Petros Ligoxygakis

Surprisingly, one important “cold case” is not investigated: Lys-type peptidoglycan activates Toll while DAP-type peptidoglycan activates IMD. One of the most widespread claims in the field. And one that is wrong. See Vaz et al Cell Reports 2019 for a full rebuttal.

Εντωμεταξύ, από ανοσολογική άποψη, ο εμβολιασμός κατά τη διάρκεια ενός disease outbreak είναι τυφλοσούρτης είτε το outbreak είναι σε ανθρώπους είτε σε ζώα. Ότι άλλο λέγεται δεν έχει καμία επιστημονική βάση.

YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel Why is Trump targeting Minnesota? | Beyond the headlines

For those interested - here is an 8 minute discussion of what has happened in the sphere of immigration, nationalism & foriegn policy last week in the US that you might have missed.

Will also be doing shorter clips over the week!

youtu.be/8I4OoIfTUrU 1/2

Popi Papandreou Few figures in Greece have caused more sleepless nights among the country’s powerful than Popi Papandreou. As the most prominent prosecutor in the Athens office of the European Public Prosecutor’s …

From resilient prosecutors to unyielding lawmakers and provocative firebrands, here are 10 people to watch for a clearer view of what’s brewing in European politics @politico.eu
Among them, Popi Papandreou EPPO delegated prosecutor

www.politico.eu/list/10-to-w...

I got my tickets and I can’t wait to see them live on the 13th here in Oxford!

A great historical account of one of the most fascinating and important clusters of genes in animal evolution. The Master Regulators: The Hox. Despite knowing so much about them since the McGinnis 1984 Cell paper, they retain a core mystery that is difficult to explain. Namely: why clustering?

Important review from @virusesimmunity.bsky.social group, with @jannamoen.bsky.social and Christine Miller, just published: 'The lingering shadow of epidemics: post-acute sequelae across history', a highlight of post-acute infection syndromes (PAIS) through the centuries #LongCOVID

WIN! - a Norman World Exclusive copy of 'HAYWARDxDÄLEK' by HAYWARDxDÄLEK

Like, share, and give our page a follow for the chance to win a copy of our limited exclusive of this class industrial hip-hop collab.

@relapserecords.bsky.social
www.normanrecords.com/records/2117...

Teens may have come up with a new way to detect, treat Lyme disease using CRISPR gene editing To compete at iGEM, a sort of science Olympics, teens at a Georgia high school set their sights on finding a better way to detect and treat Lyme disease. Their approach uses CRISPR gene editing.

Remarkable story of a Georgia high school team who used CRISPR to make a rapid diagnostic test strip for Lyme disease, speeding dx from 2 weeks to days
www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-m...

I don’t understand the logic here-i.e. why it is inevitable that Reform will be elected and so we shouldn’t even fight the good fight to prevent them from doing so. What am I missing?

“If the sadness of life makes you tired/and the failures of man make you sigh/You can look to the time soon arriving/When this noble experiment winds down and calls it a day.”
“Noble experiment” closing one of the most beautiful records no one knows.

I’m proud to present the main work from my postdoc, 3+ years in making from scratch, my ultimate #MimulusPropaganda up till now:

The Moment
That
Symmetry
Breaks.

#plantscience #development #imaging #microscopy 🧪🌸🔬
w. Captain Yaowu & @biancatash.bsky.social

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

Emergence of a bacterial immune mechanism by incorporating pre-existing cellular machinery. A lesson in the evolution of cell-autonomous defences. Fantastic work by the Bernheim/Patel labs.

Graphical summary of our paper. In mice, prior lower airway exposure to diverse inflammatory stimuli, including chronic bacterial infections such as M. tuberculosis, acute bacterial infections such as pulmonary S. aureus, viral infections such as Influenza A, type-II allergic responses such as the OVA-Alum model, activation of pulmonary TLR9 by CpG or pulmonary TLR1/2 by Pam3CSK4 leads to reduced viral burden upon subsequent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (SCV2). (2) This SCV2 restriction occurs prior to induction of SCV2-specific adaptive immune responses and is mediated through innate immune responses, including the induction of IFN-I, TNFα and IL-1 and sustained changes to the TRM (Tissue resident macrophage) cellular compartment and the pulmonary epithelium. (3) Innate cytokine and TLR signaling to both recruited immune cells and the pulmonary epithelium creates a microenvironment in the lung that limits early replication of SCV2. IFN-I signaling to pulmonary ECs (epithelial cells) increases expression of interferon-stimulated genes, that likely cell-intrinsically limit viral replication. TNF- or IL-1 suppress SCV2 independently of IFN-I signaling. TNF acts exclusively through radio-resistant cell types such as the lung epithelium, whereas IL-1 affords control both direct and indirectly, through either stromal and hematopoietic cell types, to restrict overall early SCV2 burden.

