Jeffrey Dean

"Forty percent of data center demand is being met by gas-fired power plants according to the latest statistics, and the state of Georgia projects that its demand for electricity will be 17 times where it is today in a decade due to increased industrial use." 😳

Actually, not surprised.

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III | Nature Plants make complex and potent therapeutic molecules1,2, but sourcing these molecules from natural producers or through chemical synthesis is difficult, which limits their use in the clinic. A prominent example is the anti-cancer therapeutic paclitaxel (sold under the brand name Taxol), which is derived from yew trees (Taxus species)3. Identifying the full paclitaxel biosynthetic pathway would enable heterologous production of the drug, but this has yet to be achieved despite half a century of research4. Within Taxus’ large, enzyme-rich genome5, we suspected that the paclitaxel pathway would be difficult to resolve using conventional RNA-sequencing and co-expression analyses. Here, to improve the resolution of transcriptional analysis for pathway identification, we developed a strategy we term multiplexed perturbation × single nuclei (mpXsn) to transcriptionally profile cell states spanning tissues, cell types, developmental stages and elicitation conditions. Our data show that pa

Discovery of genes FoTO1 & Taxol allows biosynthesis of baccatin III from yew trees, key for paclitaxel production. Complex plant-derived therapies, simplified! PMID:40500440, Nature 2025, @Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09090-z #Medsky #Pharmsky #RNA #ASHG #ESHG 🧪

Okay this is worse than I thought. A large # of academic press books (incld. a textbook I use in class) have been moved to a platform called Ebook Central. It's like Kindle paired w/ AI. No footnotes. No page #s No facsimile PDFs are available. I just wrote a lengthy complaint to my library. Sigh.

“You Feel Like You’re Being Cheated”: Oil Companies Unfairly Take Millions, North Dakota Mineral Owners Say Oil companies are holding back a large portion of revenue payments to the people they lease drilling rights from, often with little explanation. But the industry has an outsize influence in the…

NEW: Oil companies are holding back a large portion of revenue payments to the people they lease drilling rights from, often with little explanation.

But the industry has an outsize influence in the state, and public officials have refused to take action.

With @northdakotamonitor.com

The 'King of the Great Plains' is dying. Drought is killing giant oak trees in the Midwest Years of drought conditions in the Midwest and Great Plains have opened the door for pests and diseases that are killing trees. Now people working in parks and forests are planting new species they ho...

Hypoxylon canker caused by Biscogniauxia atropunctatum is killing drought-stressed bur #oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) on the high plains. www.kcur.org/news/2025-08... #phytopathology #trees #ascomycete #fungus #drought #climate

Hammerhead sharks eat other sharks—and it’s worth the risk Apparently, sharks are food, not friends.

Thank you @popsci.com for covering our recent paper on great hammerhead energetics! 🐟🧪🌊🌍 Read the piece here:

www.popsci.com/environment/...

Scientists crack the case of the melting sea stars. It only took a decade Researchers in Washington and British Columbia say they have solved a deadly mystery that has stumped scientists for more than a decade.

Researchers say they've identified the pathogen behind one of the world’s biggest disease outbreaks: a wasting disease that affected billions of sea stars from Alaska to California. via @kuow.org

2.6 billion tariff revenue
Queen Steph
@ShortSteph00
It’s a consumer tax. We just transferred 29.6 Billion to the federal government from the middle class. How in the hell is that good news? 🤦‍♀️

A Cancer Patient Chose Assisted Death. That Wasn’t the Last Hard Choice.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/h...

Motherfucking wind farms…

Stalking the Elusive Hellbender

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/t...

Blood sugar rising, color-blindness and a scary condition She’d been fit and healthy all her life. Then with her first pregnancy she got gestational diabetes. Over the coming years things just cascaded, puzzling doctors until she finally got a scary diagnosi...

Blood sugar rising, color-blindness and a scary condition

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Dogs are helping people regulate stress even more than expected, research shows A new study finds that dogs’ mitigation of human stress is more biologically complex than scientists previously understood.

Dogs may have a more profound impact on reducing human stress levels than previously thought. They regulate both major stress pathways in the brain, keeping us in a healthy "sweet spot" for handling stress, according to researchers.

Scanning electron microscope image showing an abnormal "shot glass-shaped" structure from a liverwort mutant lacking the SHOT GLASS gene. The structure has tall, narrow walls forming a deep cup with an empty interior, contrasting with the normal shallow gemma cups visible as small circular openings scattered across the surrounding plant surface.

