The internet can be great!

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

Yes,,, your boy has taken a ride in the 4 man bobsled,,, but im an adrenaline junkie and needed to try skeleton. And now I’ve officially joined the team and am gonna try to start competing.

66 years old going 66 mph.

I love this portrait of a scientist so much. Portrait of Dr Bouchard, by Tamara de Lempicka, 1928

High-stoichiometry m6A sites are evolutionarily conserved bit.ly/498rOuQ

I've been waiting for this Titeca et al. story from Anne-Claude Gavin's lab to come out: A systematic, comprehensive analysis of lipid transfer protein cargo selection, a truly massive undertaking. What a time to work in lipid biology. Cool stuff every few days.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finally out! We studied the retinas of the longest-living vertebrate, the Greenland shark, and found that the retinas remain remarkably healthy in animals around 150 years old. What is the mechanism? It may be a highly efficient DNA repair system. Enjoy!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The changing roles of Escherichia coli Nature Microbiology - Richard Lenski traces the legacy of Escherichia coli and how science is evolving to use this model organism in new ways.

"The changing roles of Escherichia coli" -- a short essay by yours truly.

rdcu.be/eVtXT

a shot of a god botherer in a car, next to him on the passenger seat is a skull in an ornate box

'Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey.'
Photograph by Daniel Ibanez

Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl The molecular, cellular, and functional restoration of the axolotl thymus after de novo regeneration is described.

Can't believe my postdoc paper is finally out. Christmas came early this year, holy moly 🎄

Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Now THAT is going down in a blaze of glory... just watch the last few minutes/seconds of this stream as the eruption gets closer and closer until eventually it kills the camera.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqmp...

No Reserve: 27-Years-Owned 1962 BMW Isetta 250 Bid for the chance to own a No Reserve: 27-Years-Owned 1962 BMW Isetta 250 at auction with Bring a Trailer, the home of the best vintage and classic cars online. Lot #222,846.

27-Years-Owned 1962 BMW Isetta 250 at No Reserve

New paper from the @rouxlab.bsky.social on Nature Communications! We study how membrane tension is spatially organized in cells. Using the mechanosensitive probe Flipper-TR to visualize tension across the plasma membrane of adherent cells and to dissect the conditions needed for a gradient to happen

A global screen for magnetically induced neuronal activity in the pigeon brain How animals detect the Earth’s magnetic field remains a mystery in sensory biology. Despite extensive behavioral evidence, the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms responsible for magnetic sensin...

Omg this is amazing. Fun fact: my original PhD goal was to study magnetoreception but no PIs were interested and someone suggested I study hair cells as an analogous system. Turns out they were even more analogous than we imagined!!!

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

PULLET TRAIN

Wow, furthest south confirmed sighting of the 11/11 aurora (that I have found) is in Zacatecas, Mexico, north of Guadalajara. Phenomenonal!

Low on the horizon, pink/red in color, these types of auroras are very high in the atmosphere and thus is why they can be seen so far south.

#northernlights

From the houston community on Reddit: Remember Marvin Zindler's "Slime in the Ice Machine" segment? Explore this post and more from the houston community

www.reddit.com/r/houston/co...

Specificity, length and luck drive gene rankings in association studies - Nature Genetic association tests prioritize candidate genes based on different criteria.

How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals?

In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!

🧬🧪🧵

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

However, at other sites only the intricate structure of the nucleosome depleted region changes.

From this we conclude that nucleosome depletion itself is a major driver of long-range contacts.

Figure 3 - Neuropeptide expression delineates distinct neural circuits in H. vulgaris. Panels D and F - Top and middle: Immunostaining using an antibody against GLWa (green) reveals the RP1 circuit extending from the basal disk to the tentacles. Bottom: GLWa immunostaining in body column rings shows endodermal en1 neurons of the RP2 circuit.

A molecular, spatial and regulatory atlas of the Hydra vulgaris nervous system

Read this #LifelongDevSI #OA Techniques and Resources Article by Hannah Morris Little, Abby S. Primack, Jennifer Tsverov, Celina E. Juliano (@julianolab.bsky.social) and colleagues:

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

This is the kind of stuff we're going to need to do virtual cells well

How do cells navigate up gradients of adhesive proteins?
🤔

Termed "Haptotaxis", this effect is ubiquitous in cell migration, but it's mechanism was poorly understood

We show that passive friction directs cells & explains complex trajectories on gradients

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

So, uh, when are folks gonna talk about this kind of stuff in "virtual cells"?

Hi-C! That's how we did X. laevis (plus other stuff, but Hi-C is a low-effort experiment that really moves the needle)

Quantitative imaging of lipid transport in mammalian cells - Nature Directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting into organelle membranes.

This is awesome! Lipid probes for quantitative imaging of lipid transport. A real need in the lipid field!

@nadlerlab.bsky.social

It's Minnesota State Fair time! It's time for Minnesotan folk art! Here, for example, is Saturn Devouring His Corn, in the seed art category!

Conservation of bilaterian genome structure is the exception, not the rule - Genome Biology Species from diverse animal lineages have conserved groups of orthologous genes together on the same chromosome for over half a billion years since the last common ancestor of bilaterians. Although no...

Delighted to share the peer-reviewed version of our study led by @tomlewin.bsky.social now out in Genome Biology @bmc.springernature.com! We analyzed 64 chromosome-level genomes across 15 animal phyla and found that extensive genome rearrangements are the norm in bilaterians.
doi.org/10.1186/s130...