Rachel Berg-Murante

Budding yeast shaped gingerbread cookies

Happy holidays from my favorite pleomorphic yeast!

NIH shake-up to grant decision-making draws concerns of political meddling Policy drops “paylines” based on peer-review scores and requires geography and other factors to guide approvals

In a potentially dramatic change to how it chooses what science to fund, NIH is ending a long-running practice at many of its institutes of establishing, and making public, a threshold peer-review score needed for a grant application’s approval. https://scim.ag/48ck2zu

Been hearing folks don’t realize NIH is more than its internal labs.

That cutting NIH is ok because Dana Farber will still do cancer research. Joslin will cover diabetes, etc.

But these centers get most of their funding from NIH.

Stop NIH, and the whole system fails, across the entire US.

U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories As the second Trump administration sends U.S. science into upheaval, countless researchers are fighting for their futures

I'm very impressed with this article by @science.org highlighting how the destruction of science in the US is impacting the careers of scientists who are, you know, real people. They did a great job of capturing my fears and frustrations around my career.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Unlawful grant terminations are harming young scientists and threatening innovation. ASCB joins leaders calling for immediate funding restoration.

www.ascb.org/society-news...

BREAKING: We're suing the National Institutes of Health over their politically-motivated purge of research grants.

This is an unlawful attack on scientific progress that puts lives at risk.

A call for the United States to continue investing in science | mBio The U.S. life science research mission is critical not only to human health and understanding the natural world but also to agriculture and food production, technological innovations, socioeconomic progress, and our national defense and leadership worldwide. A 2025 Research!America survey reveals that 92% of Americans want government to actively work to promote medical progress, in part by funding infectious and chronic disease research. Why? Because biomedical research saves lives, prevents suffering, and increases quality of life for not only Americans but for people throughout the world. While less well appreciated, science also drives enormous economic growth. Indeed, historically there has been widespread bipartisan support for biomedical funding by the federal government. Below we discuss the U.S. scientific research enterprise and provide evidence and arguments we hope the ASM community can use to advocate for science.

Scientific research is important. Scientific research saves lives. Scientific research fuels the economy. Scientific research keeps the country safe. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...