Hiten Madhani

Sequence-specific RNA recognition drives Restrictor-mediated termination of extragenic transcription Polizzese et al. show that the C3H1 zinc fingers (ZNFs) of ZC3H4 confer sequence-specific RNA binding to Restrictor. These ZNFs recognize a degenerate A/UGUA motif at ncRNA 5′ ends and are required fo...

A remarkably similar motif was found in this paper to the motif (UGUA) for Nrd1-dependent termination of cryptic unstable transcripts in S. cerevisiae, but with a completely different RNA-binding protein. Convergent evolution or re-wiring?

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Some shit is about to go down with NIH study sections, friends. Keep your eyes peeled for change that may affect your grant submissions.

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

If you want a science cleanse today, read and celebrate the accomplishments of these amazing young scientists

Great stuff! Fun fact—my baymate in grad school, Anne de Bruyn Kops, isolated the original brr6-1 mutation in a nuclear export, cloned it, and stayed on to work on it. Same cs library that Suzanne Noble cloned the splicing factors Brr1and Brr2 out of via a Northern blot/Primer-extension screen!

Voices: Medical research saved my daughter’s life. We must protect the funding that makes that research possible. “Scientists are seeking new treatments and cures for many diseases, common and rare,” writes Lateishia Curtis in an op-ed. “Talk to friends, neighbors and policymakers about medical research. The next...

Wonderful op-ed by a mother who explains how NIH-funded research at U of U Health saved her daughter's life.

"That research — and Briar’s life — demonstrate just how critical federal support is to scientists, doctors and, especially, the patients they help."
www.sltrib.com/opinion/comm...

Would add to this thorough list of harms at NIH:

1) multiyear funding, Vought’s trick to fund less new research with the same amount of $

2) presidentializing of NIH, shifting toward a political agenda rather than science. More on that from @markhisted.org: open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Dear Director Bhattacharya and Deputy Director Lorsch: I saw a post Director Bhattacharya retweeted about replication in economics. This begins with: Between 1974 and 2014, only 0.1% of publications in the top 50 economics journals were replication studies. That's 40 years. Thousands of papers. Almost none replicated. We've built careers on findings no one has verified. When economists finally replicate studies, 40-67% fail depending on the study.

A second email, this with a more substantial insight about "The Replication Crisis"...

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Thank your NIH POs: they are working under challenging dictates, including being required to multi-year fund (and therefore cut) grants. Congress caving on MYF means that the NIH budget has been effectively cut significantly. There’s no sugar-coating this.

UCSD, facing federal cuts, will no longer guarantee funding for incoming grad students The school warns admitted first-year students that their support packages are contingent on state and federal funding.

It’s PhD admission season in the US and elsewhere. Is anyone collecting and sharing info about what admissions letters are saying this year, especially in the neuro/psych/bio space? Last year there were some (unfortunate) changes at some Unis, eg
www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/03/08/u....

a cartoon of stitch covering his eyes with his hands and the words uggg !! below him . ALT: a cartoon of stitch covering his eyes with his hands and the words uggg !! below him .

One of my pet peeves is people calling proteins "metazoan-specific splicing factors" just because they aren't found in S. cerevisiae. Please take a look at this paper from @hitenmadhani.bsky.social and Scott Roy!

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34555349/

The first centromeres to be cloned (by chromosome walking) by Clarke and Carbon (should have won them a Nobel) were mysterious in their origin. Max et al have solved the mystery.

*complexity

I argued in a piece I wrote in 2013 called ‘the frustrated gene’ that caps are an antiviral defense. Hence some viruses steal caps, other have their own capping enzymes, while others evolved IRESs. Here’s a virus that captured the entire cap recognition machinery. Conflicts begets comlexity.

A line graph shown the number of NIH new and competitive awards funded for fiscal year 2026 (through 2/13/26) compared with fiscal years 2021-2025. The fiscal year 2026 is lagging well behind with only 569 awards made through 2/13/26 compared to >2000 for previous fiscal years.

New and competitive renewal awards.

The number of awards is 569 compared with more than 2200 through the same date in earlier fiscal years.

All ICs have now made awards except for NIAAA, NCCIH, NLM, FIC, and OD. NEI (Eye Institute) made its first award during the new period.

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I would ask people to call or message their senators about this and specifically that Vinay Prasad needs to be out at FDA. Even the Wall Street Journal has said as much. There is push back. Companies won’t fund clinical trials if they can’t trust the FDA.

NIH, CDC, HHS, and all of US cancer research and public health needed and still needs protection from Russell Vought and the P2025 White House.

The defining feature of 2025 at NIH was not merely grant changes.
It was unprecedented levels of presidential interference with NIH decision-making.
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Opinion | I Just Returned From China. We Are Not Winning.

“For starters, we need to reverse the cuts that Mr. Trump has made to investments in science and other areas. “

I Just Returned From China. We Are Not Winning. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/o...

I don’t understand. If a R01 funding period is over, how does MYF help? Would NCE be the dilution? Or are you saying carry over from another grant would be allowed depending on whether the type 4 award allows it? My understanding is that some type 4 awards allow flexibility but others don’t.

Nice day for a pre-Super Bowl stroll!

The original language was to limit MYF to 2023 levels. Last fiscal year it was used to ‘use up’ the budget so that many fewer awards happened. Same will be true the next yr. Either they will trim awards, shrink new award amounts, or award fewer grants. Meanwhile 70B increase for DHS.

But the impact of MYF will make paylines crater nonetheless.

A non-catalytic role for RFC in PCNA-mediated processive DNA synthesis The RFC clamp loader remains associated with PCNA beyond the loading step, supporting processive DNA replication by stabilizing the inherently unstable PCNA-polymerase ẟ complex.

Nice to see some yeast genetics in a Cell paper, where the authors test models based on single-molecule in vitro analysis. The combination of genetics and biochemistry often addresses questions most effectively.
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Meanwhile in China…

Top of the photo in white text reads: "BREAKING OVER 680 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES MEMBERS, INCLUDING 10 NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATES, ENDORSE IMPEACHING RFK JR." Below that in black text is a statement reading: "We, the undersigned Members of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering, writing in our private capacities, endorse the Articles of Impeachment introduced in the House of Representatives on Dec 10, 2025 by Representative Haley Stevens." Below that is the red "STAND UP FOR SCIENCE " logo. Below that is a link in white text reading: "standupforscience.net/impeach-rfkjr".

BREAKING: Over 680 members of the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have endorsed articles of impeachment against RFK Jr.
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A line graph showing funding curves for all NIH projects awarded grants for fiscal years 2021-2026. The curve for fiscal year 2026 is lagging behind that for previous fiscal years substantially.

My weekly update on NIH funding.

This is for all projects.

The breakdown for competing and non-competing awards will follow.

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Not good. I don’t understand why dems acquiesced on this.

Bhattacharya, a moment ago: "What you've been seeing in the press is that there have been funding cuts. There haven't been funding cuts. What there has been is a change in agency priorities."

Our year in numbers begs to differ
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Important update: a federal judge has ruled that Russ Vought & OMB were breaking the law & must tell the public exactly how they are spending (or not spending) funds appropriated by Congress.

I wrote this law years ago to ensure transparency and accountability.

Help us get the word out!!!