Danny Johnston

Rejection today, this is my current energy!

Research linking gut microbes to autism is deeply flawed, critics say Amid growing investment in the field, a new paper argues it rests on shaky foundations

Studies of fecal bacteria have led some researchers to propose a link between the gut microbiome and autism.

But a new paper argues the claim rests on shaky foundations. https://scim.ag/48lckEh

James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97

NYT obituary of Jim Watson.

A long and fairly balanced view of a complicated man who participated in one of the greatest discoveries in biology.

[Gift Link]

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/s...

Opinion: I am a university lecturer witnessing how AI is shrinking our ability to think As technology improves, the temptation to use it to game the system grows

Pretty stark, annoying it’s behind a paywall but worth sharing anyway I think
“I am a university lecturer witnessing how AI is shrinking our ability to think”

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Beyond excited to share our #NewPaper in @cellcellpress.bsky.social! Inflamed environments acidify intracellular #pH. BRD4 senses this via transcriptional condensates, tuning #macrophage responses to match demand and consequences of #inflammation authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

🧬 Sharing an exciting new pre-print from the team! We stimulated healthy blood cells with 11 different treatments used in immunology research & created single-cell profiles to compare responses. Hopefully an invaluable resource for immunology/disease researchers 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are very excited to be hiring a Postdoc to our expanding team! Are you interested in neuroinflammation, immunometabolism and/or epilepsy research?? 🧠 Apply now my.corehr.com/pls/coreportal……
@Futureneuro_ie @RCSIPharmBioMol
***Closing date 16th July***

Launch of a therapeutic trial of a new treatment for hidradenitis suppurativa Hidradenitis suppurativa is a skin condition that causes painful abscesses in skin folds. There are three stages of the disease. A new clinical trial, ABCESS2, has recently been launched to treat stag...

⚕️New hope for hidradenitis suppurativa patients 💊
The ABCESS2 clinical trial just launched, testing a 4-antibiotic combo for stage II HS - a painful skin condition affecting 1% globally.
#Dermatology #ClinicalTrial

This was one of the funniest things you’ve done on many levels, enjoyed it so so much 😅

Harvard sues Trump administration over move to bar international students Lawsuit signifies dramatic escalation of battle between administration and Harvard

Harvard sues Trump administration over move to bar international students

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines: Introduction A free online humanities course about how to learn and work and thrive in an AI world.

My Brother in Christ I wrote a whole ass online course for nineteen-year-olds that starts by making that point before moving on to some modest degree of nuance that is being taught at dozens of universities around the country so why exactly are lecturing me on this again?

Today "a milestone in the evolution of personalized therapies for rare & ultra-rare inborn errors of metabolism"
—the 1st human to undergo custom genome editing
—from decades of NIH funded research
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
@nejm.org
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/h...

Skin injury releases damage-encoded systemic signals that can initiate immunity to novel antigens introduced at distal barrier sites @sciimmunology.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Irrational view of science under Trump not reflected beyond US, says EU research funder Prof Maria Leptin rejects view ‘this is a big opportunity to snatch back our colleagues’

“Internet, vaccines, anything you can think of, were originally developed by publicly funded research programmes and nobody at the time could have foreseen what would come out of them"

- @marialep.bsky.social at @researchireland.bsky.social event.

www.irishtimes.com/science/2025...

www.americanprogress.org/article/chil...

We were delighted to have been awarded funding from the Anatomical Society in the last few days to work on #hidradenitissuppurativa! Our Anatomy Research Development Award will be used to study the microanatomy of this condition to better understand its causes.

Read more at johnston-lab.com!

Good point here by @fotoole.bsky.social
“Ireland should offer itself as a refuge for American scientists. Use some of that corporation tax bonanza to attract world-class researchers and up-and-coming geniuses to our universities and institutions to work with the excellent scientists we already have”

Really glad the YAI exists and can provide a public facing platform to work on these issues. Can’t keep kicking this down the road, the quality of Irish graduates will suffer compared to competitors

Woman who had pioneering cancer treatment 18 years ago still in remission Researchers say woman treated for neuroblastoma as a child is longest known survivor after having CAR T-cell therapy A woman treated with a pioneering type of immunotherapy for a solid tumour has been in remission for more than 18 years with no further…

Woman who had pioneering cancer treatment 18 years ago still in remission

Urgent lessons here for Irish higher education - let's not make this same mistake.

Happy #ValentinesDay! 🫀

We are absolutely in love with this colourful illustration of the circulatory system from the "Atlas of Human Anatomy and Physiology" by William Turner M.R.C.S., Edinburgh, 1857, in our book collection. #MuseumValentine #ArchivalValentine

The Genomic Code: the genome instantiates a generative model of the organism How does the genome encode the form of the organism? What is the nature of this genomic code? Inspired by recent work in machine learning and neuroscience, we propose that the genome encodes a generat...

The Genomic Code: the genome instantiates a generative model of the organism www.cell.com/trends/genet... - really delighted to see this in print in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social! 😊

Might just be me but that link seems to be broken!

The Old Anatomy Museum at @tcddublin.bsky.social is now on Bsky!

Between 2019 and 2023, researchers paid $8.968 billion to make papers open access. Imagine what else could be done with this money if it wasnt paid to for profit publishing companies...
👉 arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551

Congratulations, well deserved!

Typical development of synaptic and neuronal properties can proceed without microglia in the cortex and thalamus - Nature Neuroscience Microglia are proposed to have a role in brain development through synaptic engulfment and paracrine signaling. O’Keeffe et al. show that certain neurodevelopmental processes attributed to microglia c...

Mice lacking microglia (Csf1r∆FIRE/∆FIRE) have normal
-synapse number and maturation
-seizure susceptibility and hippocampal-prefrontal cortex coherence
-segregation of inputs into the lateral geniculate nucleus
-neuronal and astrocytic gene expression

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

The Student Perspective

Interested in #generative #AI in #highereducation? Take a listen to this podcast I made recently to hear the #radiationtherapy #student perspective open.spotify.com/episode/7AON...

An inherited mtDNA mutation remodels inflammatory cytokine responses in macrophages and in vivo Impaired mitochondrial bioenergetics in macrophages can drive hyperinflammatory cytokine responses, but whether this may also be caused by inherited mtDNA mutations is unknown. Here, we address this q...

📢Preprint alert! Very excited to share the first preprint from the lab spearheaded by stellar postdoc Eloïse Marques. An inherited mtDNA mutation remodels inflammatory cytokine responses in macrophages and in vivo. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Class Is Canceled Until Further Notice While I Do My Job Our most-read article of 2024. - - -Originally published March 27, 2024. - - -Dear Students — I am sorry to say that I will need to cancel all cla...

ICYMI: This biting higher-ed satire was our most-read article of 2024. Thanks to all the academics who shared it around. And thanks to academic Laura McCullough for writing it and sharing her work with us!