Chris Adami

Ummm.

In the old German script the “ss” looks like “ff”

In case you were wondering...

The Planets | Wharton Center for Performing Arts

For those of you in the area: I will be part of the MSU Choir at this Saturday's performance at the Wharton Center of Jocelyn Hagen's "The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci", which is a beautiful piece that marries orchestra, voice, and audiovisual effects. www.whartoncenter.com/events/detai...

That's been on my favorite list on YouTube for a while now!

1982-1986 Teaching Assistant
1986-1991 Research Assistant
1992-1995 Postdoc
1995-today Faculty
That's it. Never had another job.

Can confirm.

Immigrants, particularly on H1Bs, are the lifeblood of American innovation. If you wanted to hurt US competitiveness in the next century, I can think of few more effective ways than a move like this

Even when found illegal, the mere intent will have irreparably harmed our future

I think the point here is that these proteins do not carry out any function. If they were important than of course mutations to functionally important residues would matter. But these proteins do nothing at all. Yet, when mutated some mutations impair fitness.

Trump administration to add $100,000 fee for H-1B visas The Trump administration is targeting a visa widely used by tech companies and other employers to hire foreign workers.

Of all the stupid things that this regime has done, this is right up near the top. Postdoctoral researchers come to the US on H-1B visas. This will further destroy the US science enterprise. Stupid stupid stupid.

The authors offer no clues. They used YFP, and some mutations appear to impair fitness, but not the ones that lead to misfolding. It's a mystery! It's like there is toxicity, but not due to what we usually assume (misfolded proteins).

Collateral fitness effects of mutation are not commonly caused by protein misfolding Mutations in coding sequences are often assumed to harm cells by destabilizing proteins and creating toxic misfolded species. Here we directly test how fitness scales with predicted folding stability....

This is really interesting! Mutations that affect a protein's foldability do not seem to impact org fitness if the protein is not important for function. But there *are* effects from mutations on those proteins (just not related to foldability). What are they due to??
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My “I got the Covid vaccine” sticker from 2020 (which tells me which side is up on my laptop) got a bit ragged, so I replaced it.

My oldest brother and I were both left handed. He was forced to write with his right, I was in the first year where we were allowed to choose our hand. He suffered at school (and later in life, dead at 25). I prospered. Of course this is anecdotal, but I’ve been wondering ever since.

Hey, local news!

While I cannot say anything about this paper (as I haven't read it), I should point out that I reviewed several papers of the senior author, and they were not good. At all.

With Jeff Barrick's return to #MSU, the #LTEE was restarted today after a short pause (frozen) for the move.

Today was daily transfer 12,301. With ~6.6 generations per day, they are now at ~82,007 generations.

100,000 generations is fast approaching! Are you ready, #Spartans?

@msumgi.bsky.social

David Baltimore, Nobel-Winning Molecular Biologist, Dies at 87

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/s.... When David was President of Caltech he and I often ran on adjacent treadmills at the Gym, and we got to talking. He was very interested in the brain and consciousness, and we ended up friends. All around great guy.

Abercrombie and Fitch bag with ripped male torso and bottom half of face. A cat in the bag gives top half of face.

I'm sorry, but genetic engineering is getting out of hand.

I was Genesis live in 1976 (Brussels) and then in 2022 on their farewell tour (Los Angeles)

A photo of the 2005 Tor hardcover edition of Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War”, on my reading desk.

I’m told this is where you begin when on Bluesky (birthday present to myself)

Same