Stephen Matheson 🌵🚲

our new paper on pelagic #Asgard archaea that use #rhodopsins with carotenoid antennas to harvest light energy in the oceans.
Structural insights into light-harvesting by antenna-containing rhodopsins in marine Asgard archaea www.nature.com/articles/s41... @galitzlil.bsky.social

prescient (from 3 months ago)

Why is no one talking about the fact that two of the greatest pop piano players both have names that both the first name and last name are first names? Makes me think they're both products of some time traveling or alien type phenomenon. Sorry I drank one beer

"Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been." David Bowie

Happy Friday, Skeethearts! ☕️☀️🩷

It's a nice day to start again. 💜

Someday it will happen to you 🙂 and I will be here to celebrate and mourn with you. It's a little bit like watching a kid grow up. (Now I'm watching grandkids grow up!)

Congrats again!

Rita that's amazing!!! YOU are amazing!!!! That journal is lucky to have you. Also as someone who has suffered losses like this, repeatedly, I offer my condolences to the team at Nature Methods.

Congratulations!!!!

Flexible updating of reward and punishment contingencies by VTA GABA neurons In dynamic environments where stimuli predicting reward or punishment unexpectedly change, it is critical to flexibly update behavior while preserving…

New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility

GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Medicaid’s “Able-Bodied” Adults — Unbreaking In building out our Medicaid explainer, we uncovered a lot of actual complexity *and* plenty of plainly inaccurate information about who’s enrolled in Medicaid—and what it means to take away their hea...

We learned—and keep learning—so much stuff about Medicaid and not all of it fit into the @unbreaking.org Medicaid explainer so here is a blog post I wrote about all those “able-bodied” people the administration and its allies claim are on Medicaid.

unbreaking.org/blog/medicai...

He's overlooking think-Bradley-fighting-vehicles, a major national security lapse.

#Andor
+ Dr. Cat Hicks (@grimalkina.bsky.social) one of my favorite voices
+ psychology of #resistance ✊
+ disability justice

=

MUST READ (and listen)

Medicaid’s “Able-Bodied” Adults — Unbreaking In building out our Medicaid explainer, we uncovered a lot of actual complexity *and* plenty of plainly inaccurate information about who’s enrolled in Medicaid—and what it means to take away their hea...

Some officials and commentators have claimed that millions of “able-bodied” young men in the US are sitting around collecting Medicaid because they don’t want to work. The Medicaid research we’ve compiled says otherwise. unbreaking.org/blog/medicai...

A great skeetorial on a new and much improved method for mapping transcription factor landscapes, with a beautiful image by our own Gloria Fuentes @gloglita.bsky.social from Life Science Editors @lifescienceeditors.bsky.social

🦠🧍‍♀️From bacterial to human immunity.

We report in @science.org the discovery of a human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins that participates in the TLR pathway of animal innate immunity.
Co-led wt @enzopoirier.bsky.social by D. Bonhomme and @hugovaysset.bsky.social

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

We're here visiting from Tucson and marvel at the rainforest that is our kid's neighborhood

he was a frantic fool,
Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behavior

A cell type in the visual system that receives feedback about limb movement Hartman et al. describe a cell type in the Drosophila visual system that is activated during head grooming through visual and non-visual signals arising from foreleg movements. These neurons inhibit a...

New paper from our lab! This was such a fun project to be a part of - proof that sometimes following a spurious observations down the rabbit hole leads to awesome findings.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

I meant to make a good news/bad news joke here but I forgot

(asked my daughter, age 30) 😎

Tamora Pierce? Redwall?

It is so complicated that it's hard to believe development even works...

Freedom from kings.
Freedom from fascism.
Power to the people forever. ♥️

Happy Independence Day 🇺🇸

The evil that men do lives after them

Happy to be the next (and 1st female) @crg.eu director. The CRG always stood out to me, for its excellence in understanding life's principles, with implications for health and biodiversity, & its collaborative, open and innovative way of doing science. Thrilled to join its amazing community in 2026!

he seems nice

The @berlowlab.bsky.social kicking off the next session at #PS39

If you missed his talk, Jake Simmons and Jamie Do of the Berlow lab will both be presenting posters at the afternoon session!

A super cool, mind blowing new story from my colleague @nbellono.bsky.social showing how sea slugs steal algae chloroplasts to perform their own photosynthesis!…🧪🧬🧠🐌
@harvardmcb.bsky.social

In the face of anti-science politics, silence is not without cost More scientific leaders need to speak out about anti-science agendas and threats to academic freedom across the world.

“Having the freedom to defend science is a privilege. Those who have it owe it to everyone the world over to make their voices heard.” Our editorial calling for global academies to speak out like the Pontifical Academy just did - www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Our paper on single-cell learning is now published in
@currentbiology.bsky.social!
@wallaceucsf.bsky.social

sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🎉🎉🎉!

Two absolute star scientists who are also amazing people!!! Congratulations!!! #BlackinBiophysics 💪🏾🤩🎉🎉🎉