Joanna Slusky

Joanna in marshals robes wielding the scepter

Also l, I volunteered as a faculty marshal this year and I got to wield the scepter (temporarily)

Sam and Joanna in robes.

Joanna and Cameron in robes

Joanna andTeja in robes.

Congratulations, KU graduates! Especially KU-graduating Slusky lab members, Teja Nimmagadda, Sam Brunclik, and Cameron Ernst!

I’m so, so sorry.

Interested in what NIH grants have been cancelled to date? You can see award numbers, institutions and titles here. Not sure how often this list is being updated but seems to reflect only those that have received "official" notices from NIH (some of us haven't yet) taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data...

Ya know? I really thought that we were just going to hang out and make slime.

there is something marvelously perverse in the position that biological sex is an immutable characteristic but also that it has no biological effects worthy of scientific acknowledgement

How soon till we have gifs in grant proposals? 🤞🙏

Every single stupid conversation I’ve had with a scientist about anticipatory obedience and historical comparisons over the last week has had me thinking about how scientists’ political incompetence is one of the major arguments for a liberal arts education

Like you’re literally a tool without it

I dunno about you guys but this is one of those very rare times when neighbors and mothers-in-law suddenly and unsolicitedly ask about our business, ie “is that IDC thing going to ruin science”. It matters that you convey the right message and the accurate message. Not your unverified grievances.

It’s been a tough few weeks. My 10yo daughter was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive cancer called interdigitating dendritic cell sarcoma (IDCS). I’m reaching out to identify clinicians/patients who have encountered pediatric IDCS or other (non-LCH) dendritic or histiocytic sarcomas cases.

Protein codes promote selective subcellular compartmentalization Cells have evolved mechanisms to distribute ~10 billion protein molecules to subcellular compartments where diverse proteins involved in shared functions must assemble. Here, we demonstrate that prote...

Cool paper using LLM to discover a protein sequence code for subcellular localization 👏

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If you have been affected by the fires in LA, or are concerned about your ability to keep precious Drosophila strains going during the latest funding crisis, we will host your strains as a backup. Please email me.

Please amplify. If you are also able to host fly strains, add your name as well.

Leeds teenager creates Venus de Milo sculpture out of snow The Bramhope Venus was created out of snow by 17-year-old Emily Bates in her Leeds back garden.

A teenager has recreated the Venus de Milo out of snow in her back garden.

Emily Bates, 17, sculpted the frozen goddess in her Leeds garden when her school had an inset day.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Jie Liang was also a warm and friendly colleague. If anyone knows of anyone collecting funds for a scholarship (or similar) in his memory, please let me know. Similarly if there will be any journal's dedicating issues in his honor, please let me know. 3/3

Pattern of Amino Acid Substitutions in Transmembrane Domains of β-Barrel Membrane Proteins for Detecting Remote Homologs in Bacteria and Mitochondria -barrel membrane proteins play an important role in controlling the exchange and transport of ions and organic molecules across bacterial and mitochondrial outer membranes. They are also major regulat...

Jie Liang had many, many excellent papers. Many in much higher ranking journals, but this is the one I think back to the most. An elegant assessment of what parts of OMPs change how and an application for how this can be used to understand evolution 2/3 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

I just learned of the passing of my colleague Jie Liang from cancer on December 23. I cannot overstate the effect Jie had on my research. Jie's work was inspirational for the founding of my lab. Whenever we start a OMP bioinformatics project, the rule is to double check that Jie hasn't done it. 1/3

Fire in fireplace, feet in slippers.

Celebrating the blizzard with our first fire in the new (to us) house.

How are we feeling about letters of recommendation where the first page is about the recommender?

3 hanukiot on a tray in front of a window. each with one candle and one shamash.

Happy Hanukkah 🕎

Thanks! I’ll look into that one.

What electronic notebook is your lab using? Do you like it?

🧬🧶🙌

It’s funny how the word “opportunity” used to be exciting, and now when I see it I’m filled with dread.

CAPRI conclusions from the CASP16 assembly session

CAPRI conclusions from the CASP16 assembly session

Blueksy Mentions are now in Altmetric. It's been 84 years meme #AcademicSky #HigherEd #MedSky #HMSky #Altmetrics #Medlibs #Metascience

BLUESKY MEGA-THREAD

Altmetric is thrilled and also LITERALLY RELIEVED to officially announce:

We are now tracking research attention as it happens on Bluesky!

We have been picking up posts on the site since late Oct.

Our team is on Bluesky all day answering questions.

Let's get into it!

a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

Warm Water Baths and Three Biophysics Departments

A long and somewhat twisted (and very personal) path (with bits of science sprinkled in)
(Apologies for the length, lots to cover)

An amazing example of mistaking your own perspective for the perspective of the intended audience. I’ll be giggling about this all day 😂

I think about using MALDI to verify fish identity at least once a week.

A general temperature-guided language model to design proteins of enhanced stability and activity The PRIME model improves protein mutants’ key properties with a 30% success rate, using machine learning without prior data.

Pretraining PLMs with both the standard MLM loss and a growth temperature loss dramatically improves prediction of thermostability, as well as identification of thermostabilizing point mutants. Lots of wet lab evaluation www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...