Micha Sam Brickman Raredon

Interesting to think about

In my area, i think scientists would benefit immensely from hypothesizing from their data directly and getting more comfortable deprioritizing prior knowledge. Our literature is so full of confounded studies and improper conclusions. And now we have tons of new, much clearer data! Pondering…

⚠️REGISTRATION CLOSING SOON⌛️

4th Epithelial Mesenchymal Interactions in Lung Development & Fibrosis Conference registration closes in just 5 DAYS.

🫁 Join us in sunny Mexico next March and secure the last few remaining spaces now:🔗https://bit.ly/4iHNa6w

#Fusionlung26 #FusionDevBio

Are you investigating cell tissues and interested in stress patterns? TFM + BISM reveals them! 👇

With @luanger.bsky.social and P. Marcq, we summarise the applicability across different exp. conditions regularly used in the @bladoux.bsky.social @rmmege.bsky.social lab.
Full pipeline on Lucas GitHub!

Architecture of the neutrophil compartment @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

On the cover: The cover image captures how a humble byproduct of the dairy industry becomes the foundation for a next-generation biomaterial in the work of Correa et al. Inspired by the saying “don’t cry over spilled milk,” the artwork depicts milk spilling from a carafe, with its droplets spontaneously capturing and linking polymer strands to form an intricate network in mid-air. This visual metaphor represents the study’s central theme: transforming yogurt whey-derived extracellular vesicles into dynamic crosslinkers that create injectable hydrogels with regenerative functionality. Image courtesy of Santiago Correa.

I only rarely get to blend my art with my science, which is why I am happy that my illustration for our lab’s first paper is out today as the cover of Matter @cp-matter.bsky.social!

We're so proud of this work, so in case you missed it, please check the paper out here: www.cell.com/matter/fullt...

You'd have to be a “scientific publisher.” You'd make better profits than Apple and could benefit twice from public funds, from research and from libraries, which would then have to buy back the results in book form. Simply awesome.

We are opening a FACULTY POSITION (tenure track, permanent) in the University of Cambridge at the interface of control and biology, interpreted broadly. Theorists and wet lab quantitative biologists with backgrounds in control, EE, applied math, ... apply by Jan 28!

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...

An amazing preprint on molecular evolution (p63-Notch) of Epithelial Multilayering

Cross-organ (14 in🐭), Cross-species (7🪰🐟x2🐸🐥🐭👤) single-cell transcriptomics

p63+Jag2+ basal signal sendor▶️ p63-Hes1+ suprabasal receivers🐭

bioRxiv 2025
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m...

Mapping embryonic mouse lung development using enhanced spatial transcriptomics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.22.688293v1

Bad mentors hurt people What to do about bad mentors?

You know those labs that keep harming students, again and again? Some reflections on why it's so hard to stop this from happening and where our responsibilities lie.

scienceforeveryone.science/bad-mentors-... 🧪

Lab-in-the-loop therapeutic antibody design with deep learning

Targets
EGFR
IL6
HER2
OSM

11 lead Ab➡️ 4 rounds with > 3X ⏫binding affinity➡️ > 1800 Ab designs

Hope this system can yield antibodies with better immunohistochemical performance as well

bioRxiv 2025
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

These people are detrimental to science. Imagine how much more we would have figured out about the universe if young women people like Summers and David Sabatini targeted were left to focus on their research in peace instead of having to fend off old creepy men in positions of power.

Making a heatmap is an essential skill for a bioinformatician. But you probably do not understand heatmap. 7 reading resources to understand heatmap! 🧵

Bright large white galaxies. More distant greenish and orange galaxies, sometimes with strong gravitational lenses.

#Galaxy cluster Abell 2813 with #JWST NIRCam (filters: F277W, F356W, F444W) with lots of bright gravitational lenses. 🔭

program: VENUS www.stsci.edu/jwst-program...

A continuous totipotent-like cell-based embryo model recapitulates mouse embryogenesis from zygotic genome activation to gastrulation - Nature Cell Biology The authors identify a chemical cocktail to generate totipotent-like cells, which they then use to build an embryo model. This model captures a developmental spectrum from early embryogenesis to post-...

