Emily Bruce

Has Your Scientific Work Been Cut? We Want to Hear.

Hey US scientists, the NY Times wants to hear from you if you've had your funding cut. 🌊🧪

This 4-year-old's heart is failing. A federal grant that might help him was canceled A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down. n.pr/3KIfcSn

Human MX1 orchestrates the cytoplasmic sequestration of neosynthesized influenza A virus vRNPs | PNAS Interferon-inducible Myxovirus resistance 1 (MX1) proteins are known to restrict influenza A virus (IAV) transcription/replication process. Herein,...

After years in the making, Joe McKellar @viroscope.bsky.social’s final PhD paper is finally out today in PNAS! 🎉 🎉🎉
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The NIH ordered me to stop my ‘dangerous’ gain-of-function research. It isn’t dangerous at all Safe gain-of-function research is necessary to identify new treatments for diseases like for tuberculosis — but the NIH has imposed unfounded stops.

Timely piece on the importance and safety of “gain-of-function” research, from my brilliant PhD advisor Sarah Stanley www.statnews.com/2025/10/06/g...

🧬 Exciting news from our lab 🧬 The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has approved our project studying KSHV and RNA decay: our first grant since re-launching the lab in Switzerland 🎉 We’re now looking for a Postdoc and a PhD student to join the team (start date January 2026) - please repost!

I thought I'd put the administration's proposed "compact" with universities in context, so I wrote the blog post below.

It's especially for journalists covering this story!

Many details about how the compact itself works and why the administration has retreated to this strategy.

I'm thrilled to announce I'll be joining the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the University of Florida in January 2026! My lab will study RNA virus-host interactions with a particular focus on the spatial regulation of viral replication and innate immune activation. genoyerlab.com

We are currently in the process of recruiting a technician. 🥼🐭🔬

If you know anyone with enthusiasm to learn new skills and stamina to hear me go on and on about IFNs, please have them reach out to me for more details!

How to Smell like a Dog, with Ed Yong Spotify video

Loved the last episode of @sciencevs.bsky.social with Ed Yong. "What is happening [to scientific infrastructure] in this country is happening because science is bad for tyrants and always has been. ... You have got to stop the tyranny, not try to make a better case for why science should exist."

Trump cut funding for new biomedical research projects by 37%.

Bioimage Analysis Specialist | King's College London

BioImage analysis friends - King's are recruiting for a full-time, permanent facility position! Come and work with fun microscopes and fun people (and me!) - please share! www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/126345-...

Open letter to HHMI on their Immediate Access to Research Policy The following is in response to a letter sent to the HHMI community on September 24, 2025 and refers to HHMI’s new Immediate Access to Research Policy. The original letter appears at the bottom below ...

thescientistpapers.substack.com/p/open-lette...

Rab11B is required for binding and entry of recent H3N2, but not H1N1, influenza A isolates As an obligate intracellular parasite, influenza A virus (IAV) depends on host proteins to complete several important functions, including trafficking viral proteins throughout the cell. Previous work...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Variant mutation G215C in SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid enhances viral infection via altered genomic encapsidation Mutations outside the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2, which are likely to impact viral properties, are currently understudied. This study shows that a nucleocapsid protein mutation in the Delta variant e...

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

My last two papers both came out of “weird” bands on western blots. One band that shouldn’t have been there, one band that should have been there and wasn’t.

Westerns are the best technique.

I know someone who calculated the odds of winning the lottery vs getting a NI R01 from NIAID and decided they might be better off investing the start up in the lottery😂

This is as realistic as movie studio execs telling producers to only make block busters.

I’m curious what they are doing with F awards. Very few seem to have been awarded. We have a student with a fundable F31 score well under the interim payline reviewed LAST AUGUST now waiting 4.5 months after submitting JIT docs 🤬 NIH reporter also showing negligible awards (from NIAID). Devastating

Even a descriptive title!

Opinion | We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself

We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself

Population diversity declines between inoculated and exposed guinea pigs. Viral titers in nasal lavage samples are indicated by the overall height of the bar. Red lines show LOD (50 PFU/mL). Colors within the bars represent unique barcodes, and the height of each color indicates barcode frequency within the sample. Plots for individual animals are paired with those of their cage mate. Representative pairs for direct contact (top half) and aerosol (bottom half) exposure are shown from three experimental replicates. Guinea pig ID numbers are shown in the upper right corner of each plot.

What causes viral transmission bottlenecks? This study uses barcoded virions to show that in the case of #influenza A #virus, early within-host replication dynamics (rather than a reduced inoculum population) drive loss of diversity during transmission @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4ngicDK

Population diversity declines between inoculated and exposed guinea pigs. Viral titers in nasal lavage samples are indicated by the overall height of the bar. Red lines show LOD (50 PFU/mL). Colors within the bars represent unique barcodes, and the height of each color indicates barcode frequency within the sample. Plots for individual animals are paired with those of their cage mate. Representative pairs for direct contact (top half) and aerosol (bottom half) exposure are shown from three experimental replicates. Guinea pig ID numbers are shown in the upper right corner of each plot.

What causes viral transmission bottlenecks? This study uses barcoded virions to show that in the case of #influenza A #virus, early within-host replication dynamics (rather than a reduced inoculum population) drive loss of diversity during transmission @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4ngicDK

It’s outrageous that Sec. Kennedy is trying to fire the CDC Director — after only a few weeks on the job — for her commitment to public health & vaccines.

The Sen. HELP Committee must hold a hearing with Kennedy & the CDC Director as soon as possible.

Vaccines save lives. Period.

Our study describing the isolation and characterisation of contemporary seasonal #coronaviruses is out 🦠🎉🎊 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Led by @jessneil26.bsky.social at @thedohertyinst.bsky.social

Postdocs applying for K99s, particularly if it's your last opportunity: DO NOT forget to include a foreign justification document if you have any sort of foreign collaboration. Your application will be withdrawn if you don't have that.

The structure of the mammalian bornavirus polymerase complex - Nature Communications Borna disease virus 1 replicates and transcribes its negative sense RNA genome in the nucleus of infected cells. Here, the authors present the cryoEM structures of the large polymerase protein in comp...

Very pleased to have our new work out where we perform a structure/function study on the bornavirus polymerase complex with fantastic coauthors. Have a read www.nature.com/articles/s41... @warwicklifesci.bsky.social @loiccarrique.bsky.social @franziskaguenl.bsky.social

Molecular organization of the New World arenavirus spike glycoprotein complex - Nature Microbiology Cryo-EM structures of the full-length Junin virus and Machupo virus spike glycoprotein complexes stabilized in the prefusion conformation. Analyses reveal features that regulate glycoprotein pH-depend...

Excited to share our new @natmicrobiol.nature.com paper revealing the most complete arenavirus glycoprotein complex (GPC) structures to date 🤩 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My dataset is that we couldn’t detect any positive SARS2 tests in any (of hundreds) of VT mammals we tested, so unfortunately in this case it does not require any complicated analysis 😂