Ann C. Morris

This is the first time in 12 or 13 years I haven't gone to Jersey for the WFMU marathon and performed a show too. End of an era. But I'll still be live on the air remote on Thursday so tune in.

Like to see a version of Dracula where when they're signing the papers for the castle, Dracula has his own buyer's agent, and there's also someone there from the title company who did the title search. Maybe that's who the three vampire women in the original Bram Stoker book are.

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE!
#BOTD in 1988.
Keep on evolving!

#science #evolution #microbiology

Love when Nosferatu says, "We are entering a golden age of vampirism and I have have vampired better then anyone ever before...these nasty people with stakes...they have stakes. They call them stakes (sucks air between teeth). It's a beautiful thing though how I suck the blood. Completely undead."

Instead of SOTU, I'm watching Nosferatu (2024) because it has some of the same letters and roughly same vibe.

It's so weird that the OJ trial was a real life event on TV, but it still had spin offs. The Kardashians are The Jeffersons of the OJ trial.

H.A. Brown Elementary School Mural By Skype a Scientist

A week ago I found out that the grant I was confident would fund our spring mural will not, bc we're 2 blocks too deep into Kensington. This STINKS.

This project rocks bc it's community driven, biodiversity-focused (& more! read on!)

We're raising money to make it happen
givebutter.com/KenzoMural

Image of an adult male zebrafish (Danio rerio) with distinctive yellow and blue stripes. You can see their reflection in the bottom of the clear tank. Credit to Dr. Paco López-Cuevas.

Did you know @zebrafishhusbandry.bsky.social has a guide to zebrafish husbandry basics in 22 languages including Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Serbian, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Turkish, Urdu & Japanese 1/2 🧪

Does anyone have any recommendations for a low cost amplifier for extracellular recordings that would be good for a teaching lab? We have been using the Grass Instruments P55 ones but they no longer appear to exist and we are running out of working ones. Sharing of this message would be appreciated.

Banner for the Midwest Zebrafish Meeting on June 24-26, 2026. This is a group of adult zebrafish across a green and blue background.

Save the date! The organizers of the Midwest Zebrafish Meeting would like to personally invite you to attend their next gathering, which will be held June 24–26, 2026, at the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Check out this thread for more details about the conference!👇 #zebrafish 🧪

New preprint out!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
One of the most salient lessons I learned in all my adventures with screening and protein engineering is the importance of context. The context in which you test a gene or protein determines what function it has.

Since it has been twenty years since I shot film, I forgot the wonderful Schrödinger's film roll feeling of having your photos be both genius and garbage at the same time while they remain undeveloped.

High-efficiency TadA cytosine base editors for precise modelling of human disease variants - Nature Biomedical Engineering A suite of TadA-derived cytosine base editors was optimized to improve efficiency, reduce sequence bias, expand PAM compatibility and minimize artefacts, enabling precise genetic interrogation of vari...

Our paper on TCBE-Umax is out in @natbiomedeng.nature.com!
We developed these high-efficiency cytosine base editors for zebrafish, enabling rapid functional testing of disease variants. This work is led by a talented scientist, Wei Qin.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

At some point I will do Quatermass and the Pit as a radio play and replace the Quatermass character with Lt. Columbo. Tomorrow is too soon since I'm out of fresh veggies so can't dissect any martians.

Microbiota discovered in scorpion venom With low nutrient availability and presence of numerous antimicrobial peptides, animal venoms have been traditionally considered to be harsh sterile environments that lack bacteria. Contrary to this…

A new study by Barbara Murdoch and colleagues reveals diverse bacterial communities inside scorpion venom secretions, with differences due to geography and between the two species studied, Paruoctonus becki and Anuroctonus phaiodactylus.

plos.io/4tfd7zk

With this snow storm coming, I should probably top off the dog's neck cask.

Selling my Academy of American Poets award. It's not a medal, just a letter, but it will make you a poet if you buy it from me.

Shot one roll of color and one black and white, and now I'm sending them to the past to get developed.

ipRGC properties prevent light from shifting the SCN clock during daytime Nature - The inability of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells to shift the circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus during daytime is caused by light-dependent depolarization...

A new paper from my lab. I will have a full description soon. rdcu.be/eX1Ld

whole-genome data for 7 rhododendron

~50% transposable elements (TEs) 🤩

TEs significantly associate w genomic differentiation & structural variances

Gene duplication & loss significantly associated w flower color & expression potentially driven by TEs

🧪🪴🌸🌺🧬

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fun! Link to original research: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

zebrafish in petri dishes

LEGO blocks aren’t just for kids 🐟

Research from Dr. Sarah Alderman’s lab @integrativebiology.bsky.social shows zebrafish raised with LEGO early in life learn faster, show less anxiety-like behaviour & handle stress better than those raised in barren environments

🗞️: www.uoguelph.ca/cbs/news/202...

Looking for a postdoc? Work on vertebrates and have lab experience? Come be the lab manager/museum postdoc for the LSU Museum of Natural Science!

(It's a great stepping stone to being a curator!)

Finally out! We studied the retinas of the longest-living vertebrate, the Greenland shark, and found that the retinas remain remarkably healthy in animals around 150 years old. What is the mechanism? It may be a highly efficient DNA repair system. Enjoy!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey, science community (whoever is here). Can you please help me amplify this message? Postdoc position available in Düsseldorf!

🧪 A fascinating discussion of the disjunct between biological systems and digital computation, that really emphasises the vast gulf between the neurons in our brains and the nodes in a computer-hosted neural network.

I don't go around bragging about it, because I want to be known for my own accomplishments, but I am a direct descendant the first human.

Join me this evening when I reduce complex philosophical ideas to bumpkin-y nonsense and poo jokes. Ever wonder why there's language? Me neither! Let's not break our streak. Miracle Nutrition on @wfmu.bsky.social WFMU tonight at 6 eastern. Shemp Jive!

I've had a couple estranged family members die before I could make peace wih them, and it really isn't as bad as you think.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Theoretical Evolutionary Biology Postdoctoral Researcher in Theoretical Evolutionary Biology

📢 I'm hiring! 3-year postdoc in theoretical evolutionary ecology at University of Helsinki 🇫🇮 Apply: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki-Postdoctoral-Researcher-in-Theoretical-Evolutionary-Biology/1348955157/
#AcademicJobs #Postdoc #EvolutionaryEcology #TheoreticalEcology #ScienceJobs #AcademicChatter