Fritz Roth

a headshot of David Botstein

We are deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of David Botstein, a towering figure in modern #genetics and a foundational force behind SGD.
www.yeastgenome.org/blog/in-memo... #yeast #modelOrganism

Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy Duplicated self-interacting proteins can interact and interfere with each other’s function. Cisneros, Mattenberger, et al. show that selection against interfering loss-of-function alleles extends the ...

New paper alert: Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy www.cell.com/current-biol...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating).

A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

Make Article I great again

A poster for the Stand Up for Science event in Pittsburgh.

Getting ready for a week from tomorrow!

Find an event near you: www.standupforscience.net/march7

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The impact is already hitting science agencies hard. The NIH—the world's largest public biomedical research funder—has had to rely on leftover stopgap funds.

New grant awards have slowed to a trickle — exacerbating the effects of a record-long shutdown in October.

(h/t @jeremymberg.bsky.social)

Thanks to the Nature team for digging into this. Apportionment is one of those inside-baseball issues that I hoped never to need to learn about... But here was are.

This week's cover @thelancet.com

NATIONAL DAY of ACTION Take back our science, health, and democracy! Join us MARCH 7TH, 2026 SAN FRANCISCO, CA and nationwide! Register, volunteer, and donate! standupforscience.net/march7

PITTSBURGH! Join your local March 7th rally to take back our science! Learn more at standupforscience.net/march7
#rally
#March7
#ImpeachRFKJr
#science
#standupforscience

TAKE BACK our SCIENCE RALLY! WASHINGTON, DC MARCH 7th, 2026 Prioritize Science standupforscience.net/march7

WE ARE BACK FOR ROUND TWO! Join us in Washington D.C. on March 7th or at your local rally to take back our science! Visit standupforscience.net/march7 to learn more!

#science
#standupforscience
#ImpeachRFKJr
#RemoveRFKJr
#March7

Seattle locals: thesis defense Tuesday at 11:30 in Foege! Mapping the functional landscape of the pharmacogene CYP2D6 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by Gabby Ferra, joint student between my lab and @kelleyharris.bsky.social

When research is halted and scientists are sidelined, people suffer, discoveries are delayed, and public trust is eroded. That is why, on Monday, I brought this complaint to the Office of Special Counsel.
katzbanks.com/news/nih-sci...

In #GENETICS, a new model developed by @christianlandry.bsky.social and colleagues examines how molecular dominance determines total protein activity and contributes to phenotypic dominance. buff.ly/CfaTDp7

a picture of a person in the water with the words call of the deep below it ALT: a picture of a person in the water with the words call of the deep below it

More on NSF funding data

A deeper dive into the numbers of awards by Directorate.

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Ah, Harvard colleagues—raise a taco with me tomorrow

Check out our new work now published in G3! We use proteomics and phosphoproteomics to study how cells cope with tRNA variants that mis-insert amino acids.

We’re happy to share our 2025 Annual Report!
A year of "momentum and connections"!
➡️ zenodo.org/records/1833...
#AnnualReport #GlobalAlliance #FunctionalGenomics #VariantEffect #Community

We’re excited to share our latest preprint on the mechanism of excised linear intron stabilization in yeast! This work was led by PhD student @glennli.bsky.social and was a wonderful collaboration with @maxewilkinson.bsky.social. Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/4)

Thanks for everything, Dr. Foege. May we all work to be more diligent stewards of the legacy you left us: to work every day to care for all of our neighbors, present and future, a bit better than we did yesterday.

Community benchmarking and evaluation of human unannotated microprotein detection by mass spectrometry based proteomics - PubMed Thousands of short open reading frames (sORFs) are translated outside of annotated coding sequences. Recent studies have pioneered searching for sORF-encoded microproteins in mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics and peptidomics datasets. Here, we assessed literature-reported MS-based identificati …

Pitt researchers are raising the bar for microprotein discovery.

By reassessing detection methods, Aaron Wacholder and Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis reveal why standardized protocols are essential for uncovering these elusive proteins' roles in health and disease.

tinyurl.com/NatureWachol...

Wait. Armed militias search vehicles for evidence of US citizenship?

They will likely encounter the same situation if they return to the United States.

"Science is doing okay..." according to NYT, choosing to highlight that unfortunate quote from somebody from AAAS.

We beg to differ.

Just look at some of those in: www.trumpactiontracker.info

h/t @chrischirp.bsky.social

Gratitutde to all NIH study section participants who are participating in rescheduled meetings now and in January. Thank you for your service and thanks also to the hard working NIH staff who are making these happen. 🥰🧪

A line graph of the number of non-competitive renewal awards for fiscal year 2021 to 2026. The fiscal year 2026 is lagging behind the other years someone likely due to the extended government shutdown.

Here are the curves for the number of non-competitive renewal (Type 5) awards.

The curve for fiscal 2026 lags behind earlier years. This lag is likely due to the extended government shutdown.

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Illumina Appoints Dr. Eric Green as Chief Medical Officer

Eric Green, the first NIH Director to be forced to retire by the Trump administration, has landed on this feet.

He is the new Chief Medical Officer at Illumina!

www.illumina.com/company/news...

We are thrilled to share our latest work uncovering the mechanistic basis of target-directed microRNA degradation (TDMD). This work was driven by @jakobfarnung.bsky.social and @elenaslo.bsky.social in a fantastic collaboration with Brenda Schulman's lab. tinyurl.com/E3TDMD (1/5)

Mapping isoforms and regulatory mechanisms from spatial transcriptomics data with SPLISOSM - Nature Biotechnology Differential isoform usage is identified with high statistical power from spatial transcriptomics data.

Excited to see this out www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Nonparametric kernel-based tests for spatially variable isoform usage in spatial transcriptomics. So many interesting examples in the CNS and cancer, we're only scratching the surface!

Letter of resignation | Jennifer Troyer Reposting: As many of you know, I recently chose to leave the position I worked hard to achieve, the work that I love, and the team of people that could not have been better to do this work with. It ...

Letter of resignation from @jennifer-troyer.bsky.social former Dir of Extramural Ops at NHGRI

"The NIH is not only no longer the organization that I love but is now an organization that I can no longer be a part of and retain my integrity and self-respect."

www.linkedin.com/posts/jennif...

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Yes: deleterious recessives aren’t completely recessive! An important study confirming intuitions from at least some of us.

Silently nodding