Erik Van Dis

Just to give the TL;DR on this one:

*The* main purpose of the EO is to move funding priorities and decisions away from experts and career professionals over to political appointees. With the ultimate power held by Vought / OMB.

Hmm. I think there are separate--but perhaps a little overlapping--things going on here that are being somewhat conflated...

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it

🦠🧍‍♀️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/...

pYtags - our in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases - in all their beauty on the cover of Cell Reports! Read more here: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

ECG LAB "The only constant in life is change." — Heraclitus Genetic conflicts — the good, the bad, and the ugly — shape our lives over time We aim to understand why even the most essential genes and chrom...

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of the Evolution of Chromosomes and Genomes (ECG) Lab at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Our lab website is now live—come check it out! sites.google.com/view/ecg-lab...

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

Check out this amazing new work from @sattelylab.bsky.social along with collaborator and @stanford-chemh.bsky.social Institute Scholar @pollyfordyce.bsky.social !

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

Really important article in the NY Times today about cuts to NIH diversity grants, featuring a profile of Ashley Albright @aralbright.bsky.social who is an amazing and super inspiring cell biology postdoc whose K99 was prematurely terminated.

Differences between human and rodent nitric oxide production dictate susceptibility to tick-borne Rickettsia. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.27.661835v1

MERKLEY: How do you feel about being responsible for hundreds of thousands of kids dying because of your sudden interruption in these key programs?

VOUGHT: I reject the assertion

MERKLEY: I find your response both ignorant & callous. Few Americans have had a more devastating & disastrous impact

Methylglyoxal produced by the host is an innate immune antimicrobial effector that bacteria must detoxify for virulence and to prevent mutations
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
@cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social

Happy to say that my 2nd PhD paper is finally out in @cp-immunity.bsky.social!! One more to go!

Thread coming later today!

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

SP140–RESIST pathway regulates interferon mRNA stability and antiviral immunity @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The brain drain will be when scientists are forced into other careers/jobs so that they can keep paying the bills. They will never return.

There aren't enough science jobs in other countries to absorb even a fraction of those laid off.

Here Are the Nearly 2,500 Medical Research Grants Canceled or Delayed by Trump Some cuts have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye.

Cutting NIH or NSF funding sounds abstract. Seeing what research is actually being cut makes it real. Kudos to @nytimes.com for this piece:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

How bad will it be? Catastrophic.

Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come.

But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget.

Speak up now before it is too late.

(inflation adjusted $-s below)

A small Montana town grapples with the fallouts from federal worker cuts Science is an economic driver in Hamilton, Mont., thanks to Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a federal research lab. Now, layoffs and funding cuts are having an impact in this town far from Washington.

Science is an economic driver in Hamilton, Mont., thanks to Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a federal research lab. Now, layoffs and funding cuts are having an impact in this town far from Washington.

So let me get this straight. Hundreds or maybe thousands of international Jewish students are being kicked out of Harvard to protect the Jewish community from Harvard’s antisemitic policies? My heart goes out to all the students affected. Even the uncertainty alone is brutal.

ENPP1 inhibitor with ultralong drug-target residence time as an innate immune checkpoint blockade cancer therapy https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.18.654655v1

Great piece on @stanford-chemh.bsky.social Institute Scholar @stanleyqilab.bsky.social’s work toward curing diseases with genome editing innovations #ResearchMatters

Evolutionarily ancient functions of enzymatic TIR proteins in innate immunity Proteins with a Toll/interleukin-1 receptor/resistance (TIR) domain are among the most ancient immune regulators and include well-known pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). A specialized subset of TIR domain proteins are enzymes that predominantly use nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) to generate second messenger metabolites. These enzymatic TIR proteins have essential roles in bacteria, plant, and animal immunity. The mechanism of activation of these TIR proteins, conserved across Kingdoms, involves oligomerization into higher-ordered structures, which activates their intrinsic enzymatic activity. Here, we review the functions of enzymatic TIR proteins in innate immunity in bacteria, plants, and animals. This work offers insights into the evolutionary origins of immunity itself and defines fundamental principles of immune surveillance across the Tree of Life.

Evolutionarily ancient functions of enzymatic TIR proteins in innate immunity #immunology

Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually Economists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself

🧪 Basic science boosts the economy:

"The proposed dismantling of NSF [and NIH] raises an urgent question: do these cuts actually save money or merely delay spending until the bill gets larger?

The answer is clear: these cuts will cost the economy billions."

Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually Economists find public R&D drives U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself

Cutting research investment isn’t fiscally prudent.

It’s economically self-defeating.

www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually Economists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself

So I took a deep dive.

New research shows public science delivers 140–210% returns and fueled 20% of U.S. productivity growth since WWII.

Cuts now = $billions lost later.

www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

The 80-year recipe stoking America’s Prosperity:

1) Free-market capital investments in brilliant ideas…
2) enabled by Engineering Innovations…
3) based on Science Research in Universities…
4) funded by Grants from the US Government.

It’s time more people understood this.

Review @cp-trendsbiochem.bsky.social
RNA processing in innate immunity: regulation by RNA-binding proteins
www.cell.com/trends/bioch...

ATG5 suppresses type I IFN-dependent neutrophil effector functions during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in mice - Nature Microbiology ATG5 expression in neutrophils counters type I interferon signalling and downstream activation of neutrophil swarming and NET release to limit disease severity during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infect...

ATG5 suppresses type I IFN-dependent neutrophil effector functions during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in mice @natmicrobiol.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Justin Krish Williams, Randy Schekman et al. @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social show that human cells shed extracellular vesicles in order to repair their membranes. rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#EVs #Exosomes