Beautiful sunrise in Havre de Grace

That was a midwest-level of green sky! What a storm

I'm defending my PhD next Friday, May 23!(!!!!). I'll be highlighting our work looking at aneuploidy in early human development. If you're interested I'd love to have you join via Zoom (DM me for info) or on the Homewood campus!

Wow that's an interesting one! At least if you had to lose some organoids, these made for a good discussion! Alternatively, chia pet organoids.

I’ve had fungal contamination before but usually it either disintegrates the organoids or exists as its own colorful free floating entity. But based off the images that’s my best guess too for Tiffany’s plates, probably just a different flavor of fuzzy

Are the organoids still in suspension or have they adhered? Sometimes they get sticky (and some brands of plates have this happen more often) and if they do, splat out like that. Seems unlikely for a whole plate to do that unintentionally though

Women, minorities fired in purge of NIH science review boards Scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal.

A disturbing, but alas, not surprising, report from the Washington Post.

[Gift link]

wapo.st/4jtCPdw

I'm so sorry, Kristen.

I may be tired and a little hoarse, but as I said again and again on the Senate floor, this is a moment where we cannot afford to be silent, when we must speak up.

@booker.senate.gov 👏👏👏

‘One of the darkest days’: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs In shock move, four institute directors at the US biomedical agency are removed from their posts.

Carnage.

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

* And postdocs!

This is so depressing. As a former F31 recipient, these grants are so important for training scientists. And behind that flat line are thousands of grad students who worked tirelessly to put together a competitive submission that now isn’t being reviewed or awarded for reasons beyond their control

Thanks Shubham!

Thank you!

And @bobbyjeyeguy.bsky.social for mentorship and support throughout the *6 years* I have been working on this! 7/n

Massive thanks to all of the authors, including Clayton Santiago and @sethblackshaw.bsky.social for the multiomics analysis, Kiara Eldred, Ian Glass, and Tom Reh for fetal tissue, Arturo Hernandez for the functional assays, and Nate Lord for the computational modeling 6/n

Lastly, we modeled this system to try to understand why the retina uses such a complicated system for PR development, and show that doing so provides accurate temporality, subtype fate, and robustness in specification despite underlying variability in RPCs 5/n

We use this DIO3 mutant to show that the developing retina experiences local negative autoregulatory feedback similar to what exists on an organismal level to maintain homeostatic levels of TH. Additionally, we used chimeric organoids to show a role for cell non-autonomous feedback in TH reg. 4/n

Turns out, disrupting TH signaling genetically (DIO3 mutant) or pharmacologically (exogenous TH) advances photoreceptor subtype specification and promotes red/green cone fate, even inducing other photoreceptor subtypes to express red/green opsin. 3/n

DIO3 degrades thyroid hormone (TH), and we predicted it would have a role in limiting TH signaling which promotes terminal red/green cone fate. We show that it is expressed in retinal progenitor cells (RPCs) and we hypothesize that the ratio of DIO3+ RPCs:DIO3-neurons drives specification events 2/n

Very excited to share (most of) my PhD work, in which we use human retinal organoids to understand how thyroid hormone signaling is regulated in the developing retina to promote robust and accurate photoreceptor subtype specification. Turns out, it's a lot more complicated than we expected. 1/n

We are experiencing an assault on science unparalleled by anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s not one issue or another anymore, the entire institution is under attack by the most powerful individuals in the country.

This Friday, where will you be?

standupforscience2025.org

Trump Tracker: Firings, lawsuits, and U.S. science in chaos Follow President Donald Trump’s impact on U.S. research and science globally

A freeze on meetings of expert panels that peer review grant proposals at the National Institutes of Health is kicking in this week.

Follow Science’s coverage of President Donald Trump’s impact on U.S. research and science globally. ⬇️ scim.ag/40XtSSi

Abrupt Dismissal of NIH and NSF Staff Undermines Government Efficiency

Just a normal Wednesday at Johns Hopkins, where it's 56 degrees with a chilly breeze.....inside. 🙃

Federal Register hold makes ‘end run’ around court pause on NIH funding freeze NIH-related updates to the Federal Register, which are required for the scheduling of study sections and advisory councils, are on hold indefinitely, according to an email reviewed by <i>The Transmitt...

A large portion of grants awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health cannot be funded for the foreseeable future because of an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register, according to an email reviewed by The Transmitter.

By @avaskham.bsky.social

bit.ly/3X8ngz8

Current Baltimore vibes ☺️ the wind knocked out my power. Maybe a good excuse to disconnect for an evening instead of doom scrolling. Thankful for my backlit kindle 😅

"Where Law Ends Tyranny Begins"

Engraving on the exterior of the United States Department of Justice headquarters.