Where a Love of Birds Leads Biology Ph.D. student Taylor Rubin wins a 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America.

Congratulations to Biology Ph.D. student Taylor Rubin, who won a 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America!

"The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Jay Bhattacharya) has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half."

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Now out in AEM @asm.org! 🎉🧪

*High school student-isolated mutants 👉🏻 novel genetic causes of biofilm-associated adaptations
*We learn how diversity arises quickly and is maintained
*EvolvingSTEM enables scalable research in classrooms & promotes scientific literacy

journals.asm.org/eprint/FBU9M...

Under Trump, NIH Funding Opportunity Notices Dropped From 787 To 84 Even though the U.S. Congress gave the National Institutes of Health budget a modest increase, the Trump administration may be using other ways to cut the NIH budget.

www.forbes.com/sites/brucel...

A pore-forming antiphage defence is activated by oligomeric phage proteins - Nature Bacteria use diverse defence systems against phages, including a 164-residue prophage-encoded protein, Rip1, which senses conserved phage assembly rings to form membrane pores that block virion matura...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Rip1 uses these phage protein ring complexes as a template to assemble into membrane-disrupting pores that inhibit phage virion assembly and cause premature death of the host cell."

@isv-news.bsky.social

National survey of NIH-funded researchers shows precarious state of U.S. science — ‘This is like the Titanic’ A nationwide STAT survey of NIH-funded researchers reveals that, a year after Donald Trump's return to the White House, many scientists are reeling

www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/n...

Why Is the NIH Abandoning Science? This is not a temporary slowdown.

www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

Which type of Scientist are you?

I don't remember where I got this but found it going through some very old files. NB: I am a Geek.

Bacteriophage data on capsular Klebsiella bacteria barcoded library

New paper 🔔

Collaboration
@sullivan-lab.bsky.social
Marissa Gittrich led the work

Klebsiella phage biology has focused almost entirely on capsulated strains, but capsule loss is the #1 resistance mechanism under phage predation. We used a naturally acapsular host to reveal the receptor landscape

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

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

Mind blowing

How bioRxiv changed the way biologists share ideas – in numbers Four million articles are now downloaded from bioRxiv every month, according to an analysis of the life-science preprint server’s first 13 years of existence.

I'm a big fan of bioRxiv, so it was fascinating to dig into the stats behind the rise of this preprint server from its first 13 or so years for Nature News @nature.com 🧪 @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social #preprints

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

Capturing dynamic phage–pathogen coevolution by clinical surveillance - Nature The acquisition of a parasitic anti-phage mobile genetic element, PLE11, showing potent anti-phage activity against cocirculating ICP1, and the subsequent evolution of ICP1 to escape this defense, are...

Capturing dynamic phage–pathogen coevolution by clinical surveillance

"we capture the acquisition of a parasitic anti-phage mobile genetic element, PLE11, that initiated a selective sweep coinciding with the largest cholera outbreak in recent records. "

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The're also doing untargeted deep sequencing of wastewater RNA. Cool project! naobservatory.org/casper/

There's a preprint out: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Four scientists pose outside of City Hall park at the Stand Up for Science rally. One holds a poster saying “An attack on scientists is an attack on everyone”

@queenscollegecuny.bsky.social scientists at the @standupforscience.bsky.social rally today!

If you block junior scientists from ensuring that they can afford to live (or start families!) in the exorbitantly expensive areas around their workplaces, only family-subsidized solitary rich kids will be able to pursue careers in research - amidst exponential inflation, increasingly few people.

Current NIH leadership want you to think they are using rigorous, consistent & scientific processes to screen studies to align them with agency priorities.

But the process that they have put down on paper is a sham.

It’s important to know NIH is not following its own guidance. Here’s why:

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Stand Up for Science
New York City National Day of Action Rally!
Saturday, March 7, 12pm - 2pm
City Hall Park

Rally to defend scientific integrity, protect public health, and protest political interference in the scientific enterprise.

Meet PSC members at the Broadway and Park Place entrance.

Hoping for a big turnout tomorrow!

Sabotaging the NSF fellowship is a blunder Over the last year, the Trump administration has sent one discouraging message after another to young people aspiring to a scientific career in the United States. The corrosive rhetoric that mocks sci...

Sabotaging the NSF fellowship is a blunder

"After making a massive mistake of curtailing the entry of excellent foreign-born scientists, the administration is compounding the error by further restricting the development and availability of domestic scientists."

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

Thank you for your service @nmrkaygee.bsky.social !

New paper showing that bacteria with more genes for cooperation can live in a broader range of habitats and that genes for cooperation are more more likely to be in the accessory genome www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @lauriebelch.bsky.social

In our latest work, we characterise the Tmn defence system. We reveal plasmolysis as a new way to block phage infection, dramatically reducing secondary infections.

Profile: Dr. Caroline M. Solomon - The Mind Hears I tell my students that learning isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience. I would tell younger Carrie to try new things and find new ways of experiencing life.

Great profile of @ntidpres.bsky.social in the @themindhears.bsky.social

themindhears.org/2026/02/25/p...

Epistasis and co-adaptation in bacterial genome evolution Nature Reviews Genetics - Bacterial genome evolution is shaped by epistasis, which can constrain or promote specific evolutionary paths. The authors review how integrating the effects of epistatic...

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two years thinking about genome evolution and how recent research revealing complex gene-gene interactions has complicated traditional ‘gene-centric’ genomic approaches to evolution. So here is a review that consolidates these thoughts!

rdcu.be/e6pHY

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

The number of researchers who*don't even respond* to review requests is appalling. If you can't or don't want to review, fine. But don't waste everyone's time by ignoring three or four emails that can be dealt with one click.

Claire Shipman is a former television journalist, and it shows.

Going live to tape and telling the world how your university was invaded and your student abducted on the same day is exactly how you fight authoritarianism.

Cover of The Lancet:

@thelancet.com
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I'll translate it for you Dave. There's going to be a small club getting funded and you're not in it.

Grantmaking will become industrial policy executed through academia.