Nick Silva

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Is Awarded for Work on Immune Systems

Congrats to Mary Brunkow from @isbscience.org on winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! Brunkow was honored with collaborators Ramsdell and Sakaguchi for their groundbreaking work on immune system regulation.

A proud moment for science and Seattle!

🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/h...

UC Davis Center for Neuroscience postdoc spotlight: Dr. Amanda Iglesias, studying neural circuits of motivation and reward-related psychopathologies.

Celebrating #PostdocAppreciationWeek2025 🎉Meet Amanda Iglesias, Ph.D., postdoc in the Fioravante Lab at CNS. She investigates the neural circuits underlying motivated behavior and reward-related psychopathologies. Learn more about research in the Fioravante Lab: www.fioravantelab.ucdavis.edu

August 22, 2025 Dear Director Bhattacharya: I write to you regarding your plans after the Supreme Court ruling yesterday. As you know, the Supreme Court did allow a stay on the required grant reinstatements based on a controversial jurisdictional issue but also found that the grant termination processes used were likely illegal. I know you are deeply concerned about public trust in NIH. I hope that you understand that proceeding to fail to reinstate or to re-terminate grants that had been found to have been illegally terminated will not increase the public trust in NIH. This would also be substantially damaging to science.

I just sent this email to Director Bhattacharya and am sending him a hard copy by registered mail.

1/14

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to terminate $783 million in NIH grants linked to DEI initiatives By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to allow the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funding source for biomedical research in the world, to […]

SCOTUSBlog story about NIH Grant Termination case

www.scotusblog.com/2025/08/supr...

Really important article in the NY Times today about cuts to NIH diversity grants, featuring a profile of Ashley Albright @aralbright.bsky.social who is an amazing and super inspiring cell biology postdoc whose K99 was prematurely terminated.

Cross-regulation between the nervous system and type 2 immunity The nervous and type 2 immune systems regulate each other via cytokines and neurotransmitters, suggesting previously unidentified therapeutic avenues.

We're now appreciating how the immune and nervous systems communicate across body & brain, and there's still more to explore!

Had a fun time co-writing this with some amazing immunologists and neuroscientists @nickmroz.bsky.social @arimolofskylab.bsky.social @annamolofskylab.bsky.social 😎🧠

Calling all @apsphysiology.bsky.social members: let’s help raise some money to support ABRCMS student presentation awards! Goal is $1200/discipline to support 12 awards by Sept 30th! 🧪 abrcms.org/donate/stude...

TransTag enables simple and efficient transgene mapping in zebrafish via tagmentation Meng et al. develop a method called TransTag for simple and efficient mapping of Tol2-based transgenes in zebrafish. TransTag robustly identifies transgene insertion sites and offers an alignment-free...

Please RT: Published today, a super fun collaboration w/ @fanjumeng.bsky.social and Marnie Halpern's lab to establish methods for transgene mapping in zebrafish - TransTag enables simple and efficient transgene mapping in zebrafish via tagmentation: Cell Reports Methods www.cell.com/cell-reports...

MOSAIC scholars: Sharing again in case anyone missed this. Less than an hour left in this deadline 👇🏾

Thanks for sharing! 🫶🏽

HBCUs Reel as Trump Cuts Black-Focused Grants: ‘This Is Our Existence’ HBCUs’ mission-driven effort to serve Black communities could now result in severe budget cuts under Trump’s crusade against DEI. It’s all a big misunderstanding, advocates say.

Trump, who said last year that he had “saved” historically Black colleges, has canceled $140 million in grants to them since March.

Agencies told HBCUs “to change the language in grant applications that explicitly focus on Black people — or lose federal funding.”

www.chronicle.com/article/hbcu...

Thank you, Kevin for all your contributions over the years with #ZebrafishRock and the community has a whole! 👏🏽

So important! Please contact your Republican senators, especially Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), and Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA). 🙏 amplify!

