Michael Meers

Derek Lowe letting loose to start the year...speaking truth and committing to work hard to make this better.

I am most definitely with your @dereklowe.bsky.social

Reality as parody is undefeated

The Undermining of the C.D.C. The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that it is hewing to “gold standard, evidence-based science”—doublespeak that might unsettle Orwell.

Giving voice to what American scientists are simmering over in (largely silent) anger and despair www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

WashU in STL just announced, in a university-wide email, that we will NOT be signing The Compact.

This statement, I believe, exists thanks to the tremendous energy generated w/in our community by, among others, the Faculty Senate, the revived AAUP, and student journalists. I'm proud of everybody.

The Meers Lab always follows protocols to the letter except when they don’t 🦁

Given this is a Director's award, I'd be remiss to ignore the broader context of what the current NIH Director is presiding over right now at the NIH. These were my full thoughts when asked for a quote for this piece on what this means to me and our lab.

It feels very apropos to have this announcement preempted by a government shutdown 🥲 but I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for the tireless work of the reviewers and staff of the Office of the Director who saw fit to give us this chance.

What if NIH had been 40% smaller? Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Plate CUT&Tag (Meers Lab version) This protocol describes a method for carrying out CUT&Tag-Direct in 96 well microplates for high-throughput processing of samples by a single operator with only standard lab...

We published a detailed protocol for our Plate-CUT&Tag method on @protocolsio.bsky.social to accompany our recent preprint (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) give it a try! Feedback welcome! dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.n2bvjed5wgk5/v1

Intermediately Methylated Regions in Normal Cells Are Epimutation Hotspots in Cancer DNA methylation is altered in all cancers, but the mechanisms responsible for these changes are not well understood. Using data from 100 primary samples, we show that regions with intermediate methyla...

While you're at it, check out this nice new preprint from Dave's lab that makes use of Plate-CUT&Tag data to characterize chromatin states at intermediately 5mC-methylated regions that play key roles in AML: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 4/3

This work was spearheaded by Brittany Johnson, the very first Meers Lab member who has now moved on to a PhD at @ibisatnu.bsky.social, with big assists from Gabe Boyle and @sarthylab.bsky.social at Seattle Children's and David Spencer here at WashU. Hoping this is the first of many for the lab! 3/3

Inspired by Derek Janssens' work on AutoCUT&RUN/Tag that streamlined those methods for highly parallel sample processing on a liquid handling robot, we simplified that a bit by allowing any user to process 96 samples at once without any specialized equipment, with a nice use case for AML 2/3

A protocol for high-throughput microplate-based CUT&Tag Cleavage Under Targets & Tagmentation (CUT&Tag) is a versatile method for measuring genomic occupancy of chromatin-associated proteins with high sensitivity and specificity. CUT&Tag has low sequencing...

On our three year lab anniversary (give or take a few days!), I'm proud to share the first original work produced within the Meers Lab: Plate-CUT&Tag! Take a look: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/3

Death, taxes, and "the PI is too inexperienced and requires a senior co-mentor for this student's F31" 🙃

The nuclear periphery confers repression on H3K9me2-marked genes and transposons to shape cell fate - Nature Cell Biology Marin et al. report the role of lamin proteins and the lamin B receptor (LBR) in chromatin positioning at the nuclear periphery. Knockout of all lamins and LBR in mouse embryonic stem cells leads to h...

Another paper bluetorial! Today: how does the spatial location of genes influence their function? (1/n) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Surprising Scientists Hit by Trump’s D.E.I. Cuts

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/u...

The elusive virtual cell Rosetta Stone or Moby Dick?

I wrote down some of my thoughts down on the current race to build virtual cell models. Overall, excited and wary about the work ahead. Also, it's my first post to Substack; getting more excited about it as a replacement for X and Blue Sky.

srikosuri.substack.com/p/the-elusiv...

Range extender mediates long-distance enhancer activity - Nature The REX element is associated with long-range enhancer–promoter interactions.

Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

This is fantastic stuff Evgeny! Great to see it come together so nicely. Congratulations!

How do non-coding variants in enhancers lead to disease? Happy to share our recent work, led by @ewholling.bsky.social, in which we discovered that poised chromatin sensitizes enhancers to aberrant activation by non-coding mutations, contributing to disease. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/

Stem Cell–Derived, Fully Differentiated Islets for Type 1 Diabetes | NEJM Zimislecel is an allogeneic stem cell–derived islet-cell therapy. Data on the safety and efficacy of zimislecel in persons with type 1 diabetes are needed. We conducted a phase 1–2 study of zimisle...

What an amazing time to be a biomedical scientist.

www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

U.S. Scientists Warn That Trump’s Cuts Will Set Off a Brain Drain

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...

Why does the government fund research at universities? : Planet Money American universities are where people go to learn and teach. They're also where research and development happens. Over the past eight decades, universities have received billions in federal dollars t...

Thank you @erikaberas.bsky.social for including me in this in depth @planetmoney.bsky.social piece on the mechanics of research funding at universities—I give it a 👍🏻👌👏👨‍🔬 emoji 🙃 www.npr.org/2025/05/28/1...

MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm America will pay the price most of all

Thank you @economist.com for this important, well reasoned piece. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

Good cover @economist.com

With apologies to @jeremymberg.bsky.social, I borrowed directly and heavily from this thread of his to craft my comment on this policy proposal, which I'm posting here for anyone who would like to use it as a template. Please heed Jeremy's exhortation and post a comment by Friday!

Remarks by Director Kratsios at the National Academy of Sciences Remarks by Director Kratsios at the National Academy of Sciences REINVIGORATING AMERICA’S SCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY Washington, D.C.

Typical of this White House: a non-expert decrying all that’s wrong, using “evidence” that amounts to anecdotes, offering mealy-mouthed “solutions” (wtf is “gold standard science” anyways?) as a pretext to destroy without any strategy to build. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...

My quote of the day

My dad used to say: “Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value."

Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

A screenshot of the termination notice showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants"

A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

the word alert is in a purple circle ALT: the word alert is in a purple circle

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM

Implementation of Schedule F

This is what a lot of us have been worried about.

This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs.

BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD...

1/n