Best #Nikolaus 🎅! Our paper on how the 🫁 microenvironment can shape #innate immunity against #viruses is out @sciimmunology.bsky.social This was a herculean effort brilliantly led by @pauljbaker.bsky.social who singlehandedly established the model in the lab during the pandemic. 🧪 #Immunosky 1/9

Πέθανε ο μουσικοκριτικός Αργύρης Ζήλος | LiFO Τα τελευταία χρόνια είχε αποσυρθεί από τον παλιό, πιο εντατικό επαγγελματικό ρυθμό γραφής και κριτικής

Rough streets…Το όνομα μιας συλλογής που επιμελήθηκε (83;). 45άρια της Rough Trade. Ερχόμενος Αγγλία το πρώτο πράγμα ήταν να τα βρω. The Zounds, Blue Orchids, Virgin Prunes, Pere Ubu, Pop Group, etc. Δεν νομίζω να υπάρχει άνθρωπος που να επηρέασε τόσο πολύ τι άκουγα τότε. www.lifo.gr/now/entertai...

One of the greats. For years I was thinking that one ought to take his papers and write a study of their repercussions, extensions and influence. His inquisitive mind was described to me “[…] as a blind rhinoceros running in a burning savannah”. I can only imagine those group meetings…

Drumrolls, please! I’m thrilled to share the cover for my forthcoming #book from @doubledaybooks.bsky.social
(Penguin Random House), #PROPHECY. This is the best book I’ve written: the boldest, the most innovative, the most personal. I have poured my soul into it like never before. 1/

How can gut microbes modulate host lifespan?
@jogender-singh.bsky.social & coworkers show that in C. elegans, lifespan extension arises from microbial perturbation of iron homeostasis and oxidative stress response activation
#RefereedPreprint c/o @reviewcommons.org
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...

Advances in genomics are giving exciting new perspectives on biology of speech, language & reading. My latest peer-reviewed paper is a tutorial, guiding readers from different backgrounds through the history of the field, current state-of-the-art, & where we’re heading. A taster in this thread.🧪
1/n

So devastatingly true. Read this thread.

We are in the midst of an all-out attempt to exclude the global majority from science. Watson was clear about where he fell on that. I would trade every single dinner, meeting, seminar, fancy campus, and prestigious donor for my incredible friends to be safer. Their science is worth far more.

Elegant chaos

Let me use this as an opportunity to talk about Jordi et al's very cool paper, now out in PNAS 🧪:

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

You can read our news and views here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

EyaHOST, a modular genetic system for investigation of intercellular and tumor-host interactions in Drosophila melanogaster Teles-Reis et al. present EyaHOST, a modular Drosophila system that enables clone generation in the eye disc with independent genetic manipulation of other tissues. EyaHOST uses an Eya-KD “kick-out” s...

Excited to share our new paper out in Cell Reports Methods! @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social
🎉🎉🎉
We present EyaHOST, a modular Drosophila genetic system that enables precise and independent manipulation of tumours and host tissues to dissect tumour-host interactions.
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

Symbiosis and the Unself: Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on How Interbeing Shapes Life on Earth “Living beings defy neat definition… We abide in a symbiotic world.”

“Living beings defy neat definition… We abide in a symbiotic world.”

The visionary evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis (of Gaia Hypothesis fame) on symbiosis and the unself www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/21/l...

My latest review for Uncut!

Enabling options for review: from training and transparency to author-centered AI tools - openRxiv Peer review is widely viewed as a critical aspect of biomedical communication. Ideally, it provides authors with feedback so they can improve manuscripts and gives readers, particularly nonspecialists...

Excited to launch an openRxiv partnership with the scientist-run AI review service qed (@qedscience.bsky.social), the brainchild of @odedrechavi.bsky.social 1/n

openrxiv.org/enabling-rev...

N.Y.C. Mayor Live Updates: ‘This City Belongs to You,’ Mamdani Says as He Celebrates Victory

The fightback begins www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11...

Essays on philosophy in public life - Nuffield Foundation

"The point is to change it" — a volume of new essays from 21 leading academics exploring the role of philosophy in public life — launches today!

Contributors include @tariqmodood.bsky.social, @martinoneill.bsky.social, @jowolff.bsky.social, @elkeschwarz.bsky.social and more.

Click below to read 👇🦉