Marko Hyvönen

Flyer for a conference

📣 Save the date 📣
The next FASEB Science Research Conference on TGF-β Family in Development and Disease will take place:
July 26-30, 2026 in Porto, Portugal!
@faseborg.bsky.social
With Mythreye Karthikeyan @mythreye.bsky.social, Rosemary Akhurst and Andrew Hinck

web.cvent.com/event/af5f6d...

Why you should sequence your plasmids (and how to do it for free) Through GetGenome, scientists in 100 countries can access free whole-plasmid sequencing — removing barriers, improving quality control…

We just published: Why you should sequence your plasmids (and how to do it for free)

Through @GetGenome scientists in 100 countries can access free whole-plasmid sequencing —giving researchers the confidence to move their experiments forward.

medium.com/p/why-you-sh...

truth

The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field?

That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience

A 🧵 1/n

The Bornelöv Group is seeking a Research Assistant to work on gene regulation using deep learning. This is an exciting opportunity to use AI-based methods to uncover the molecular mechanisms behind mRNA processing and fate. Apply here by 8 July 2025: www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51812/

FBLD 2025 | Final Call for Abstract Submissions!
Abstract submissions close this Friday, 27 June 2025.
Don't miss your chance to share your research with global experts at FBLD 2025. For more information go to: fbldconference.org/2025-abstrac...

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, How can we persuade more people to cycle? Can behavioural science help listener Hans with his aim to get more people on bikes?

I'm on BBC World Service later discussing how we're not going to get people cycling more just by encouraging them. I've not heard the edit, but hopefully they've used lots of the footage of me slagging off Swansea's car-first infrastructure as we cycled through the city www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

Royal Society prize winner returns award in protest over Elon Musk Andrea Sella is latest scientist to express dismay over UK science academy’s refusal to criticise tech billionaire

www.ft.com/content/8778...
Kudos to Andrea Sella for taking a stand against @royalsociety.org’s inaction over Elon Musk FRS

Followed in the evening by Dine Hard

Excel: Why using Microsoft's tool caused Covid-19 results to be lost The decision to use a spreadsheet format that dates back to the 1980s has proved to be unwise.

www.bbc.com/news/technol...

Is the UK paying the price for world’s most expensive visas? | The Observer Competing political and economic goals on immigration are resulting in the loss of valuable skills and talent in the UK

“The visa fees are so exceedingly high that it makes coming here very difficult for some people. We are fishing for the best scientists in the world. They want to come and work here because we are such an effective country at science, but if we have these high costs, they can and will go elsewhere.”

This 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 is so frustrating.
Write to your MPs and make them listen.
Object to these ridiculous costs.
Object to the language they use on immigrants.
Promote the value we bring as fully fledged members of the society.
Island of strangers, my arse.

Slightly amended so I can fit this here: I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame! I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one. I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country. This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong. Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues. I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean? Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.

This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way. You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position. Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces. What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly. The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy. Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed. Tanja Bueltmann

My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration

Immigration and the UK — the main thing really is this:

UK governments have, for ~ the last two decades, pursued anti-immigration policies.

You tell me one positive outcome from that approach.

There isn’t one.

Not a single one in my view.

There is, however, a very long list of harms caused.🧵

BioRxiv search results

I correct that. Search for "protein" did give hits...
All of three 🤷🏻‍♂️

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social is bioRxiv search down? Don't seem to get hits with any searches, incl in advanced mode.

I got hit by some rather sudden and extreme financial hardship so if anyone is in need of remote wetlab contract research, strictly BSL1, do let me know. Currently scrambling for gigs.

Plant, Bacterial, Archaeal Non-model Bioeng
Custom Lab Hardware
Turn Key Genetic Design

Please repost for reach 💚

Join us in Cambridge in September for the latest in fragment-based lead discovery 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
#FBLD2025

Cambridge Cheese Company?

Cyclists who kill pedestrians could be jailed for life under new law in England and Wales Reckless cycling is currently prosecuted under legislation from the 1860s, with a maximum two-year jail sentence

Pedestrians killed by car drivers in UK annually: >400
Cyclists killed by car drivers in UK annually: >100
Pedestrians killed by cyclists in UK annually: <3

So which of these is the most scary and worthy of more laws?

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ap...

One issue I have with active voice is that it sounds odd in multidisciplinary manuscripts, when "we" can never refer to all authors, no matter how liberally one defines "all". Passive doesn't have that issue.
Tense can get muddled up as well: what was done and what is (still): data, results...

"The UK's upfront immigration costs now vastly exceed other leading research nations, so the UK is struggling to compete. EU countries can more easily attract talent from the EU due to free movement, and from non-EU countries due to their relatively low visa costs. "Non-EU countries are also attractive to global research talent due to lower comparative immigration costs than the UK." British scientific institutions are having to spend huge sums on visa costs for cancer professionals they wish to attract and recruit. The Francis Crick Institute, one of the world's leading biomedical research centres, is now spending more than £500,000 a year on visas for cancer scientists. Cancer Research UK institutes are spending almost £690,000 a year, up 44% from £470,000 in 2022-23.

Another report on how our high visa costs deter top R&D talent
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Yes! 🙏🏻

My lab and Chuck Farah's at the University of São Paulo (USP) are seeking a postdoc to join an exciting project focused on applying structural biology to novel and unexplored targets in antibiotic discovery.

Post-Brexit youth mobility scheme with EU on the table under a different name Exclusive: There is growing optimism that a fresh proposal for youth mobility across the UK and EU will be accepted by the government

Honestly, UK, do it or fuck off.

The world’s in flames, and you’re pissing about over the name of the most basic and uncontroversial form of cooperation imaginable.

If you can’t even manage this, go away and come back when you’ve grown the fuck up.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Sunday morning? Your neighbours must love you...

Nonsensical illustration of DNA double helical structure.

Has left-handed DNA Hulk migrated from the other platform to BlueSky? Wanted to ask what they think of this beauty. 🤔

Asymmetric unit and unit cell highlighted in an illustration of crystallographic symmetry with mermaids

Any help?

We are excited to announce a new faculty position here in Cambridge, for researchers in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Come and join us! Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here. www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50414/

EMBL International PhD Programme - summer recruitment 2025! 👀

Research groups across EMBL are recruiting now! www.embl.org/about/info/e...

Don’t miss this opportunity to receive dedicated mentoring while doing interdisciplinary research.

🧪#AcademicSky #MolBiol #PhDSky #careers @ebi.embl.org