Ryan Smith

TNF signaling mediates cellular immune function and promotes malaria parasite killing in the mosquito Anopheles gambiae Author summary Mosquito innate immunity is a major determinant of vector competence with significant implications in malaria transmission. During infection with the Plasmodium parasite, mosquitoes mou...

Celebrating the holiday weekend with another bang! Our work describing roles of TNF signaling on mosquito immune cell function and in limiting malaria parasite infection is now published. Big shout out to @georgesaman.bsky.social and others for their contributions! journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Mosquito immune cells enhance dengue and Zika virus infection in Aedes aegypti Nature Communications - Infection of mosquito immune cells by dengue and Zika virus enhances the spread of virus infection to mosquito tissues, such as the salivary glands, to promote virus...

Despite all the shit going on, we have to celebrate our victories. New publication with @entomososwin.bsky.social and @vectorimmunity.bsky.social showing that hemocytes play a central role in disseminating flaviviruses to secondary tissues potentially functioning as a Trojan Horse(TBD)
rdcu.be/euj4g

Mosquito immune cells enhance dengue and Zika virus infection in Aedes aegypti Nature Communications - Infection of mosquito immune cells by dengue and Zika virus enhances the spread of virus infection to mosquito tissues, such as the salivary glands, to promote virus...

Excited to share our latest collaborative work with @entomososwin.bsky.social @brackneylab.bsky.social looking at the role of mosquito immune cells in virus infection. It turns out that these cells help disseminate virus infection, increasing the potential for virus transmission rdcu.be/euiZt

I wouldn’t say unhinged, but it was fun. I would say it was more of a show than a concert. We still had a great time

Heading out for a night of weirdness with the family

It's nice to start off your day with "We are delighted to accept your manuscript..."

The phone calls are soooo much better...

It's the time of the year when a student can be genuinely excited about getting a D-. D's get degrees.

Only the best and brightest are ready to hit the workforce!

This is a great explainer of just how much trouble NIH-funded scientists are about to be in. 😨

Harvard University Harvard University is devoted to excellence in teaching, learning, and research, and to developing leaders who make a difference globally.

Harvard redid its whole homepage to push back against the administration’s demands. I mean, this is just a website but I think it’s kind of a great PR move: www.harvard.edu

a cartoon character from south park says please in front of a sign that says south park ALT: a cartoon character from south park says please in front of a sign that says south park

Does anyone have recommendations for a preferably free or low-cost software platform for cloning, plasmid design, and curation for the lab. I "grew up" scientifically with VectorNTI. Is SnapGene the best current option? Any other alternatives that you might recommend?

When it rains it pours

New

Got the NoA on a R01 through NIAID last Monday. Full award with normal IDCs.

America will pay dearly for the NIH’s mindless war on wokeness and DEI Colleges, businesses, patients, students, workers, and US excellence will all suffer—and for what?

The cost-saving claims don’t hold up. Every dollar in NIH research grants generates $2.46 in economic activity, research shows—a total of $93 billion in 2023 alone.

“It’s incredible to me that we would give up this thing that has such obvious societal benefits,” says biologist Mark Peifer.

kermit the frog has his hand on his mouth ALT: kermit the frog has his hand on his mouth

The biggest hit to extramural program staff appears to be grants management specialists (GMSs). It appears that 15-20% of GMSs were terminated.

This is quite concerning since these folks have already missed essentially a month of getting-grants-out time and have lots to do. They already work hard.

🚨 We are recruiting for two post-doc positions!🚨

1) Development of genetic tools to study mosquito immune cells isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/IowaStateJob...

2) Role of mosquito immune cells in immune recognition and priming isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/IowaStateJob...

Thanks Greg! Much appreciated!

For the sake of transparency, this particular grant took four submissions and about 3 years to get it across the finish line:
-Submission #1: 50th %
-Submission #2: 26th %
-Submission #3: 29th %
-Submission #4: 12th %

Excited to share that I officially received my first R01 today! It's been a long road, one marked by persistence and several grants that narrowly missed the payline. Now to do all of the exciting work that we proposed!

I will be hiring, so be on the lookout for job postings!

Thanks Kristin! I'm happy to see that it's working on our end as well. Yay!

That's great! Glad that our work can be of help!

Looks great! Excited to give it a read!

Nice to see the influx of people moving onto this platform. Fingers crossed that we can develop something comparable to SciTwitter before Elon

After you put in a query, the screen goes blank with no clickable options

Awesome! But it doesn't seem to be working properly. Hopefully a work in progress that will be fixed.

patrick star from spongebob squarepants is standing on the beach with his arms crossed ALT: patrick star from spongebob squarepants is standing on the beach with his arms crossed

Thanks. I’d like to do this with virus infection as well

A genome-wide CRISPR screen in Anopheles mosquito cells identifies essential genes and required components of clodronate liposome function bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

New preprint from our collaboration with
@perrimonlab.bsky.social in which we perform a genome-wide CRISPR screen in Anopheles to identify essential mosquito genes and examine clodronate liposome function. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

a man is crying while laying on a couch and saying i 'm begging . ALT: a man is crying while laying on a couch and saying i 'm begging .

🚨Mosquito/fly tweeps🚨
Does anyone know of an alternative to E-RNAi?
I/we have used that platform to design dsRNAs for more than 15 years and it appears as though the URL is no longer available. Any help would be much appreciated! TIA!