Best of Twitter - Week of January 17, 2022 - (biology supplement)

As I’m getting more and more into thinking about the science of biology and not just about institutions of science, I’m starting to an irregular (for now) bio supplement to best of twitter. See email right after this one. Feel free to ignore it if you are not interested in biology at all, but if you are starting to become interested and want to figure out how to get in, feel free to email me :)

If this supplement becomes regular, I’ll probably split it off into a separate newsletter.

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Russell Kaplan @russelljkaplan

Today I saw the impact that AlphaFold is having on speeding up drug discovery firsthand:

January 23rd 2022

599 Retweets3,618 Likes

Hessam Akhlaghpour 🔬🧠🧬🪰🧮🔱🦉 @theHessam

It's officially published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology! An RNA-Based Theory of Natural Universal Computation. free-access link for next 50 days: authors.elsevier.com/a/1eSX457im8GWD In it, I raise a theoretical challenge that I believe is overlooked in neuroscience and biology...👇

January 22nd 2022

155 Retweets633 Likes

Veera M. Rajagopal @doctorveera

Everyone loves a genetic association with a large effect size (particularly when it's protective). But it's not easy to find one. Here I list few studies I read in 2021 that identified large effect rare variant associations leading to beautiful gene discoveries. 🧵

January 22nd 2022

104 Retweets535 Likes

Randy Bruno @TheBrunoCortex

Neurons in the uppermost layers of the cortex are sparsely active, being relatively quiet even during sensory stimuli and behavior. 🤫 A new study in BioRxiv by Rikki Rabinovich shows that *surprising events* are potent drivers of layer 2/3 cortical neurons.

January 22nd 2022

20 Retweets133 Likes

Rommie Amaro @RommieAmaro

Truly epic whole cell simulation of a ✨living minimal cell✨ by Z. Luthey-Schulten & team (UIUC) with experimental input by Glass & team (JCVI) 👉doi.org/10.1016/j.cell…

January 20th 2022

56 Retweets246 Likes

Daniel Giguere 🧬 @DanielJGiguere

Nanopore sequencing has improved dramatically. Here are 3 takeaways from the newest developments 👇🧵

January 20th 2022

118 Retweets480 Likes

Dan Landau @landau_lab

🥳new pre-print!🥂 Clonal mosaicism is THE frontier in human genetics. But we know next to nothing about phenotypes of mutated cells in humans. Single-cell multi-omics allowed us to link genotype-phenotype directly in primary human clonal hematopoiesis🎉 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…Single-cell multi-omics of human clonal hematopoiesis reveals that DNMT3A R882 mutations perturb early progenitor states through selective …Somatic mutations in cancer genes have been ubiquitously detected in clonal expansions across healthy human tissue, including in clonal hematopoiesis. However, mutated and wildtype cells are morphologically and phenotypically similar, limiting the ability to link genotypes with cellular phenotypes.…biorxiv.org

January 17th 2022

119 Retweets538 Likes

pablo @tsuname

This is one finding that I would point to when people ask "what has single cell methodologies discovered this far?". Turns out neural crest cells know how to tune some of the Yamanaka factors to induce pluripotency. Study led by @AntoineZalc & Rahul Sinha Reactivation of the pluripotency program precedes formation of the cranial neural crestTranscriptomics and cell tracing of mouse cranial neural crest cells reveal precursor cell origin and pluripotency reactivation.science.org

January 19th 2022

1 Retweet10 Likes

Brady Johnston @bradyajohnston

Made a DNA generator inside of geometry nodes, but it quickly became complicated and I added in histones, with customisable chromatin that you can just 'draw' in the viewport #b3d #geometrynodes

January 18th 2022

94 Retweets931 Likes

Kat Kajderowicz @KKajderowicz

What are some overlooked non-model complex organisms with extraordinary capabilities? i.e. regeneration, survival in extreme environmental conditions

January 22nd 2022

6 Retweets43 Likes

Andrew D Hanson Lab @ADHansonLab

Thought-provoking critique from @NicholsonHPBio of useful #engineering metaphors (circuitry, machine...) in #SyntheticBiology & elsewhere. Based on huge disparity in size btwn cells & what they are compared to, with very different physical laws at play. philarchive.org/archive/NICOBT…

January 16th 2022

16 Retweets33 Likes

Science-adjacent

Samuel Rodriques @SGRodriques

A quick blog post here about the "talent liquidity paradox." When considering fast grants, I think the labs that are most likely to be able to perform quickly on fast grants may also be the ones that least need the additional funding. Thoughts appreciated. The Talent Liquidity ParadoxIn light of the recent popularity of fast grants, I think an important concept to keep in mind when thinking about funding academic research is what I have started to call “Talent Liquidity.” I.e., if we get into a regime where funders can rapidly dispense money to academic labs (within ~weeks), is…sam-rodriques.com

January 7th 2022

3 Retweets23 Likes

Nidhi Seethapathi @nidhi_s91

I'm seeing a trend where PhD applicants want to work on an exceedingly narrow area almost directly in line with their past research exposure. I find this to be sub-optimal, and optimized for the short-term benefit of PIs, not the long-term benefit of science or trainees.

January 20th 2022

44 Retweets594 Likes

Julia @yuliamilton

When people said doing a PhD would be difficult I was thinking more along the lines of "challenging math to be learned" rather than "the culture and bureaucracy of academia will demean you and wear you down day after day for 5+ years"

January 20th 2022

2,072 Retweets23,327 Likes

New Science @newscienceorg

An excellent piece by Derek featuring Arc Institute, @ArcadiaScience, and us -- about the current efforts to reimagine how science is funded and organized.

Derek Thompson @DKThomp

Abundance requires innovation. Innovation begins with science. But scientific funding in the U.S. is broken—it's too slow, risk-averse, and old. I wrote about a surprising coalition of tech founders and star scientists who are trying to fix it. https://t.co/pmSr36HfdQ

January 20th 2022

2 Retweets31 Likes

Michael Baym @baym

The combination of the difficulty in getting NIH and NSF grants that are shrinking wrt inflation with all this billionaire money tossed around in already-rich areas very much feels like US science is reverting to renaissance patronage and abandoning 20th century democratization

January 19th 2022

67 Retweets689 Likes

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