...

omicsomics.blogspot.com

2 5

Reposted by Keith Robison

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · Jun 24

A process server delivered a letter regarding my "hostile" and "defamatory" attacks on #ColossalBio co-founder Ben Lamm, insinuating I'm a misogynist and a failed scientist. Nothing I've said is defamation, but you can read it a judge for yourself. I've redacted my home address 1/n

5 16 40

Reposted by Keith Robison

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · Jun 12

Updated a broken link in my substack post about the
#ColossalBio #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign – dire wolves are still extinct.

open.substack.com/pub/devoevom...

The Extinction of Truth

Or, a Colossal Pile of Bullshit

open.substack.com

3 13 46

Reposted by Keith Robison

Brendan Quinn @bfquinn.bsky.social · Jun 23

How profoundly sad. The kids deprived of reading Calvin and Hobbes are the kids who need them the most. My brother put it best: "We know we’re fucked when they come for your cartoon stuffed tigers."

Let's go sit in the grass and crack open "The Days are Just Packed."
pen.org/magic-tree-h...

‘Magic Tree House’ Author, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ among hundreds of Tennessee book bans - PEN America

The removals in Tennessee are the result of a growing political movement to control information through book banning.

pen.org

82 600 1.5K

Reposted by Keith Robison

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Jun 20

Defining ultra-slow-growing extremophilic microorganisms as aeonophiles #USC_earth #USC_MEB #jcampubs www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Defining ultra-slow-growing extremophilic microorganisms as aeonophiles - Nature Microbiology

In environments like the deep subsurface, microorganisms with long doubling times can remain metabolically active for millions of years — we propose referring to this class of extremophile as aeonophi...

www.nature.com

9 15

Reposted by Keith Robison

Ben Langmead @benlangmead.bsky.social · Jun 17

Now published! Note that since Vikram's original post (quoted here), he's made it easy to dynamically update a set of multi-MUMs (e.g. when more genomes are added to a pangenome) and to find multi-MUMs for huge collections like HPRCv2 genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

1 22 53

Keith Robison @omicsomics.bsky.social · Jun 17

Had a fun chat recently with Kevin Libuit on his The Bioinformatics Lab podcast

on.soundcloud.com/2hxiS7sDlK0x...

EP 56 Open Conversation with Keith Robison

Ketih's Blog, Omics Omics: https://omicsomics.blogspot.com/ Summary In this conversation, Keith Robison discusses the inception of his blog Omix, the evolution of social media in the scientific comm

on.soundcloud.com

2