Gregory Ducker Lab

I’ve never felt unsafe in this bougie neighborhood a day in my life. This is a 25 mph zone, full of fancy bars and restaurants, a curling club, salons, boutiques, and one of the busiest coffee shops around. They are doing their damndest to wreck everything here.

Another charter member of the "Branch Covidians"...

The damage these idiots are doing both with specific issues under consideration and future operations is breathtaking (literally).

Central high school just walked out, marching on the Capitol

Sounds like they have a band with them

Simply outrageous!

Fantastic opportunity for undergraduates pursuing summer research experience! @hhmi.org

Me in front of the ABRCMS sign

16 (! What?) years ago I went to my first ABRCMS and was welcomed and encouraged to pursue my scientific dreams. I met folks that provided direct feedback on my graduate school applications and served a pivotal role in my career. I am honored return and give back again as faculty.
#ABRCMS2025

How do cancer cells use the nutrients to grow and how can that knowledge lead to better care? Gregory Ducker, PhD, studies the metabolism of cancer. @duckerlab.bsky.social aims to uncover new ideas for future therapies & ways to make current treatments even more effective. @uofubiochem.bsky.social

Updating my LEGO White House

this is wild - i was aware of Mary-Claire King's absurdly important discoveries on BRCA / inherited breast cancer but I had no idea that her first PhD paper (King & Wilson 1975, Science, not bad lol) is the "99% of protein coding shared btwn chimps and humans" result

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

In a time as this— I am deeply thankful to be blessed with this honor. As a scientist and educator, the NSF CAREER award allows me to integrate the very core of who I am as a scientist and educator.

Forever grateful to past and present members of my lab for helping me accomplish this dream.

Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause Health-Research Funding The administration halted and then restarted billions in new research grants flowing from the National Institutes of Health.

UPDATE: The pause was scrapped Tuesday evening after intervention by top White House officials. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Presumably this will lead to labs closing as paylines are abruptly lowered. I’d have to imagine it’s unstated but is that the point?

Open Rank, Tenure Track Position – Metabolic Physiology - Salt Lake City, Utah job with University of Utah | 674355 The Department of Nutrition and Integrated Physiology (NUIP) at the University of Utah seeks a Tenure Track faculty member at the rank of Assistant...

We have an Open Rank tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Nutrition & Integrative Physiology! Looking for a new colleague interested in making the University of Utah their new home to build a metabolic research program. Please share! @uofunuip.bsky.social

Engineered reactivity of a bacterial E1-like enzyme enables ATP-driven modification of protein and peptide C termini Nature Chemistry - In living systems, ATP provides an energetic driving force for protein synthesis and modification. Now, an engineered enzymatic tool has been developed for high-yield, ATP-driven...

Excited to share our latest: we engineered the reactivity of a bacterial E1-like enzyme for ATP-driven modification of C termini. Our tool mimics the logic of peptide bond formation in biology for precision modification of proteins in vitro. 🧪https://rdcu.be/ewN7C

Coenzyme Q headgroup intermediates can ameliorate a mitochondrial encephalopathy - Nature Decreased brain coenzyme Q10 levels cause encephalopathy and are associated with neurodegeneration; supplementation with 4-HMA or 4-HB restores coenzyme Q10 synthesis in mice and humans with HPDL vari...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Coenzyme Q headgroup intermediates can ameliorate a mitochondrial encephalopathy

DM for more info. See our recent preprint on biorxiv for details on project area and to learn more about team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨Postdoctoral position available now! 🚨We have an immediate fully funded position available in cardiac metabolism. We are looking for a highly motivated person to lead our animal model work in oxidative metabolism in heart! Pay is competitive with benefits offered and you get to live in Utah. 1/2

🚨 There’s a lot of horrific news out of Washington right now—but you might have missed this: Senate Republicans just introduced a plan to sell off 120 million acres of our public lands.

Let me break down what’s in the bill and why it’s a full-scale land grab. 🧵

[Person with ponytail wearing lab coat hands balloon to another person in front of a springboard, a magnet hanging from above, and then a target] PERSON WITH PONYTAIL to Person 2: Rub this balloon against your head, then go jump past that magnet toward the target on the wall. [caption] Before the bathroom scale was invented, the only way to weigh people was mass spectrometry.

Mass Spec

xkcd.com/3094/

Overall our study reveals that disruption in gluconeognesis can signal to pancreas and that loss of autophagy that occurs in obesity or liver damage may also be affected pancreatic hormone secretion and regulation. Thanks to all the co-authors on this great study. 5/5

High glutamine in blood stimulates alpha cell proliferation and glucagon secretion. But in livers without autophagy, no gluconeogensis can occur! This broken feedback loop results in a state of hypoglycemia with hyperglucagonemia. 4/n

What happens to gluconeogenic substrates? They build up in blood- glutamine and alanine are significant increased when autophagy is lost. We use clamps to show that loss of gluconeognesis also reduces glucose uptake systemically. 3/n.

Autophagy has been shown to be important for glucose regulation- but a detailed physiological understanding was lacking. Here we show loss of liver autophagy leads to hypoglycemia due to loss of gluconeogenesis 2/n

Loss of hepatic autophagy induces α‐cell proliferation through impaired glutamine‐dependent gluconeogenesis Autophagy, the highly conserved process of protein and organelle degradation, is suppressed in the liver by obesity and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease and associated with the de...

New paper alert! Huge congrats to my graduate student Jesse Velasco on his first author publication in physiological reports. physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.14814...

Assistant Professor in Metabolism Research - Morgridge Institute for Research The Morgridge Institute for Research, in partnership with the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, seeks a joint tenure track assistant professor to lead a vibr...

We @morgridgeinstitute.bsky.social, in partnership with
@bmolchem.bsky.social , are looking for a great new metabolism researcher to join our @morgridgemeta.bsky.social team. Please see ad below and send along to your colleagues!
morgridge.org/job-posting/...

So much healthy food discourse is disguised versions of "have you tried not consuming a quart of oil daily"

i would say the modal opinion among the media-political elite is that trumpers are basically correct that our government/elite universities have been taken over by woke ideology/too many minorities and women and that trump is providing a welcome corrective even if it goes too far

"Do your own research" to decide about therapies is like asking to someone to learn to fly to get into a plane. It complete erodes the trust in each other and the essence of society.

U.S. citizen interested in grad studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (Canada)?

Grad programs are re-opening applications of US programs for one week. With expedited decisions.

U.S. Applicant Week:

www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant...

#AcademicChatter #Canada #GradSchool

Inspired by @mark-carney.bsky.social and Canadians everywhere. We’re all fighting back on our home ice!