And from a 1 to a 2-year ban for a B?

Ugh, time to drop them from my annual playlist. Thanks for updating the sketch meter.

New Archspire too if you need even more notes!

Metallic Conductance in Palladium Nanowires Templated by DNA Origami Molds Pd nanowires are created by self-assembly based on DNA origamis and exhibit exceptionally good charge conduction properties.

I am delighted to announce our new paper, which investigates the conductivity of our DNA-templated palladium nanowires:
doi.org/10.1002/sstr...

Great work by Borja and everyone else involved! 🧬

Realizing that some of my inexplicable sadness about the Artemis II stuff is that it feels like a trans-dimensional communication from an America that took a different path and chose joy instead of fear and hate.

Painting titled "Carb Loading." At the center is a seal with big eyes eating a huge croissant and surrounded by large croissants. The background is purple.

#art #seal #croissant #bread #food #sciart #painting #SilentSunday

From anecdotal experience, social media use is down in general. 5 years ago most scientists had Twitter and checked it semi-regularly. A lot made Bluesky accounts, but almost nobody uses them. Also Facebook has died for under-40s, and many people avoid Insta/TikTok because they know it’s addicting.

Let the saxophone flow through you!

Hey everyone, new targets are needed now more than ever! 🧶🧬 Please consider if you have something ready to go.

Breakdown of costs for JCS in 2025. Pie chart: Editorial salaries and stipends - 19%; In-house production salaries - 23%; Manuscript processing and publication costs - 7%; Travel and expenses - 3%; Marketing - 6%; Sales - 8%; Community engagement - 5%; General expenses/overheads - 29%.

Why is publishing so expensive?

In this Editorial, we (@katherine-brown.bsky.social @drmichaelway.bsky.social & @seemagrewal.bsky.social) provide details and context on JCS's finances, and hope to dispel some of the myths around the economics of publishing.

journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

I will never get Mambo no. 6 out of my head

RNA droplets that grow and divide with intrinsic ribozyme activity 🧬

Scientific diagram showing the alphaKL. Left panels shows various atomic force microscope images of structures built using the motif, while the right panel shows a computer rendering of the motif.

In addition to carrying genetic data, DNA and RNA can also be designed to fold into 'molecular breadboards' with nanometer addressability. To enable tightly-packed RNA origami, we developed a new motif, the αKL, which we're excited to share in our preprint!🧬🧪 1/🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Ooh, that’s weird. Any thoughts on this sort of effect would happen with RNA with varying degrees of structure? We see all sorts of bizarre behavior in (no-SDS) PAGE gels of RNA and everybody has their favorite reasoning as to why.

RNA droplets that grow and divide with intrinsic ribozyme activity 🧬

Analysis of simulation data showing the occupancy of each of the triplex motifs and how it correlates with the angle between the joined helices. Generally, peaks in the triplet probabilities for each triplet corresponds to a discrete peak in the angle distribution.

I ran over 50 µs of molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the dynamics and geometric constraints introduced by the triplexes! Simulations revealed that there is a tradeoff between occupancy in the three triplex sites, and that generally not all of them can be satisfied at the same time.

A gallery of AFM images showing how changing the sequence of the flanking bases affects yields of nanoscale tile assemblies mediated by ails. Changing the A-minor bases to Gs maintains high yields of structures, and any base can be inserted as a spacer between the 4-base loop and the A-minor triplex. Disrupting triplexes by inserting Us leads to poor yield. Additionally, yield of assemblies is dependent on multiple aKLs, revealing the cooperatively of multiple, weak interactions.

And it works! AFM imaging of αKL-containing tiles shows assembly of unbounded stacks of tiles mediated by the loops! We tested 4 different sequence variants based on different biological 23S rRNA sequences and a negative control where U nucleotides replaced the triplex-forming purines.

Motif composition of the aKL: Most of the motif is based on the alphaPK from the 23S rRNA subunit, which has a single A-minor triplet and a three-base loop. Cody extended that motif with a motif based on the P4-P6 Group 1 Intron structure from Tetrahymena, which stabilizes a crossover with a G-major and two A-minor triplets. By extending the loop by 1 additional base and modifying the flanking sequences, we generated the aKL, which should be a 4-base loop stabilized by neighboring triplexes.

"But that looks so easy!" you say. "Just design a few unpaired bases!" Not so fast! Those bases must be pre-organized into a loop without disrupting the host helix. Thankfully, lead author and RNA wizard Cody Geary developed a nature-inspired triplex strategy which satisfies all the requirements. 🧬

The library of existing single-stranded connectors. 180-degree and 120-degree kissing loops connect two strands loop-to-loop. Branched kissing loops can branch a third strand from a 180-degree kissing loop at a 90-degree angle, but that forces any connections away from the connection because the bKL sequence needs to be long enough to be stable. Paranemic crossovers (PX) can be used to connect helices side-by-side, however they require complete crossover of the strand. The aKL joins neighboring helices by a short loop producing from the side of the helix.

Why do we need new motifs? The structure of nucleic acids limits the ways molecular designers can connect helices! When routing a single stranded origami, there's no good way to make sideways connections. The αKL solves this problem by looping out a 4-base sequence, which joins helices side-by-side.

Scientific diagram showing the alphaKL. Left panels shows various atomic force microscope images of structures built using the motif, while the right panel shows a computer rendering of the motif.

In addition to carrying genetic data, DNA and RNA can also be designed to fold into 'molecular breadboards' with nanometer addressability. To enable tightly-packed RNA origami, we developed a new motif, the αKL, which we're excited to share in our preprint!🧬🧪 1/🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This wasn’t quite as weird as Wallsocket, or as “parallel universe familiar” as Fishmonger, but her signature sound still comes through and I’m always happy for more Underscores!

The vocals are reminding me of somebody else… but I can’t place what. Baroness, maybe? Anyway, digging the instrumentation, especially on good headphones where you can sink into those long notes.

This tripped me up the first time I went to the UK. It was a bit disorienting to be able to read the ads on the Tube!

Woah! 🧬

Ok, here is the OFFICIAL AND ONLY CORRECT GUIDE to starting reading Pratchetts Books. Its a multiple step process, so read all steps carefully otherwise you will be wrong and shunned to eternity. 1. Go outside. 2. Trust the universe for once in your life. 3. Find any of these: Library, Thriftstore, secondhand bookshop, a cupboard with free books, your relatives or friends book shelf or storage boxes... 4. Locate the Pratchett Book. 5. The universe has now deciced with which book you must start with. 6. Compliment the universe for its wisdom. 7. From there on repeat the steps above.

You know what? Yes. This is the way. Let the narrative decide.

I recently caught it trying to make an excuse that “compressed file can be read into memory in their entirety because they’re smaller”… Forget how big they are when decompressed, or that the whole point of implementing compression was that our 20+ GB files were getting unwieldy as they got bigger.

First 6 Days of Iran War Cost U.S. $11.3 Billion, Pentagon Says

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.

FYI this thread is why the molecular programming feed only has posts from the last 3 days, for the curious 🧬

I’m super happy to pay on a per-feed basis to support the service! It doesn’t make sense for me to set up a whole server with a firehose consumer for my one lil feed that sees a post every ~3 days, so I’m happy to chip in to the economy of scale you have with your consumers and indexers!

This has been an ongoing problem, thankfully, there are lots of drop-in replacements!

leavesubstack.com