And the collaborative nature of science! I will be sharing this with my students this week.

Kai's blog is a beautiful story of the importance of paying attention to details before you understand their significance. I LOVE the description of the donut to spread properties of the MuLTEE strains--such a beautiful example of the importance of "close looking"! Fantastic!

Done.

"huh" It stands for universal cooperation. It shows that there is a global need, and willingness, to pause a conversation and sort out a communication problem as it occurs.

Word up, we're all the same. Here's proof

One word appears to be universal across languages.
Say it and you will be understood despite language barriers.

That's pretty weird, huh?

The Most Universally Understood Word In The World Appears In So Many Languages 🏺🧪
www.iflscience.com/the-most-uni...

I am looking for others who have scaled standards based grading for higher ed STEM. I teach intro cell/molecular biology labs aligned with Vision and Change core competencies. Timely, meaningful, regular feedback is challenging. Thoughts? #edusky #eruditepedagogy #standardsbasedgrading

To me this feels like the contrast between following a linear progression vs creating a web of connections.

I find it interesting to observe groups of cells on plates as they age and even dry out. The left side has a flo1 null and the right has a flo11 null. Both genes code for different surface structures in yeast. Love my proks but glad for a career that fosters life long boundary expansion.

Artificial selection led to the evolution of longer cells and, eventually, yeast ‘snowflakes’ that tangled to create clumps as tough as wood. TONY BURNETTI

By centrifuging yeast, @wcratcliff.bsky.social and colleagues got squishy beer-fermenters to form clumps as strong as wood. That story and more of the best from Science and science in today's #ScienceAdviser
www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Super cool book, @chrisadami.bsky.social! I also recommend the #Mindscape ep if you have not listened to it yet.

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024...

Went away for a few days and wowza! Bluesky is rocking. I am so excited. I hung on to Xtwitter longer than intended because of the professional network I had built. I am so excited to see the energy here on bluesky!

Look at us doing a new!

Hidden comet tails of marine snow impede ocean-based carbon sequestration Gravity-driven sinking of “marine snow” sequesters carbon in the ocean, constituting a key biological pump that regulates Earth’s climate. A mechanistic understanding of this phenomenon is obscured by...

A major setback or progress, depending on how you look “glass half full” situation of ocean based carbon sequestration.

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

We just found a major hidden biological parameter that controls flux of carbon in our oceans carbon budget calculations.

Rebuilding twitter connections is real. Happy to find you here.

Good to see you here. I just deactivated my "X" account and am now slowly rebuilding connections. No looking back.

These are yeast colonies accumulating a red pigmented intermediate in the adenine biosynthetic pathway. The left image is one week of growth. The right is 2 months of growth.

Time deepens the mystery.

I am still figuring my way around! Thanks for the tip.

This is a wickedly fun database. I found lots of data on Km / Vmax. There are many rabbit holes to poke around in. #edusky #STEMed

Growth unfolding from a yeast colony in new ways.

Ale yeast … grows in folds.

Why do cells in colonies form patterns when they are depleted for adenine? Why wedges instead of points?

Yeast cell-cell interactions intrigue me. I am exploring S. cerevisiae & S. pastorianus from ale & lager. I am curious about flocculation in yeasts that overwinter in the guts of social insects. My goal? Teach students the art of close looking. Leave colonies alone & see what wild things unfold.

I teach undergraduate cell and molecular bio labs at Amherst College. Interests are pedagogy and pathways in science, systems and modeling, molecular visualization, and and generally all things microbial. My research is evolving.

These books are among my all-time favorites. Functional morphology- how physics influences life’s structures at every scale: curves, shapes & sizes, motility, energetics; structures that support escape or staying put & surviving. Great reading for curious minds!

That’s really cool. My inclination is also to begin with the premise of life as a system.

mRNA decoding in human is kinetically and structurally distinct from bacteria - Nature The reaction coordinate of aminoacyl-tRNA movement is altered on the human ribosome and the process is an order of magnitude slower compared with bacteria due to eukaryote-specific structural elements...

Despite the conserved genetic code, ribosomal decoding in proks and euks is not the same game. This study dives into the high fidelity of eukaryotic ribosomes. “Proofreading is rate limiting”. This work will the carve new directions for therapeutic targeting with broad clinical potential.

S. cerevisiae on the left (an ale variety) and S. pastorianus right (a lager variety). The “donut” appears in lager cultures after sitting on the bench a few days. Flocs are smaller for lager strains. I wonder why the clearing in the middle?

I want to be in your class.

Felt bold and victorious conquering infrastructure when I changed my whole house filter until I saw the basement of my science center. So. Many. Pipes. All the levers…