Alistair Forrest

Black text on white background. Screenshot from ARC webpage updating us on changes, in response to community feedback, to their proposed modification to their grants system. This screenshot shows the main changes, listed on that webpage.

The ARC has “announced” an update on the proposed changes to its grant schemes.

Key changes, in response to “nearly 350” submissions” (!) on their proposal, are 👇

More here: www.arc.gov.au/news-publica...

Chicken wings are awesome in the airfryer :) easy and very little mess

Table from page 25 of the proposed restructure of ARC grants. Back text on white background, with the table delineated by a dark blue header row and alternating light and very light blue rows.

The ARC Board has proposed a major shake-up of the National Competitive Grants Program ▶️ www.arc.gov.au/engage-us/co...

I've only skimmed so far, but they propose reducing 13 grant schemes to 6, with intent & scope in the table👇

Submissions are being accepted in response until 13 April. Get to it!

Prohormone cleavage prediction uncovers a non-incretin anti-obesity peptide - Nature Computational drug discovery is used to identify a 12-mer peptide derived from BRINP2 with potent anti-obesity effects that are independent of leptin, glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor and melanocortin...

Prohormone cleavage prediction uncovers a non-incretin anti-obesity peptide

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

Do you have an exciting story about #enhancers or #enhanceropathies?. Then submit your abstract to the @embo.org workshop on "Enhancer mechanics and Enhanceropathies" in Denmark before is too late: the deadline for abstract submissions is in two weeks (March 17th)!

meetings.embo.org/event/25-enh...

Link to job advert:
external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/en/job/51959...

Heading to #lornegenome25 #LorneCancerConference ? Looking for a computational postdoc to work on spatial and single nuclei transcriptomics of poor prognosis cancers, please DM me or see me at Lorne. We will be advertising soon. @ozsinglecell.bsky.social #LorneCancer2025 #Lorne2025

@ozsinglecell.bsky.social #OzSingleCell25 has a new website www.ozsinglecell.com See the current list of invited speakers and stay tuned for registration details. Sponsors reach out to ozsinglecells@gmail.com

MagLOV!

MagLOV is a fluorescent protein you can "turn off" with a handheld magnet, engineered by @mariaingaramo.bsky.social.

We think/hope we can use it to turn arbitrary proteins (including drugs!) on and off in opaque creatures (including humans!).

bsky.app/profile/addg...

A little video intro into Illumina Single Cell 3' RNA Prep protocols. It has begun!!
#singlecell
#transcriptomics
#PIPSeq
#illumina

Transcript-specific enrichment enables profiling of rare cell states via single-cell RNA sequencing - Nature Genetics Programmable Enrichment via RNA FlowFISH by sequencing (PERFF-seq) isolates rare cells based on RNA marker transcripts for single-cell RNA sequencing profiling of complex tissues, with applicability t...

Out today in @naturegenet.bsky.social -- PERFF-seq! With @tsionabay.bsky.social , @ronanchaligne.bsky.social, Bob Stickels, Meril Takizawa, + Ansu Satpathy, we describe this new assay to study rare populations with programmable nucleic acid cytometry. 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Has Bluesky replaced X for scientists? Take Nature’s poll The research community has flocked to the social-media platform Bluesky. Tell us about your experience.

@nature.com wants to hear from you on the battle of David vs Goliath - aka Twitter 🐥 vs Bluesky 🦋*
And if you’re reading this post I already know your answer to one of the questions 🙂‍↕️

👉🏼 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

*I’ll let you decide who’s who at this point!

Ovarian cancer-derived IL-4 promotes immunotherapy resistance Cancer-derived paracrine factors create distinct “neighborhoods” in the tumor microenvironment, promoting clonal selection and tumor heterogeneity. In ovarian cancer, IL-4 originating from a minority of cells within the tumor can promote immune suppression and tumor resistance to immune checkpoint blockade therapy.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Perturb-map - focused on receptor/ligands hypothesized to be involved in tumor-macrophage communication

I've been catching up on some reading and came across this paper. Ovarian cancers export a cancer-specific #lncRNA, Tu-stroma, to TME via exosomes. Tu-stroma alters spicing of flower gene in stromal cells to reduce cell fitness. Such a cool mechanism.

