Doug Kojetin

TTPD #7 with @fraserlab.com.

We chatted about the recent meetings, news, preprint engagement notifications, and the point of rotations.
wankowiczlab.com/2025/09/27/T...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0JCB...

Graphs of funding curves for nine NIH institutes from fiscal year 2012.

Since there is some discussion that NIH institutes should not simply use paylines to determine which grants to fund, I thought I would share some old data.

These are plots of funding probability fas a function of percentile score for 9 institutes.

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So that adds up to 340 new R01 that were not funded in this past week alone, due to the multi-year funding mandate. sorry, "strong suggestion".

I am all for journal caps but $2000 is too low. As @peiferlabunc.bsky.social said, it costs $ to run a journal.

Today #NIH leadership were told no funds can go out for research project grants, R&D contracts or training grants.

We have just a couple weeks to get funds out the door before Russel Vought attempts a #PocketRescission on Aug 15.

Even if this ends up being temporary, it’s time we don’t have.

Don’t let the light of science dim in the Sunshine State | Opinion Seth Tomchik received his undergraduate and graduate training in South Florida and went on to run a Scripps Florida lab before moving to the University of Iowa. Federal funding for scientific resea…

I wrote a commentary for the Sun-Sentinel about training as a scientist in South Florida and the role/importance of federal funding for biomedical research. While focused on Florida, it applies broadly. Gift link, feel free to share:

www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/06/14/d...

Last night we heard a scream + "I burned chocolate in the microwave!".

my group says "We think it's a lot more precise than the nanodrop we used previously (which was admittedly pretty old). If we read the same sample multiple times with the Implen, we generally get near identical values."

we have the implen and have been satisfied/happy

In France, we are very grateful for the support of @cnrs.fr and #Infranalytics that allows us to access the 1.2 GHz spectrometer in Lille for free (upon selection of proposals of course).

Anyone have a lead on replacement syringes for Malvern VP-ITC instruments? They no longer sell them, and they want me to upgrade to the PEAQ system. Unfortunately, we have a PEAQ-ITC, and it doesn't work with the concentrations needed for nanoparticle experiments. #chemsky #biophysics #ITC

Urge Congress to re-establish the U.S. as the Leader in Innovation American Society For Biochemistry And Molecular Biology

Basic science saves lives and fuels the economy, which is why I’m advocating for:

➡️NIH & NSF to spend FY25 funds
➡️$51.3B for NIH, $9.9B in FY26
➡️Restoration of many canceled NIH & NSF grants

Act now. Contact your lawmakers today: asbmb.quorum.us/campaign/123....
#ScienceServesUsAll #ASBMBAdvocates

No-cost extensions of NIH grants are no longer automatically approved The no-cost extension (NCE) allows the recipient of a NIH grant to continue to spend on the project after the original award interval has expired. This NIH website explains the way NCE used to work…

No-cost extensions of NIH grants are no longer automatically approved drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/05/09/n...

Heavy Water in Your NMR Experiments, And Elsewhere

Heavy water isn’t water. That goes for protein NMR experiments and for a lot else besides:

Here @cameronicohen.bsky.social dives into the new findings from the @dougkojetin.bsky.social & the John Yang labs ... "From activation to repression: decoding the impact of PPARγ ligands on ligand-binding domain conformation"
bit.ly/43P7xJG
@vubasicsciences.bsky.social @vanderbilt.edu

NIH adds about 100 billion/yr to the economy

Budget released today:
40% cut to NIH
50% cut to NSF
If enacted, this will destroy academic research in the United States. It will also have a major trickle down effect on the entire academic ecosystem

Burnette lab graduate student, Zach Sanchez, won the Steve Hann Outstanding Graduate Student Award! He then gave a fun talk on blebbisomes! You can read about his work here:
nature.com/articles/s41...
@vubasicsciences.bsky.social

TV watching recommendations

The lead story on 60 Minutes tonight is about NIH and concerns about damage done and continuing during the current administration.

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Advances in uncovering the mechanisms of macromolecular conformational entropy - PubMed During protein folding, proteins transition from a disordered polymer into a globular structure, markedly decreasing their conformational degrees of freedom, leading to a substantial reduction in entr...

Looking forward to digging into this new @natchembio.nature.com review article by my colleague @stephanieaw.bsky.social (and @fraserlab.com)! @vanderbilt.edu @vumedicine.bsky.social @vanderbiltcsb.bsky.social pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40275100/

Learning millisecond protein dynamics from what is missing in NMR spectra Many proteins’ biological functions rely on interconversions between multiple conformations occurring at micro-to millisecond (µs-ms) timescales. A lack of standardized, large-scale experimental data ...

Next Tues (4/29) at **4:30PM** ET, we will have @ginaelnesr.bsky.social @hkws.bsky.social present "Learning millisecond protein dynamics from what is missing in NMR spectra"

Paper: biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sign up on our website for zoom links!

a man is sitting at a table in a kitchen with the words ermah-gerd written on the screen behind him . ALT: a man is sitting at a table in a kitchen with the words ermah-gerd written on the screen behind him .

Some new language appeared in the HHS Grants Policy Statement last week.

It doesn't apply to NIH grants (yet)

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In science, we don’t give negative data nearly enough love. Showing with genetic precision that CGRP and Substance P aren’t needed for different kinds of acute and chronic pain? That’s huge.

Peer networks are so important. We built @nrimpact.bsky.social for this reason, and while we did not anticipate *waves hands wildly* when we put the group together in 2019, the 46 faculty in our group lean on each other in times of personal and professional challenges.
www.nrimpact.com

Congrats to Kelly O’Rourke, the Department of Biochemistry's Trainee of the Month! 👏🏾👏👏🏻👏🏽 Kelly works in the lab of @dougkojetin.bsky.social and her advice for other students Make self-care a priority. "When I have balance in other areas of my life, I feel more productive and motivated in the lab."

The Tortured Proteins Department Esp. 2 with @fraserlab.bsky.social is out! In addition to bantering about the craziness of the times, we chat about some recent exciting preprints (see links below).

open.spotify.com/show/10PHVou...

Join us for the 2nd Macromolecular Conformational Ensembles Conference on June 9th/10th at UCSF. The most compelling questions in structural biology cannot be effectively addressed using only a single structure. conformationalensembles.github.io @fraserlab.bsky.social

⚓️It's VU Giving Week! Support the CSB and the Anne Karpay Award in Structural Biology! Your gift supports innovation and discovery across Vanderbilt. Every gift makes a difference! 🧪🔬
Give to the CSB: www.givecampus.com/campaigns/57...
Give to the Karpay Award: www.givecampus.com/campaigns/57...

Cell membranes sustain phospholipid imbalance via cholesterol asymmetry This work challenges a major assumption in cell biology by showing that lipid bilayers can have drastically different phospholipid abundances between their two leaflets. This lipid abundance asymmetry...

Groundbreaking study in Cell from @leventallab.bsky.social: phospholipid asymmetry is a defining feature of the plasma membrane and cholesterol fills the holes — major implications for how this membrane works. A #lipidtime must-read! www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Thanks! I already follow @jeremymberg.bsky.social, initially for for the awesome protein biophysics, and now also (sadly) for depressing #NIH updates.