Barbara McClintock portrait

🧬🌽 Happy Transposon Day! 🌽🧬

Today we celebrate the birthday of Barbara McClintock - scientist extraordinaire and discoverer of jumping genes. Still the only woman to have an unshared Nobel Prize in the biomedical sciences #TransposonDay2025

Many w current R16s are also waiting on renewals and those planning on submitting for the May deadline had it cancelled last minute. These are the R01 like grants for unis w >$6M NIH funding that serve >25% Pell students. Lots of fear this mechanism would be permanently cancelled

I’ve warned that this was only a matter of time, but it’s still shocking to see in person.

Here AI generated content is being used to create a fake news ecosystem, disparaging a professor who has been critical of unscientific bullshit in the form of deextinction hype.

Powerful statement by Sen. Alex Padilla.

Please notice that anytime senators or representatives try to conduct oversight, they’re blocked.

In this case, a sitting US senator was tackled to the ground and handcuffed—for asking a question.

Where the hell has Chuck Schumer been on this?

If they can do it to a United States senator, what do you think they’ll do to you?

$160 billion in new spending on building jails, hiring more ICE 'agents' to carry out kidnappings & flying people to torture prisons.

For comparison, the 2024 NIH budget, which funds essentially all US medical research, was $47.1 billion.

Funding racism instead of research.

Choroid plexus apocrine secretion shapes CSF proteome during mouse brain development Nature Neuroscience - The choroid plexus (ChP) provides molecular cues for brain development. However, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. This study identifies an apocrine secretion mechanism...

Led by @scienceyael.bsky.social & out today in @natneuro.nature.com: the brain's fluid-secreting organ — the choroid plexus — can reshape neural development through a powerful, little-known process. & it can be hijacked by serotonergic drugs like LSD. 🧠👇 A thread
rdcu.be/eoaSY

Can Scientific Research Survive Without Federal Funding? Universities are offering temporary relief to researchers whose projects have been disrupted by federal funding cuts. But it won't help in the long term, and experts say industry and philanthropy are ...

No…next question.

There is a clear reason so few other countries have the research infrastructure our country does.

Nice, congrats! 🥳

We recently wrote a review about neuroimmune interactions in retinal repair. We dive into the literature regarding immune influences in Muller glia reprogramming, cell transplantation, and axon regeneration. Hopefully its useful, free link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1k-FL4pAsj...

Our very first thesis defense!
Anand Lab is proud to support this milestone in environmental microbiology and public health.
Friday, May 9 | 10 AM–12 PM | Thornton Hall (Blakeslee Room) + Zoom
#AnandLab #ThesisDefense #OneHealth #AMR @sfstatebio.bsky.social @archanand.bsky.social #Metagenomics

Thrilled to announce that my lab is now open at Ohio State! We study astrocytes as gene therapy targets for brain repair after ischemic stroke and in vascular dementia, developing new viral tools along the way. If you're interesting in joining or collaborating, please reach out!
gleichmanlab.com

Four scientific societies, @ascbiology.bsky.social, @asbmb.bsky.social , @asm.org and @faseborg.bsky.social, all partners in the MOSAIC program, have filed an amicus brief today in support of this suit: www.ascb.org/society-news...

Bravo to ASCB, FASEB, and others for standing up for MOSAIC and other wrongfully terminated programs! 🙌🏾

Such an interesting talk today @sfstatebio.bsky.social Seminar by Dr. Shannon Yan from #StanfordBiology Answering physical tension questions during various stages of mitosis, vesicle budding, and migration 🔬🧫🥼👩🏻‍🔬

I must once again repeat: CONTACT 👏🏽 YOUR 👏🏽 OFFICE 👏🏽 OF 👏🏽 SPONSORED 👏🏽 PROJECTS 👏🏽 TO 👏🏽 FIND 👏🏽 OUT 👏🏽 HOW 👏🏽 TO 👏🏽 INITIATE 👏🏽 AN 👏🏽APPEAL 👏🏽

“MOSAIC awardees were chosen using a definition of diversity beyond race, gender, and disability. It includes those who grew up in poor households or rural areas or were raised by parents who do not have college degrees.” 🧪