Sridevi Challa, Lee Kraus et al. discover a druggable PARP14/TARG1-regulated pathway that mediates site-specific mono(ADP-ribosyl)ation of the ribosomal protein RACK1 & modulates the growth of ovarian #cancer cells. https://buff.ly/3DOejo4

AI-driven ultrasound detection of ovarian cancer. #NatureMedicine

"AI model ROC curve and human examiner performance"

Open Access
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to announce that the single cell/nuc. RNA/ATAC/multi-ome resource from ENCODE4 is now officially public. This includes raw data, processed data, annotations and pseudobulk products. Covers many human & mouse tissues. 1/

www.encodeproject.org/single-cell/...

We are here 🦋. Save the date for Oz Single Cell 2025, 23-25 May in Sydney

Wow head-to-head comparison Visium HD FFPE, CosMx 6K, Xenium 5K, Stereo-seq v1.3 and Visium HD FF profiling on HGSOC and HCC. Heads-up @GESTALT_sp hopefully can save community some $$$$

Coupling of response biomarkers between tumor and peripheral blood in patients undergoing chemoimmunotherapy Chin et al. analyze tumor and serial blood immune profiles in mesothelioma patients receiving chemoimmunotherapy. They identify stem-like CD8+ T effector memory cells associated with treatment response and demonstrate that combining peripheral blood and tumor data improves prediction of clinical outcome.

Our paper with @NCARD_research is finally out. Finds • Circulating CD8+ TEMs are more abundant in chemoimmunotherapy responders • Stem-like CD8+ TEM expansion links to permissive pre-treatment tumour environment cell.com/cell-reports... #mesothelioma

It's just rate. 1 out of 3 submitted. For NT and TAS the %funded can be quite spiky year to year. This year TAS got none out of 20.

Next time you are reviewing an Ideas grant and consider ROPE. Consider this inherent bias in funding rates. Less funds = less preliminary data, less continuity of research careers, less job opportunities for young scientists in WA. This is compounded over decades.

Another terrible year for #NHMRC Ideas grants in WA. Only 6 of 127 submissions funded. National rate was 10.1%. If this was an equitable funding scheme WA should have got 12 or 13. Multiple category 6 grants missed out. This means 6 or 7 of the best research groups in WA give up.

a desert landscape with trees and bushes in the foreground and mountains in the background ALT: a desert landscape with trees and bushes in the foreground and mountains in the background

I need a volunteer..

Is biorxiv down/slow today?

I never tire of seeing these progressively improved pediatric ALL survival curves, which represent one of the most remarkable achievements in all of medicine.

Amazing to see even more improvement with bispecific antibody #immunotherapy presented in the #ASH24 Plenary session. #hematology #leukemia

Tabula Sapiens reveals transcription factor expression, senescence effects, and sex-specific features in cell types from 28 human organs and tissues The Tabula Sapiens is a reference human cell atlas containing single cell transcriptomic data from more than two dozen organs and tissues. Here we report Tabula Sapiens 2.0 which includes data from ni...

Major milestone: Tabula Sapiens 2.0 maps tissue composition & TF expression in 175 cell types, identifying 745 ubiquitous & 890 cell type-specific TFs (many still uncharacterized -> #Codebook) w/ roles in tissue homeostasis, stress response & metabolism. #SingleCell www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

El otro día, un guionista en edad de jubilarse me contó que su mujer le había reñido: “Siempre igual, con mil proyectos a la vez, y diciendo que vas a aflojar cuando no te lo crees ni tú”. Sentí vértigo: ¿serán así mis próximos 25 años? Con suerte. Si alguien encuentra un equilibrio, que avise.

In Hong Kong for #HCAAsia 2024. Looking forward to catching up with colleagues and discussing collaborations in the region.

NHMRC Ideas grants are out under embargo. Congrats to those who got theirs.