Nelson Lau Lab

Is this halt of just new not yet NOGA's, or does the halt also apply to all Non-Competing ongoing grants in FY25/FY26?

Take care and hope all that caloric restriction helps you live longer!

Case in point, HHMI? No offense to @harmitmalik.bsky.social, you are one of the most vocal advocates here! But what is your insider insight into your HHMI colleagues and the HHMI brass? Can they throw out just some lifejackets to those barely treading water?

Nuns of your business?

Was that rocket around LA California? I also when to elementary school in Lawndale with one of those, was dared to jump from top level, some how my kid legs did not break.

i always douse sashimi with plenty of wasabi. the alkylating condiment has antimicrobial effects along with adding flavor.

That is some nice luciferase activity!

That interchange is always backed up with stopped traffic, so he might be okay....

Did you get bit? If so, you may have received an innoculation of mosquito-specific viruses she was carrying.

I see you have a 2021 Science Advances paper. Was this drama more recent? Now I'm nervous of my paper that is maybe under review at Sci Adv? It's been 3 weeks and tomorrow is Friday!😟

Newark?

Phew! Main power is back! What happened out there?

Welp! Sitting in dark office, entire lab building on emergency power since 3pm. Whole chunk of downtown Boston without power!

Michael, so sorry! You have alot of fans of your research, myself included. Keep fighting and thank you for this brave post! Hope HMS backs up you and your lab to fight another day!

Does EviAnn do any annotation of repeats? There is also room for improvement with the existing repeat annotation tools.

Happy Dog Day, Chester the Tennis Pug!

"And when the baguette in the cage baked in the sun too long, it got a bit too toasty."

Second US Navy jet is lost at sea from Truman aircraft carrier | CNN Politics Another F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier has been lost in the Red Sea, the second jet lost from the carrier in just over a week, four people familiar with ...

If Spongebob Squarepants can find these two planes, he can help fund 60 biomedical research labs on land for at least 5 years. www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/p...

License plate reads "Myself"

Can't fold myself. Need chaperones. #sciencevanityplates @lucksmith.bsky.social

NIH Funding Has Stagnated Since 2003 This Viewpoint explores how funding has changed at the National Institutes of Health over time and discusses how continued investment is necessary to maintain the current level of biomedical research.

"The NIH budget has not increased in more than 20 years despite research being more expensive to conduct. This is a necessary data point for policymakers to consider as they determine funding priorities." 🧪

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

The transcription factor Traffic jam orchestrates the somatic piRNA pathway in Drosophila ovaries Alizada et al. report that the transcription factor Traffic jam (Tj) functions as a master regulator of the somatic piRNA pathway in Drosophila ovaries. Tj directly controls both piRNA pathway genes a...

Also thanks to @emiliebrasset.bsky.social and Ben Czech Nicholson and Greg Hannon for coordinating a co-submission of their paper where we both converged on this story. Please check out their paper too! /7-Fin?
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Vials containing the new Flam Drosophila mutants we studied.

Please read the paper in open access at @cp-cellreports.bsky.social ! All the real data is there, from new Flam mutants we made to surprising RNAseq results to validating reporter assays to lots of TJ ChIP-seq and some Cut&Run. /6

Left to right, Shruti, Roxie, Austin, Nelson

Congratulations to my lab’s talented team of Austin Rivera, Jou-Hsuan Roxie Lee, and Shruti Gupta; with also help from alumni Linda Yang and collaborators Raghu Goel and Joe Zaia. /5

Old timey image of Transposons as an elephant taking advantage of Traffic Jam as a lady.

But wait, there’s more! Inspired by a preprint from @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social ‘s lab showing transposon warfare in Drosophila ovaries, we also noticed TJ being hijacked by some transposons, a twist in this genetics arms race. /4

Traffic Jam is the Shield for Piwi genes acting like Captain America defending your genome from the selfish transposons.

Traffic Jam also activates many Piwi pathway genes in Drosophila follicle cells, powering the defense against the selfish transposons. And we confirm TJ binding the Piwi promoter first suggested by the Mikiko Siomi lab >15 years ago. /3

Flamenco dancer in front of a traffic jam

We performed promoter-bashing assays and proteomics to discover the Traffic Jam large MAF transcription factor binding and activating the Flamenco promoter. /2

Traffic Jam activates the Flamenco piRNA cluster locus and the Piwi pathway to ensure transposon silencing and Drosophila fertility Rivera et al. discover Drosophila Flamenco piRNA cluster enhancers bound and activated by the Traffic Jam transcription factor. Traffic Jam also binds many follicle cell genes including activating mul...

Why NIH/NIGMS funding of basic research matters with our latest work now out in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social sky.social. We solved a >30-year-old mystery of what transcription factor drives the Flamenco piRNA cluster required for female Drosophila fertility. /1
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Great, now China's algorithms also know how much we like our em dashes, and now they will take over our feeds.

Some people think AI writing has a tell — the em dash. Writers disagree. Em dashes have been derided as the “ChatGPT hyphen” — a punctuation mark overused by artificial intelligence. That’s not quite true.

Before the ChatGPT Hyphen was derided, we @bartellab.bsky.social alumni were already trained in the ways of the em dash, amirite @shechnerlab.bsky.social ? wapo.st/4co1WvY

How will Cornell resist? Asking for us friends just east of you.....sorry for you and all of us....