Mike Lacy

Would you like to be the Node’s new Community Manager?

If you're interested in #SciComm and passionate about #DevBio, apply to join the @dev-journal.bsky.social & @biologists.bsky.social team.

Find out more about what the role entails: bit.ly/4otQ2GL

#JobOpportunity

Leading Scientific Societies File Amicus Brief With U.S. Supreme Court in Support of NIH Grant Recipients Washington, DC – August 4, 2025 – On Friday, August 1, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) jointly filed an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in American Public Health Association v. NIH. As some of the nation’s largest and most respected scientific societies, the amici submit this brief to emphasize the urgent need to safeguard federal research investments, protect early-career scientists, and uphold the integrity of the nation’s science ecosystem. The four leading life science organizations originally filed an amicus brief in the case on May 2, urging the court to find recent executive actions that led to the termination of NIH grants supporting early-career scientists—such as the Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) program—unlawful and to compel NIH to restore funding swiftly. MOSAIC grants support scientists from a wide range of backgrounds in transitioning to research careers. Today’s updated filing focuses specifically on the immediate and irreparable harm caused by the grant terminations and asks the Court to deny the government’s request for a stay pending approval. The updated brief includes new evidence and perspectives drawn from peer-reviewed articles and commentary published in recent months, which underscore the devastating consequences these grant cancellations have already had across the scientific community. Together, ASBMB, ASCB, ASM, and FASEB represent more than 150,000 biological and biomedical researchers whose work drives innovation, improves public health, and fuels the U.S. economy. Their members have long supported and participated in programs like MOSAIC, w…

While many institutions are capitulating to Trump, my favorite scientific societies are fighting back. Aug 1 @ascbiology.bsky.social, @asm.org, @asbmb.bsky.social, & @faseborg.bsky.social jointly filed an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court in American Public Health Association v. NIH 1/n

The Company of Biologists @biologists.bsky.social is recruiting a new Community Manager for the Node @the-node.bsky.social - a community site hosted by Development @dev-journal.bsky.social for developmental and stem cell biologists.

#devbio #stemcells (1/4)

Pathway to Independence – an interview with Joaquín Navajas Acedo Joaquín Navajas Acedo is a Postdoc in the lab of Dr Alexander Schier in Biozentrum at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is interested in how the nervous system evolves and develops at the singl...

In case you've ever wondered, I talked with @amjeve.bsky.social about science, myself, and the future of #DevBio as part of the Pathway to Independence Fellowship @biologists.bsky.social 🧪 journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

What kinds of support do early-career researchers need? Help The Transmitter and Neuromatch bolster the next generation of neuroscientists.

We want to hear from you! @thetransmitter.bsky.social and @neuromatch.bsky.social are teaming up to better understand how to support early-career researchers. Make sure your voice is heard.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/early-career...

Excited to announce our minisymp. “Physical Cell Biology from Molecules to Organisms” #CellBio2025 w/ Hernan Garcia and ‪@atmolines.bsky.social‬! Have an interesting story on how physical cell properties are controlled, coordinated across scales, or contribute to development and disease? (1/3)

Check out this orange fluorescent calcium ion indicator for imaging neural activity! ‪AAV and bacterial expression vectors, and more coming soon www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

What are the best resources for scientists who want to get involved in public- and policy-facing communication?

"How-tos" and that sort of thing.

Why are indexers unable to see that peer review can be more than a thumbs up or a thumbs down? | DORA Journals and peer review are unlikely to change for the better if the companies that operate scientific indexes and citation databases continue to stifle innovation. At eLife we believe that the conte...

"Who controls the scientific literature?"
New guest blog post by @fionahutton.bsky.social, Damian Pattison and @drpeterrodgers.bsky.social explores the @elife.bsky.social model and the challenges of driving change in scientific publishing.
Read it here 👉 sfdora.org/2025/07/30/s...

Interested in science administration? Want to meet and work with senior members of the SDB? Want to help chart the future of the SDB? Then apply for the Strategic Planning Internship!
@socdevbio.bsky.social

www.sdbonline.org/strategic_pl...

When is a Monomer not a Monomer? The Top Three Ways Your Favorite Fluorescent Protein Oligomerizes in Cells Many commonly used fluorescent proteins form dimers producing artifacts in a variety of experimental settings. Learn how to avoid these artifacts.

