Ali Twelvetrees

An image montage advertising NeuroBioUK - 11th of September 2026 in York. The image is York cathedral superimposed over a fluorescent cortex mouse section coloured to look a bit like a dawn sky.

Save the date for #NeuroBioUK26

Do you like neurons? Maybe glia? Molecules? Cell biology? - The venue is booked and we are excited to see you and your incredible science there on the 11th of September! Please do join our email list to stay up to date.

neurobiouk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk

Plasmids are available now! "A universal protein ladder for standardisation of diverse FRET assays"
www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

link! -->

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy to share with the world and see what else it can be used for! (@addgene.bsky.social codes incoming)

A huge team effort to put make this a fully realised tool for FRET. Led by super postdoc Evelyn Smith, supported by @katiegelder.bsky.social, @danbose.bsky.social and @timcraggs.bsky.social

5/

It's hugely useful for us day to day. Uses so far:
🎯Giving a baseline for calculating correction factors.
🎯Independently trouble shooting sample prep and data acquisition.
🎯Onboarding and teaching new users (probably the most impact!).
🎯Interpolating data across modalities
4/

Changes in FLIM of the donor fluorophore across the FRET ladder.

Most excitingly, it also works in cells - opening up the possibility of interpolating FRET read outs between single molecule studies and protein conformations in cell based ensemble assays (FLIM shown here). 3/

a graph showing changes in FRET efficiency across the ladder

Correlation between the FRET ladder purified from bacteria and the FRET ladder measured directly in mammalian cell lysate.

It works as either purified protein or measured directly in cell lysate for single molecule work. FRET changes are regular and predictable, and the proteins are 'well behaved' in all the settings we've tried so far. 2/

Design of the protein FRET ladder

Fancy a fresh preprint for Friday? When we were first getting involved with single molecule FRET, there weren't any standard protein molecules that suited our applications to help us develop our pipeline. So we built some! A universal protein ladder for FRET. 🧵 1/

This is a telling quote on the super tight timeframe for bids to run a £40m AI lab

“The labs being targeted will be able to meet the turnaround time because they have that kind of resource”

Quite a top down approach to research funding?

Not the first recent example of that

...

This piece is mostly about the big problems in STFC's budget, but Vallance also gave an important update on what's happening with the MRC funding calls that have been on pause since December

He said calls would reopen in May at which point the council would set out “the totality” of its funding

UKRI shares first detailed comparisons of past and future spending under new ‘bucket’ model - Committees - UK Parliament Professor Sir Ian Chapman, Chief Executive of UKRI, has written to the Committee Chair, Dame Chi Onwurah, to provide previously unavailable information about its new 'bucket'-led approach to funding r...

UKRI shares first detailed comparisons of past and future spending under new ‘bucket’ model💐💐💐

Bucket 4 looks intentionally leaky

This is the follow up from the committee hearing. The committee's challenge to change the bucket terminology hasn't been met.

committees.parliament.uk/committee/13...

Screen shot from the UKRI Funding Finder. Title: Fundamental AI Research Lab. Timeline Open 2nd March, intention to submit date 16 March, Closing Date 31 March 2026.

Can anyone think of an example of government spend of this magnitude and speed (excluding covid)??

4 weeks from call announcement to submission (no advance warning) and within that only 2 weeks to flag your intention to submit.

£40M total - individual awards £9.4M

www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

In the case of Epstein, Google would have done.

Some good UK science policy select committee sessions to look forward to next week, in both the Commons and the Lords:

🍿 Tuesday 3 Mar - Lords S&T Committee quizzing Liz Kendall, Patrick Vallance and Emran Mian (DSIT Perm Sec). I imagine they'll be trying to get a handle on those buckets (ahem).

Thanks! I’m not sure the final product is a true reflection of the journey, but so glad this chapter is complete :)

Fly primary neurons arranged in a circle, tubulin labelled in green, actin in magenta.

Our article on how GSK3b controls microtubule bundling in axons is live 🎉
Here's our #notthecover attempt
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

Imagine how it feels to be a woman right now… 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Screenshot of text: She sees a connection between the ways women are talked about in the files and the response to a recent push to strip Elon Musk of his fellow title at the Royal Society, the U.K.’s premier scientific institution, after his AI tool, Grok, was given the capability to undress women and girls. So far, the head of the institute has said the only reasons to strip fellows of their titles is if they’ve conducted scientific misconduct, things like falsifying data, Twelvetrees said. “[Elon’s] used the products of science to make his personal AI assistant Grok a mass engine of misogyny and white supremacy. I don’t understand how that isn’t scientific misconduct.”

💯
"'[Elon’s] used the products of science to make his personal AI assistant Grok a mass engine of misogyny & white supremacy. I don’t understand how that isn’t scientific misconduct." - @dozenoaks.bsky.social of @royalsociety.org

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

Women's voices have been curiously absent from the media coverage of the Epstein files. Kudos to @jkutzie.bsky.social for publishing this excellent piece. If you consider yourself to be an ally please take a moment to consider the impact of the ecosystem created by men at the top.

I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day | Anonymous Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see

This is one of the most heart-breaking & important articles I have ever read - from someone whose voices are so rarely heard, a teenaged girl.

If you want to understand online misogyny in all its devastating impact, please read this shattering piece.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

There's been a bit of a change of tone in how UKRI leadership is talking about the funding reforms underway

Ian Chapman acknowledged this week that “uncertainty about funding is an unhelpful overlay when already faced with great challenges” and said UKRI would engage “more concertedly”

...

UKRI CEO updates the research community on areas of uncertainty Following an open letter of 1 February, Sir Ian Chapman responds to feedback and provides an update.

Another update from #UKRI CEO on #UKsciencefunding #UKRI
www.ukri.org/news/ukri-ce...

No new information and fails to address/explain the severe funding rate cuts taking place at MRC for the round currently under review (Sept2025). That's 2025/26 budget so should *not* be affected by SR.

I agree, I’ve never understood why superficial clicks are more important to folks. But Musk has created an engine for mass production of misogyny & white supremacy in Grok. If thats’s not a misuse of science it’s hard to imagine what is. Our leaders should be held accountable for their decisions.

Who gets second (third, fourth…) chances in this gig tells you exactly where the power is and what academic science really values.

‘Lots of people don’t want to do it’: Paul Nurse on his controversial second term as Royal Society president The Nobel prize winner discusses claims of a ‘boys’ club’, Elon Musk’s fellowship and rightwing attacks on science

Sunday thoughts. Nurse’s reason for not expelling Musk from the Royal Society is “fellows should only be expelled for fraudulent science”

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Worth remembering - in 2018, Nurse was pretty ambivalent about repercussions for fraud too

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Mention of a “meaningful consultation” in this thread. We can dream I guess? In practice we still know diddly squat about what’s going on.

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is definitely one to celebrate. We have come a long way, and the future is bright and hopeful. But to get there, we need to keep acknowledging the systemic biases that sadly still exist nowadays 👇🏻

Further clarifications yesterday. Thanks for flagging @nisaccom.bsky.social

the cutoff scores for #MSCA postdoc fellowships are very high this year. has the score distribution shifted compared to previous years? I made a plot with scores from past years.

if scores are at ceiling level, the process becomes essentially a lottery, because minor issues can lead to deductions.