Orange pigments in birds and human redheads prevent cellular damage, study shows A pigment that makes feathers and hair orange helps prevent cellular damage by removing excess cysteine from cells. Pheomelanin is an orange-to-red pigment that is built with the amino acid cysteine a...

Ability to make pheomelanin, the orange-red pigment responsible for human red hair and bird red feathers, helps remove excess cysteine and can reduce oxidative stress. phys.org/news/2026-01...

Bioinformatics isn’t just running pipelines.
The hardest part? Knowing when not to code.
A thread on why context comes first 🧵

See my step-by-step guide, links to other tutorials, and troubleshooting notes: sciencetania.blogspot.com/2022/09/sett...

Learning #coding and #Linux is easier when you can play without stress. Don't buy a new computer. Don't dual boot. Play with that old computer in storage that you or your parents planned to recycle anyway. It's a great way to get another 5+ years out of old tech.

#Bioinformatics students, want to learn Linux and still have your old computer? Install Ubuntu on it. Linux has many versions ("distributions") and Ubuntu is a common one with lots of online support. Use your old computer, the one you replaced because it got really slow, but still KIND OF works.

Replicability of bulk RNA-Seq differential expression and enrichment analysis results for small cohort sizes Author summary Transcriptomics data from RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) experiments are complex and challenging to analyze due to their high dimensionality and variability. These experiments often involve l...

This preprint used RNA-seq to see how sample size affects reproducibility. They found increasing sample sizes improves precision more than recall. "False negatives (low recall) are a more significant driver of low replicability than false positives (low precision)". journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

PPT to PDF: Convert PowerPoint to PDF for free | Acrobat Convert PPT to PDF to turn any PowerPoint presentation into a PDF file easily. Online PPT to PDF conversion keeps your slides professional and presentable.

If you need file convertion to make your PowerPoint slide into a high quality pdf for poster printing, Adobe does it for free and is safe: www.adobe.com/acrobat/onli...

FBI Confirms Chrome, Edge, Safari Warning—Stop Using These Websites These attacks are real—here’s what you do.

Be careful with unknown online file converter tools since they can give you malware. Lots of sketchy websites. More info: www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...

RNA xkcd.com/3056

Hey folks! I got a tattoo of my beloved PIEZO ion channel on my arm! Now I can show how they activate (flatten) under pressure by flexing—Will add a bit of performance art to my science talks 🧪🧠.

So if you're susceptible to asthma, be extra careful during measles outbreaks even if you're vaccinated. Your vaccine-given antibody levels might not be as high as you think.

Asthma Status and Waning of Measles Antibody Concentrations after Measles Immunization Asthmatics have increased risks of common and serious microbial infections including vaccine preventable diseases. Little is known about whether asthma influences waning of humoral immunity. We assess...

Measles vaccine & asthma study found that children who have OR WILL LATER DEVELOP asthma show a faster drop in measles antibodies, compared to children who don't develop asthma. Study of 838 children by Yoo et al 2015. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

New study explains how antidepressants can protect against infections and sepsis - Salk Institute for Biological Studies LA JOLLA—Antidepressants like Prozac are commonly prescribed to treat mental health disorders, but new research suggests they could also protect against serious infections and life-threatening sepsis....

Here's the press release from the @salkinstitute.bsky.social about the SSRI immunity study: www.salk.edu/news-release...

Fluoxetine promotes IL-10–dependent metabolic defenses to protect from sepsis-induced lethality An SSRI protects from infection induced lethality by promoting immune-dependent metabolic defenses.

SSRI fluoxetine (Prozac) increases blood levels of anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10. This is why fluoxetine helps protect against overactive immune responses that can lead to sepsis or long Covid. Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...