A cytomegalovirus-encoded lncRNA blocks cell-cycle progression Human cytomegalovirus expresses the highly abundant lncRNA RNA2.7 to reprogram host gene expression. RNA2.7 stabilizes cellular mRNAs by sequestering RNA-binding proteins and enforces a G1-S cell-cycl...

Really annoying that viruses figured out the value of long noncoding RNAs too.
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Gotta love San Francisco folks showing up in Ocean Beach for No Kings!

Awesome!

🔥

Happy birthday Needhi ❤️

Documentary showcasing work of local midwife to screen at Watsonville Film Festival next week “The Long Labor,” a short documentary that follows Watsonville midwife Maria Ramos Bracamontes, is part of the Watsonville Film Festival’s program this year. Lookout spoke with the film’s co-director…

“The Long Labor,” a short documentary that follows Watsonville midwife Maria Ramos Bracamontes, is part of the Watsonville Film Festival’s program this year. Lookout spoke with the film’s co-director Consuelo Alba, who also founded the festival.

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co

This is why it's not enough for Congress to just appropriate funds to scientific agencies. How the funds are or are not spent and when they are spent needs to be enforced.

The administration is playing games with our taxpayer dollars, when they should be going towards scientific innovation.

Additional resources include a reanalysis of tabulis muris and senis to include lncRNAs and integrated UCSC genome browser session so y'all can check out your own gene of interest for potential functional sORFs! Enjoy

We are excited to present this paper which has been the brain child of grad student Eric Malekos. He has taken all riboseq data and mass spec data available from immune cells and analyzed and categorized all potential sORFs. He performed 2 CRISPR screens in macrophages to identify functional sORFs.

A line graph shown the number of NIH new and competitive awards funded for fiscal year 2026 (through 2/13/26) compared with fiscal years 2021-2025. The fiscal year 2026 is lagging well behind with only 569 awards made through 2/13/26 compared to >2000 for previous fiscal years.

New and competitive renewal awards.

The number of awards is 569 compared with more than 2200 through the same date in earlier fiscal years.

All ICs have now made awards except for NIAAA, NCCIH, NLM, FIC, and OD. NEI (Eye Institute) made its first award during the new period.

3/4

Segmented filamentous bacteria reprogramming of alveolar macrophages limits postinfluenza bacterial pneumonia SFB colonization phenotypically alters alveolar macrophages, maintaining their antibacterial functions in inflamed interferon-rich lungs.

Segmented filamentous bacteria reprogramming of alveolar macrophages limits postinfluenza bacterial pneumonia | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Today @nature.com, it's #AlphaGenome, to decipher and determine functionality of the regulatory (very challenging) variants in our genome.
Another big step of AI for advancing life science
nature.com/articles/s41...

How many STEM Ph.D.s were lost from the U.S. federal government last year?

My colleagues @mghersher.bsky.social and @policyhound.bsky.social dug into a recent data release to find the answer. A @science.org exclusive.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Nature Aging @nataging.nature.com turns 5 and asked ~50 researchers to reflect on the field. I am honored to contribute alongside colleagues whose work has shaped how I think about #aging science.

Past, present and future perspectives on the science of aging
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Biomedical and life science articles by female researchers spend longer under review Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in STEMM fields, at top institutions, and in senior positions. This study analyzes millions of biomedical and life science articles, revealing that f...

Cost of being female lead/corresponding author in biomedical sciences: "[T]he median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles" even in disciplines where women well-represented. #AcademicSky

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Stimulating immune cells in vitro is a common experimental lab model. We profiled 150K blood immune cells treated with 11 different stimuli to compare the effects. The data are freely available for researchers. See the preprint for our findings and to access the data 🧪 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A mouse circadian proteome atlas @cp-molcell.bsky.social
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws - PubMed The long-held but erroneous assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system that is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering our profession--and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produ …

”never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system that is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering our profession--and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produce their best work”

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social Mettl3-catalyzed m6A methylation determines CD8+ T cell differentiation fate in tumor
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Molecular, Cellular, Tissue, and Organismal Functions of Type III Interferons Type III interferons are essential immune mediators playing pleiotropic roles during health and disease. In this review, we highlight the molecular and cellular pathways that lead to the production of...

💥New paper alert!💥 What’s better than starting 2026 with an @annualreviews.bsky.social #Immunology, often a once-in-a-life honor ❤️?! Check it out if you want to know everything about type III interferons #IFN! Thanks to my wonderful team for their amazing work 🤗 doi.org/10.1146/annu...

‘It’s surreal’: US sanctions lock International Criminal Court judge out of daily life Canadian judge Kimberly Prost is unable to use credit cards, transfer money or book everyday services in what she calls an attack on the independence of the judiciary

Worth noting that even as Trump bombs Venezuela to unilaterally seize Maduro on domestic US charges, the ICC judges who voted to investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan face such severe US banking sanctions that they are for all intents and purposes excluded from modern life.

A SWI/SNF-specific Ig-like domain, SWIFT, is a transcription factor binding platform
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@science.org @ckadoch.bsky.social @danafarbernews.bsky.social
@harvardmed.bsky.social @broadinstitute.org @hhmi-science.bsky.social

Pharmacologic reversal of advanced Alzheimer’s disease in mice and identification of potential therapeutic nodes in human brain Chaubey et al. demonstrate that restoration of brain resilience reverses advanced disease in two different mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), challenging the century-long dogma of AD irreversib...

Very cool paper showing a NAMPT activator that restores NAD+ in the brain can prevent Alzheimer's onset in an amyloid-driven 5xFAD mouse model. More evidence of a metabolic basis for neurodegenerative diseases.

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

‘This is immoral’: Public Health experts respond to funding cuts to science & medicine  Over the course of the year, the Trump administration cut billions in funding for the National Institutes of Health, and $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine research. “There has been erosion of trust in science and public health and medicine,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the Texas Children’s Hospital. “But it’s not random, this occurred deliberately by bad actors for political motivation.” Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the NIH, said he’s never seen anything like this. Cuts to NIH resulted in the cancellation of 383 clinical trials affecting 74,000 trial participants. “Many of these people very serious cancers for which we don't have a great answer, but maybe we're in the middle of discovering one, and then the trial gets stopped, and all that data is lost, and those people are basically left to drift,” Dr. Collins said. “This is immoral to drop somebody into that space.”

“There has been erosion of trust in science & public health & medicine,” vaccine & infectious disease expert @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social said in response to the Trump administration’s cuts to vaccine and medical research. “It’s a terrible tragedy,” said Dr. Francis Collins, former NIH director.

After NIH grant cuts, breast cancer research at Harvard slowed, and lab workers left Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments.

Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments. n.pr/4a4N3zD

Congratulations to Dr. Christy Montano on a fantastic defense. We are all incredibly proud of you.

A Battle with My Blood When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family.

A very moving read. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.

If you read and watch one thing today it should be this pice accompanying @agawande.bsky.social documentary.
"As of November 5th, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children."
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is one of the most coveted & prestigious positions for UC graduates. It gives a hiring incentive to campuses who hire recipients for a tenure track position. What a DAMN travesty.

This is capitulation to Trump's demand letter & anti-diversity agenda.

UC to Stop Funding Systemwide Postdoc Program Established in 1984 to encourage women and minority Ph.D.s to pursue academia, the program has attracted right-wing criticism for prioritizing diverse candidates.

This article presents the end of the PPFP as a done deal, but it’s not—until the chancellors’ meeting this afternoon.

We are very proud of Valeriya for obtaining the Pfizer trainee award for her work on Gaplinc #Cytokines2025