Buck Samuel 🪱🦠🧬🔬

I signed. I was supported by a GRFP during my thesis research and its award reinforced that I was a scientist during my training.

I signed and was supported by this program as a graduate student myself.

Rapid Response: Reinvesting in Racial and Indigenous Health Equity Research The purpose of this call for proposals is to meet the current moment by supporting timely, actionable health equity research that has been interrupted by shifts in federal funding.

More foundations should do this:

"Funding is exclusively available to applicants who have already received federal funding (e.g., from the NIH, CDC, NSF) for their health equity research, but have since had their funding rescinded due to federal administrative actions"

www.rwjf.org/en/grants/ac...

CDC is no longer surveilling outbreaks caused by campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. What could go wrong?

This EO, combined with the retirement of Noni Byrnes at CSR/NIH, makes me very concerned about peer review at the NIH

New executive order puts all grants under political control All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.

“This appears to be the administration's response to Congress: An attempt to place a major roadblock to any new funding and establish the structure that will formally exert the ideological control that it wants.”

Great reporting from @jtimmer.bsky.social

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

Well, this is a huge Executive Order power grab...

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

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I am honored to be selected as an ASCB fellow! SO much thanks to those who nominated me and provided letters of support!

And congratulations to the other Fellows selected! 🎉🥳🎊

Precise virulence inactivation using a CRISPR-associated transposase for combating Enterobacteriaceae gut pathogens - Nature Biomedical Engineering A self-transmissible CRISPR-associated transposase system encodes a nanobody payload to treat Shiga toxin infections.

#NatMicroPicks

Engineering Peace in the Gut Microbiome ☮️🔧🦠

BACTRINS, a microbiome engineering platform that precisely edits gut pathogens by inserting therapeutic payloads and neutralizing virulence genes, transforming them into allies.

@natbiomedeng.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ultra-sensitive metaproteomics redefines the dark metaproteome, uncovering host-microbiome interactions and drug targets in intestinal diseases - Nature Communications The gut microbiome is key to health, yet its protein functions remain largely unexplored. Here, the authors present uMetaP, ultra-sensitive metaproteomics workflow that combines the timsTOF Ultra and ...

>80% microb species detected by metagenomics are undetected by metaproteomics; because existing workflows rely on incomplete reference DBs, underutilize spectral data and don't robustly incorporate FDR control.
Here, a new workflow (uMetaP) seems to improve everything.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Infections as ecosystems: community metabolic interactions in microbial pathogenesis | Infection and Immunity Microbial communities are present on nearly every surface of the human body. These microbiomes exist as dynamic ecosystems that are influenced by heterogeneous nutritional and chemical landscapes, the...

Excited to have our new mini review on Microbiome Metabolism out today in I&I as part of the @asm.org New Voices in Microbiology collection! Check it out!

🧫🧪

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Polypeptides synthesized by common bacteria in the human gut improve rodent metabolism - Nature Microbiology Two polypeptides synthesized by common bacterial strains in human gut microbiota lower body fat and blood glucose and increase bone density, improving the metabolism of rodents.

Here the authors propose that gut #microbiota derived peptides exhibit potential for prevention and treatment of human metabolic disorders www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Metagenomic estimation of absolute bacterial biomass in the mammalian gut through host-derived read normalization | mSystems In this study, we asked whether normalization by host reads alone was sufficient to estimate absolute bacterial biomass directly from stool metagenomic data, without the need for synthetic spike-ins, ...

You can get an accurate estimate of total bacterial biomass from stool metagenomes by simply normalizing by host read count, without needing any additional measurements.

Excellent work by UW Master's student Gechlang Tang in @asm.org #mSystems Journal.

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
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Are you an early-career biologist or ecologist who would benefit from an invited seminar? Would you like to come to UMaine next fall or spring to give a talk? Leave a brief comment with some info about what you do. I'm co-hosting our seminar series again, and am filling out our rosters.