☕The authors identify a chemical cocktail to generate #totipotent - like cells, which they then use to build an #embryo model. This model captures a developmental spectrum from early #embryogenesis to post-implantation events.
bit.ly/4oHxUZp

Part of this week’s newsletter was inspired by the post below. Was there a way to show the distance between normal Americans and the super wealthy?
1/8
www.howtoreadthisch.art/putting-the-...

My continued biomedical education

Shaping neutrophil morphology & function
The importance of a segmented nucleus

Polylobular nuclei likely help Neutrophil with
👉Motile flexibility
👉Differentiation
👉NETosis
👉Rapid switching b/w A/B compartments

#NatRevImmunol 2025
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Figure showing that tissue-resident macrophages promote cytogenesis in an in vitro 3D model system.

Rudolfo Karl, Elvira Mass, Dagmar Wachten @wachtenlab.bsky.social and colleagues discover that renal tissue-resident macrophages promote cystogenesis in early polycystic kidney disease.
#JCSciliaSI
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Solving a Million-Step LLM Task with Zero Errors LLMs have achieved remarkable breakthroughs in reasoning, insights, and tool use, but chaining these abilities into extended processes at the scale of those routinely executed by humans, organizations...

"Solving a Million-Step LLM Task with Zero Errors", from the inimitable Elliot Meyerson (et al.)

iPEX enables micrometre-resolution deep spatial proteomics via tissue expansion - Nature Isotropic tissue magnification is integrated with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging to enable untargeted spatial proteomics at micrometre resolution and with high protein identification rates in multiple tissue types.

Nature research paper: iPEX enables micrometre-resolution deep spatial proteomics via tissue expansion

go.nature.com/4qRtP6F

Mapping chromatin structure at base-pair resolution unveils a unified model of cis-regulatory element interactions Chromatin structure is a key determinant of gene expression in eukaryotes, but it has not been possible to define the structure of cis-regulatory elem…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Oxford scientists capture genome’s structure in unprecedented detail Radcliff Department of Medicine scientists have achieved the most detailed view yet of how DNA folds and functions inside living cells, revealing the physical structures that control when and how genes are switched on.

NEWS: Oxford scientists capture genome’s structure in unprecedented detail

@rdm.ox.ac.uk scientists have achieved the most detailed view yet of how DNA folds and functions inside living cells, using a new technique called MCC ultra .

The Drain of Scientific Publishing The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and ...

Profits from scientific publishing are eye-watering, costing us billions. In ‘The Drain of Scientific Publishing’ (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820), (building on ‘The Strain of Scientific Publishing’ doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327) we show how it is harmful – and unnecessary.

There Are No Weird Blogs Anymore Cause It’s More Fruitful to Drive Them Out of Business I learned many surprising lessons from my 20 months as editor-in-chief of...

What a thrill to be part of @talkingpointsmemo.com's series about the past 25 years of digital media! I wrote about why private equity goons destroyed Deadspin and why it matters.

Back on track:

Funders hold all the cards. There's this flawed view that authors are consumers and journals are producers. Wrong.

Funders and institutes are consumers. They contract authors to produce research, and they pay for journals to QC the work.

Funders are the consumers.

8/n

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Fundamentally, what we need is leadership. But we break with the chorus of most #OpenScience initiatives here and emphasize very strongly that this leadership must come from funders and institutions.

We researchers can support the battle, but we cannot lead the charge. Funders hold the cards.

6/n

2. Stopping the drain Back in the 1950s, when for-profit journal publishing was just getting going, British scientific leaders predicted that ‘the moment commercial gain began to dominate this field, the welfare of the scientific community would suffer’ (1). They were right – and it is past time that we acted. The first step we must take is to recognize the seriousness of the problems that scientific publishing’s engagement with for-profit publishing have become.

More fundamentally, every active scientist has been brought up in a system where The Drain was already normalized.

This system hasn't always existed. For-profit publishers are a recent invention. Their value proposition has always been awful, and now they are actively eroding trust in science.

5/n

For-profit journals are supposed to improve research quality, yet they're perversely incentivized to churn out whatever they can monetize. This was happening before AI (see Strain: bit.ly/43gJPUM), and AI will make it worse.

It's insane that we volunteer our time to help them do so.

4/n