🌱 Ancient liverwort gene unlocks secret of plant cloning 🧪
doi.org/pzg3

Scientists cracked how plants reproduce without sex. The finding could improve crops and on Earth and beyond. But the key to this discovery comes from a plant that annoys many gardeners.

#Botany #PlantScience (1/7)

Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage Genomic and functional analyses reveal that the potato lineage originated from a homoploid interspecific hybridization event between the Tomato and Etuberosum lineages 8–9 million years ago. The alter...

So actually potato comes from tomato! 🤯🤯
A cross between a Solanum and a tuberosum derived in the actual potatoes! (Another) Incredible work by the lab of Sanwen Huang and colaborators

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

If you're following the #Coffee #PlantCellWalls work from the labs of @zhengli.bsky.social & @icesarino.bsky.social (see quoted), then here's their latest paper:

👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Polysaccharides of coffee"

#PlantScience

Radioactive wasp nest found at site where US once made nuclear bombs Workers at a South Carolina site that once made nuclear bomb parts have found a radioactive wasp nest. Officials say there's no danger to anyone.

In case you feel like you don't have enough to worry about, I present to you... radioactive wasps.

🪲🪳

apnews.com/article/radi...

Scientists discover a whole new type of ecosystem 30,000 feet deep In Pacific Ocean trenches, scientists found creatures that expand the limits of where we know life can live on Earth.

Scientists discover a whole new type of ecosystem 30,000 feet deep

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

The antitrust war inside MAGA

Unbelievably corrupt things are happening over at the Trump DOJ when it comes to antitrust.

Gail Slater, Trump's anti-monopoly czar, is under pressure because she objected to the HPE-Juniper merger, hashed out between officials and company executives over cocktails. unherd.com/2025/07/the-...

Resurrecting a miniature Cas9 ancestor for genome and epigenome editing - Nature Biotechnology The ancestral protein of the CRISPR–Cas9 system — less than half the size of its famous descendant — is engineered into an effective DNA-targeting tool that can be delivered by AAV as an epigenome edi...

The ancestral protein of the CRISPR–Cas9 system — less than half the size of its famous descendant — is engineered into an effective DNA-targeting tool that can be delivered by AAV as an epigenome editor for in vivo gene silencing #NBTNV go.nature.com/43JRgno
rdcu.be/eyorl

Trump’s Tax Bill Expands Farm Subsidies. Not All Farmers Will Benefit.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/u...

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

Oh my god, Russell Vought is a straight up sociopath. There is no rationale for this than a profound sadism. And this man calls himself a Christian. Like Torquemada I guess. How did he get to be so damaged? www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

USDA reorganization will cut agricultural and forest research One of the agency’s largest and most storied research facilities will be closed along with most forest research stations

USDA reorganization will cut agricultural and forest research | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

A superstrong, decarbonizing structural material enabled by microbe-assisted cell wall engineering via a biomechanochemical process A biomechanochemical process transforms wood into a high-strength, decarbonizing structural material.

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

How Trump's loathing for wind turbines started with a Scottish court battle The US president is a vocal critic of wind energy - and it's a loathing which began in Aberdeenshire.

How Trump's loathing for wind turbines started with a Scottish court battle

Navy Set to Unplug Critical Hurricane Satellites this Week Abrupt termination of satellite data by U.S. Department of Defense sends forecasters scrambling for a fix on the brink of the busiest stretch of the hurricane season

If you think I've forgotten about the hurricane satellites, think again. The Navy is permanently unplugging them this week, on the brink of the busiest stretch of the season. There's so much more to this story, and I have the latest scoop. ⬇️

Planting seeds of hope that Atlanta will reconsider its hollow tree law The Atlanta City Council passed a tree ordinance in June, but preservationists say it was an empty gesture that appeased developersdid but not actually require saving trees.

Disclaimer: This op-ed is not about hollow trees (which is too bad). 🫤
www.ajc.com/opinion/2025...

Government study to check pet dog and cat poo for superbugs The screening is part of the drive to fight superbugs that are resistant to common antibiotic drugs.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

You might be ghosting the internet. Can it survive? Your clicks have immense power. Collectively, just moments of our attention can lift or sink a site. But our browsing is changing, and it could reshape the internet you know and love.

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Finding Faster, Cheaper Ways to Get to Bacon Livestock companies like Smithfield Foods are breeding generations of pigs with new traits

www.wsj.com/science/biol...