💡 Always a good time to be reminded: "if you fuse your protein of interest to GFP or EGFP to study the protein's behavior ... you are using a tag with a serious drawback."
Same goes for anything that doesn't have 'm' in its name (looking at you, dTomato and StayGold)

Alert: The Trump administration is quietly slashing new NIH grant awards, and it's not via the budget NIH’s sudden move to multiyear grant funding is forcing shocking cuts in the number of grants funded. This is an effective budget cut. It's bad, folks.

New, from an anonymous NIH insider: Trump is being pushed to spend more NIH money. The White House is ordering NIH to do multi-year budgets for awards. This budget trick means fewer awards, fewer labs funded, and lower paylines for researchers. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/alert-the-...

What happened when I asked AI to do my job Two and a half years after first attempting the experiment, Anthony Cuthbertson learns that ChatGPT can now mimic his writing style. It left him questioning who wrote what, and fearing for the future ...

Call me a boomer, but I actually like reading, viewing, and generally, being in contact with human made content.

www.the-independent.com/tech/what-ha...

My team at ATCC is growing! New #bioinformatics position open now! More to come too! If you’re an early career bioinformatics professional, have a passion for #genomics standards, quality and scientific reproducibility - then take a look!🧬🖥️ 🧫🦠🔬🚀 Let’s go! careers-atcc.icims.com/jobs/3992/bi...

Don't forget sandy! Those donut holes are definitely going to get sandy ⛱️

As someone who this is their reality everyday, it always blows my mind that other scientists are unaware of how dire the situation is.
Grad students were rushed to graduate early. Post docs and staff scientists are being let go.
It sucks

We’ve got a new cell biology #jobs board on FocalPlane to help with this!
focalplane.biologists.com/cell-biology...

Also Microscopy jobs, powered by MicroscopyDB: focalplane.biologists.com/jobs/

And the famous jobs board on @the-node.bsky.social: thenode.biologists.com/jobs/

Addgene announces partnership with Promega to launch plasmid collection

We’re thrilled to announce a partnership with ‪@promegacorporation.bsky.social‬ to launch the Promega Plasmid Collection, providing broad access to high-value plasmids for studying target engagement, protein-protein interactions & targeted protein degradation. https://twp.ai/4ioDqY

Very interested to see how this initiative turns out - kudos to @biologists.bsky.social and @biologyopen.bsky.social for experimenting!

A lovely graphic from The Allied Genetics Conference 2020 depicting the many model organisms that contribute to our understanding of science. https://genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2025/professional-development/careers-at-tagc/

CONCLUSIONS:

To promote the best science being done, we need to look at the incentives of science publishing and funding. Long-term funding produces better science. Short-term and topical agendas encourages irreproducibility.

Funding model organisms generates science we can build on! 🪰🪱🦠🐠🐁🐸

6/6 🧵

Exciting work! Plasmids can be found here: www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

Bought one of these a few months ago - beautiful!

Bioscience folks - are there any low costs fluorescent biology things I could safely use for outreach displays and which don't actually involve culturing things? #fluorescenceFriday

blog.addgene.org Tips and Tricks for Using Golden Gate Modular Cloning (MoClo)

Want to become a cloning wizard? 🪄
Our latest blog post is packed with hands-on tips for mastering Modular Cloning — advice on how to prepare for the process, handle reagents, high-throughput methods, and more.
Start your MoClo quest here:
https://twp.ai/4io9Rn

"Our observations should prompt an essential re-evaluation of the literature concerning astrocyte-neuron mitochondrial transfer" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hello microscopy and imaging experts and enthusiasts!
We are looking for a staff scientist to join us here in Geneva to work on microscopy and image analysis projects! See the link for the job announcement (in French and in English).

Please apply and/or repost!

jobs.unige.ch/www/wd_porta...

PCR, restriction cloning, Golden Gate. So many core DNA techniques started with a natural enzyme then figured out a use for it

Has anyone tried to reverse engineer this? Is there a wishlist of plausible DNA enzyme activities that, if they existed, would be the next CRISPR?

This is an often forgotten and very important role of journals: they help set and promote community standards.

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

PLOS Biology Associate Editor- FTC UK-Remote

I am recruiting - if you have a background in plant mol cell bio, a keen interest in sustainability and planetary health and are looking to move away from the bench, this may be for you!

Have a 👀 and please reach out if Qs

1yr FTC, remote in the UK

job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/plos/jobs/46...

Some discussion here:
bsky.app/profile/mcdu...