My absolute favorite tourist attraction in Boston, hands down, is the Mapparium. It's a quick and relatively cheap visit.

www.atlasobscura.com/places/mappa...

Tag yourself I'm "Oh my God how I do hate species & varieties."

Yes! Those are absolutely all veggies!!!

Yay! Congratulations on getting it working!!!!

Oh, crap. I guess I'm in for a long night tonight :(

I'm experiencing this too, trying to submit a letter of rec for a student due tomorrow! I sent the help desk a message, but worry it won't be seen on the weekend.

Please share!
My group at @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social is offering a post-doctoral position (4 years). We look for a structural biologist with experience in Cryo-EM/Cryo-ET to investigate the mechanisms of host invasion by pathogenic fungi. Deadline February 28th!
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

If you participated in a yeast meeting in 2025, reach out to me about publishing your work from that meeting!

The NRA supported gun restrictions once in California. Is it rooted in racism? With 10-day waiting periods, universal background checks, and open-carry restrictions, California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. Here's why one expert says they're rooted in...

It may have been, but it does have a history of lobbying for gun control, specifically when Black Panthers openly practiced their 2nd amendment rights in California. Its words/actions today are consistent with past behavior.

abc7news.com/post/califor...

I don't expect second amendment advocates to behave differently today than they did after Philando Castile's murder.

People already working hard to prove how perfect Alex Pretti was. To show he didn't "deserve" to be killed. But it's a trap folks. You're only feeding into a dynamic where people who are considered lesser get no protection. You don't have to be an Alex Pretti to deserve to live.

Student evals are probably a very good measure of student biases, though. So if what an institution values is adherence to those biases, they happen to be a very useful tool!

Most institutions don't *say* that's what they value, but proclaimed and actual values aren't the same thing.

There are lots of reasons to compare what is happening now to Nazi Germany and there are also lots of reasons to compare what is happening now to the post-1850 Fugitive Slave Act U.S. and it's *weird* how people respond with interest to the former but total confusion to the latter

Thanks!

🚨We’re hiring! Please help spread the word!
Our lab at @TheSainsburyLab is recruiting a pre-doctoral intern to work on plant immunity research. Ideal for those who are planning to pursue a PhD and seeking research experience. tatsuyanobori.com

Is this opportunity available for applicants outside the UK? If so, I'll publicize it to students from last semester's Biology of Fungi class--many will graduate soon!

(Compared to a mean of $141,900, from the same 2022 source. It looks like @aubreyhirsch.bsky.social had more updated values than my 5-minute check, but we're all in approximately the right ballpark.)

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022 The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC.

Because I can't resist looking up a number:

Median net worth of American families in 2022 was $70,300. Your guess was pretty good!

Source: www.federalreserve.gov/publications...

Molecular biologists are a superstitious bunch. If I saw this in a thrift store, I'd pick it up and set it up as a lab idol to watch over our reactions.

Post-doc positions:
"Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..."

uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

I got this one yesterday. I interpreted it as "probably legit but definitely insulting" and deleted it. It looked like a PhD project, and I always have some sympathy for PhD students, so it looked like VERY bad judgement from their PI.

‼️Please RT: The CEPLAS Graduate School call for 2026 is now open! Detailed info on our website: bit.ly/4q19JWk
@hhu.de @unicologne.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social @fz-juelich.de @leibnizipk.bsky.social @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social

Poster advertising doctoral positions in 2026 at the International Max Planck Research School for Evolutionary Biology.

Up to 10 doctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology now open for application!

Start date September 2026.

More info here: www.evolbio.mpg.de/imprs

Seconding this! I didn't know this until I started working at my current job (at a small liberal arts college). It often is cheaper than in-state tuition, depending on the details. I don't love the lack of price transparency, but absolutely it's worth applying to a program you're interested in.

I enjoy this system, which I don't personally work on (but would love to!) because it suggest that bacteria are hanging out in fungal cells WAY more than I'd expect!

Induced endosymbiosis between a fungus and bacterium reveals a shift from antagonism to commensalism - Nature Communications Gassler et al. implant a free-living bacterium into fungal cells to study early steps in the establishment of an endosymbiosis. They observe vertical transmission of the bacteria despite initial host ...

In a wonderful bit of good timing, the authors published their follow-up right before our journal club came out--they documented physiological and transcript changes during adaptation to the endosymbionts.

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

Check out this "journal club" article, by me and Matt Wengler, describing a cool recent paper on injecting bacteria into fungal mycelium. With some clever artificial selection, the fungus adapts to the presence of the bacteria, making the symbiosis stable!

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

Induced endosymbiosis between a fungus and bacterium reveals a shift from antagonism to commensalism - Nature Communications Gassler et al. implant a free-living bacterium into fungal cells to study early steps in the establishment of an endosymbiosis. They observe vertical transmission of the bacteria despite initial host ...

Check out the original paper (not by us; we just wrote the "journal club") which describes what they did! Also, in a great bit of timing, the authors just published this cool paper in Nature Communications on how these endosymbioses evolve:

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

California county sees increase in rare kind of poisoning Earlier this year, three people were hospitalized after eating poisonous mushrooms.

Be careful everyone:

California county sees increase in rare kind of poisoning www.sfgate.com/bayarea/arti...