Could I be added too? My lab studies natural microbiome of wild Celegans.

For the life of me, I cannot fathom the rationale for any of this. Utter wanton destruction of one of the best research ecosystems in the world.

Well, none of us may ever get funded again but in the meantime, here's some new science!

Led by recent PhD Anjali Pandey w/ex-UG Maya Katz. Here we identify an asymmetric molecular mechanism that underlies symmetric context-dependent sensory plasticity in the AWC olfactory neuron pair in C. elegans

Tomorrow SCOTUS quietly decides if Trump administration can illegally cut grants tied to DEIA. This and today's bombshell announcing no new NIH grants is an orchestrated assault. We need to scream from rooftops.

14 Republican senators urge White House to release delayed NIH funds Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) is leading the letter making the ask of OMB director Russ Vought.

“Withholding or suspending these funds would jeopardize that trust and hinder progress on critical health challenges facing our nation. Ultimately, this is about finding cures and seeing them through to fruition.”

www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Non-antibiotics disrupt colonization resistance against enteropathogens - Nature Non-antibiotic drugs from a wide range of therapeutic classes can alter the ability of gut commensals to resist invasion by enteropathogens, a previously underappreciated side effect of such drugs.

Seeing this published is even better than eating sweets! I am so happy and proud of whole @lisamaierlab.bsky.social, especially Lisa and @jdlcz.bsky.social who walked the funny/exciting/rocky road with me until the very end. Check it out!
#science #microbiome #health

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

Future of NIH in the hands of five senators.

Write to them if you are in
PA -McCormick
WV - Moore Capito
ME - Collins
AL - Britt
LA - Cassidy

Found: a human gut microbe that makes cancer therapy more effective in mice Cancer therapies called checkpoint inhibitor drugs, which ratchet up the immune system, work better when this bacterium is around.

A potent bacterium in the human gut can supercharge the effects of some cancer drugs in mice — and researchers are now planning a clinical trial to test whether it could do the same in people. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The 2025 Outstanding Contributions to ISCB Award—Dr Lucia Peixoto Every year, the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) presents the Outstanding Contributions to ISCB Award in recognition of a society mem

It's an honor to be recognized for advocating for what you believe "that everyone belongs in computational biology and that all ideas are valued equally, recognizing that diversity of thought and background drives scientific excellence" doi.org/10.1093/bioi...

Today’s basic science is tomorrow’s game-changing invention. Trump’s cuts threaten both. - The Boston Globe Thirty years is often how long science takes to mature from a cool discovery to something that is life-changing. But researchers worry those discoveries are about to come to a screeching halt.

New Boston Globe story about NIH funding and its impacts

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/14/b...

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Exclusive: NIH to dismiss dozens of grant reviewers to align with Trump priorities The move would undo years of work, leaving advisory councils understaffed, and without the full expertise needed for reviews.

"NIH [.. is] instructed to nominate replacements that are aligned with the priorities of the administration of US President Donald Trump — and have been warned that political appointees might still override their suggestions and hand-pick alternative reviewers".

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Thrilled to share the first preprint from my group! Prevotella are predominant but understudied members of the respiratory microbiome. They have a reputation for being hard to work with, but understanding them is likely important for understanding how they contribute to respiratory health. 🧫🔬

Dear all, PLEASE add comments on the importance of model organism research at this link:

NASA is more than rockets and moonwalks. NASA is behind much of our everyday technology. From space discovery, to Air Jordans, to CAT scans, NASA has played a role. We get it all on less than a penny of every federal dollar. Now their science may be gutted by 50%.
#NASADidThat

Why We Still Need Animal Research in a World of AI and Organoids The portrayal of uncaring scientists without any thought for the animals being used in their research is far from the truth.

While I’m a big fan of new technologies that help us study human biology…there’s still no replacement for animal research! See my article in Gen News. www.genengnews.com/topics/trans...