US researchers speak with Nature Careers about the human toll of lay-offs, funding cuts and attacks on science one year after Donald Trump returned to the White House. #Academicsky 🧪
JCI - Glioblastoma stem cells resist cuproptosis with circadian variation of copper levels www.jci.org/articles/vie... in collaboration with Jeremy Rich @unclineberger.bsky.social
"… AI will allow the scientific community to do more if it picks the right ways to use it." H. Holden Thorp, Editor-in-chief, Science journals
In the first #ScienceEditorial of 2026, H. Holden Thorp focuses on #AI, discussing how it “will allow the scientific community to do more if it picks the right ways to use it.” He revisits the journals’ policies and approaches related to AI.
Read more: https://scim.ag/4qzSdJ5
This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.
“The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.”
Very well done story on 60 Minutes about the harms of grant terminations and freezes at Harvard with Joan Brugge, Don Engbar, David Liu, and a very compelling young cancer patient, now cured with Liu's technology.
Transcript and video here
www.cbsnews.com/news/researc...
Genetically incorporating environment-sensitive noncanonical amino acids containing rotor-based fluorophores to target proteins enables real-time visualization of microenvironment changes in protein substructures
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Jennifer Nemhauser’s and my tribute to our amazing friend and mentor, the extraordinary Joanne Chory.
Read about our personal and professional reminiscences. Thanks to all who provided background for this.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Here’s some of what scientists told us:
"The past five months are by far the worst I've experienced in my science career (from grad student to professor) over the last 30-plus years because we no longer know if there will be support for the work that we do, because science and research has…” +
This is figure 1, which shows a resilience model and factors.
Unique biological, exposomal, economic and sociocultural factors shape resilience and brain health across the globe. A Review in Nature Medicine discusses underlying mechanisms of resilience. go.nature.com/4l76HNh #medsky 🧪
Joanne Chory (1955–2024): Plant geneticist extraordinaire | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Outrageous. The White House is sidestepping Congress and halting up to $15 billion in NIH research funding, which would have gone to study diabetes, cancer & more.
The order was issued through a four-sentence email sent to NIH directors from Office of Management & Budget Director Russell Vought.
. #Botany2025 My institution (JIC in Norwich, UK) is hiring for a tenure-track Group Leader in Discovery Plant Sciences - see more here:
www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/gr...
Let me know if you have questions!
Decreased funding, reduced opportunities and growing uncertainty has made life tough for international postdocs living in the US
go.nature.com/4mg4ct9
My linocut portrait of Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958), in a gradient of magenta from her shoulders up through dark blue to her hair. Her necklace is a double helix of DNA. Her brooch is the Tobacco Mosaic Virus. The pattern on her jacket is based on her publication of the structure of non-graphitizing carbon. Behind her in shades of robin’s egg blue is an image of the famous X-ray crystallographic Photo 51, produced by her grad student Gosling and important to deducing the structure of DNA.
Happy birthday Rosalind Franklin (1920 –1958), #chemist & x-ray crystallographer whose x-ray diffraction images were instrumental to discovering double-helix structure of DNA, made important contributions to carbon & virus research, was 1 of the great scientists of the 20th century. 🧪🐡👩🏼🔬 #histsci 🧵
Tenure-track faculty search of the UCSF Biochemistry & Biophysics Department is open for applications!
We are looking for creative, innovative scientists asking fundamental questions in any area of biology.
Join our vibrant, collaborative, and supportive community!
aprecruit.ucsf.edu/JPF05702
"NIH has ..implemented a new policy requiring that at least one-half of the remaining funds for competing research project grants (RPGs) in FY 2025 be used to upfront fund RPG competing awards. Upfront funding provides the funding for all years of the approved project period .. from one fiscal year"
Hundreds of employees at the EPA released a “Declaration of Dissent” today, accusing EPA officials of politicizing the agency and undermining its core mission to “protect human health and the environment.” scim.ag/4lB937S
Where has industry been the past several months? Better late than never I suppose…..
The Trump administration has canceled billions in research grants to Harvard, imperiling critical scientific work. This has prompted the university to seek new funding models and raises questions about the future of US science funding.
#AcademicSky 🧪
A federal judge on Monday declared the Trump administration’s move to cut hundreds of grants issued by the National Institutes of Health illegal, accusing the government of discrimination against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. individuals. nyti.ms/4jSIjOG
If you’ve ever travelled across multiple time zones, you may already know a bit about #jetlag. What symptoms do you experience?
Check out our full factsheet on Jetlag here: www.bioclocks.uk/factsheets
#chronobiology #scicomm 🧪
A wonderful piece on the late Joanne Chory, a true giant of plant biology. A dear friend, colleague and collaborator for over 3 decades. Sorely missed!
Plant biologist Joanne Chory spent her career trying to grow plants that could sequester CO2 in their roots. Her wild ideas took hold.
Learn about her outstanding career and legacy in Ep. 4 of “The Leap" with @hypothesisfund.bsky.social. 🔊 Listen here: buff.ly/yLqDcDL
🧠📉 The 'pivot penalty' in science
A new study in @nature.com finds scientists get cited less after switching research fields – the bigger the shift, the steeper the drop.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/d415...
#SciComm #AcademicSky 🧪
Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.
There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.
Furiously logging all the new budget news, laughing grimly that it landed *just after* we hit publish. Of course it did.
Grateful that the entire point of @unbreaking.org is to give us a durable platform where we can keep integrating new developments. We'll digest, contextualize & update next week.
Super happy to share our latest in @natcancer.nature.com co-led by @pannunziolab.bsky.social! We review the complex role of the circadian clock in genome integrity, DNA repair, immunity, metabolism, and cancer with a specific focus on early-onset cancer. Check it out!
www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Why are animal models useful for CNS drug discovery?
zendudest.substack.com/p/why-animal...
