Phil Kyriakakis

Smile 😃

Nobel prize winner demonstrates the best way to apologize Unfortunately there aren’t Nobel prizes for good apologies – but Dr Frances Arnold’s words should be an example to all of us

🧪"In doing so, Arnold has mastered the art of a good apology: one that doesn’t veer into excusing oneself; that gives context where relevant; but accepts full responsibility and moves on".

www.theguardian.com/science/2020...

WAChRs are excitatory opsins sensitive to indoor lighting Hundreds of novel opsins have been characterized since the advent of optogenetics, but low experimental throughput has limited the scale of opsin engineering campaigns. We modified an automated patch-...

WAChRs are excitatory opsins sensitive to indoor lighting

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

ABSTRACT Viral pandemics continue to threaten global health and economic stability. Despite medical advances, the absence of broad-spectrum antivirals (BSAs) prevents rapid responses to emerging viral threats. This is largely due to the lack of universal drug targets across diverse viral families and high variability among viral proteins. In this study, we evaluated 57 synthetic carbohydrate receptors (SCRs) for antiviral activity in cellulo using pseudotyped virus particles (PVPs) from six high-risk viruses across three families: Paramyxoviridae, Filoviridae, and Coronaviridae. Four SCRs inhibited all tested PVPs, and their efficacy was confirmed against live viruses including SARS-CoV-2, MERS-COV, EBOV, MARV, NiV, and HeV. Notably, SCR005 and SCR007, which exhibited minimal toxicity, significantly reduced SARS-CoV-2 infection in a severe animal model with a single dose. Mechanistic studies suggested that SCRs bind viral envelope N-glycans, blocking viral attachment and/or fusion. These results identify conserved viral N-glycans as promising BSA targets and establish SCRs as candidate prophylactic agents against enveloped viruses with pandemic potential.

Their efficacy was confirmed against LIVE viruses including Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, Hendra, SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), AND Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

The study has been published in Science Advances. YES, it is PEER-REVIEWED.
• www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧪🧵⬇️

The birds might not be so happy about this 😆

Got to love studies that were clearly conducted "for the love of the game" (“self-decapitating sea slugs”, “plants that see and use that for mimicry”, “worms that jump in the air”, aka papers you sometimes find in @currentbiology.bsky.social
) References to all of this bellow👇

Very cool!

Do tell!

“Must be the water”

The emperor has no followers

Synthetic biology

Its not just my cat…

I hope my algorithm can regenerate too

Reminds me of the vault

I really want to use "behooves me" in this writing (grant), but Grammarly doesn't want me to!

It doesn’t matter much if there are base errors when looking at a recombination event.

p hacking

Yes, pictured above 😆

Resume: “expertise in word processor text box”

Lalo says happy whatever day it is

Mr Kitten says happy Saturday

Maybe that person got a job at Google and made text boxes in docs also suck?

What else should I record with IR?

If only it fixed my PCR.

Your gel running in the IR!

Drawing of Barbara McClintock with stars and double helix image.

It's not too late to participate in #McClintockLetters!

Check out all the resources we have available and get writing: tinyurl.com/McClintockLettersInitiative

Please don't hesistate to reach out with any questions!

How do you get on that starter pack?

Where did you go?

What a figure

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

Wowowow and at Tufts, what a wonderful place!