Emily Daniel @ILikeCellBio

The majority of axonal mitochondria in mammalian neurons lack mitochondrial DNA and do not produce ATP biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

A validated antibody toolbox for ALS research elifesciences.org/reviewed-prepr…

I am sending an open letter to Thermo Fisher. Their response to my response to their manipulated western blot is bullying and petty. Yes, this western blot really is manipulated, it is unfair on me to say otherwise. I don't make those accusations lightly. #ThermoFishy

Today I'm posting a new blog about an astonishing scientific own goal. Hundreds of papers have reported using a completely wrong antibody to investigate the tumor suppressor p16. This mistake has happened because scientists have muddled the names of two proteins 🧵

Agree 100%. I'd add that in 1989, a Lancet study found hope-focused group therapy was associated with 18 months longer survival in metastatic breast cancer. It's largely viewed as discredited or an aberration today. But it spawned all that toxic "hope culture" in cancer.

Julia Marie @julia_doubleday

2 weeks ago

@AlanLevinovitz Can you imagine having any other illness- MS, cancer, a severe autoimmune disease, and a reporter writing a long form article about how that illness is “totally real” but they interviewed a guy who says he was cured by envisioning himself getting better so maybe that will work

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There is a new paper in Science proposing a mechanism for how homing pigeons navigate on cloudy days. (Hint: It's magnetic fields.) As with many magnetobiology papers, though, I'm skeptical of their proposed mechanism. These researchers, from Germany, found that pigeons have macrophages in their liver that accumulate lots of iron. They confirmed this with staining and other analyses. These macrophages also tend to cluster near nerve fibers in the liver (this is important for later). Then they did a really interesting experiment: - Train 34 pigeons to fly a particular 19-kilometer route. Ensure they all do this well. - Split the pigeons into two groups: treatment and control. - Inject the treatment group pigeons with liposomes loaded with clodronate. The macrophages eat these liposomes, and then clodronate kills the cells and scatters the iron. - Release the pigeons, from both groups, on an overcast day (it's thought that pigeons use magnetic fields to navigate when there is no sun). - All of the control pigeons reached their destination within 70 minutes, but the treated pigeons scattered in random directions. - (Important control experiment: The treated pigeons, released on a sunny day, flew like normal and reached their destination.) - This is taken as evidence that ??? macrophages --> iron --> navigation ??? via magnetic fields. But the mechanism is fuzzy. This experiment is super interesting, and it's clear that the treated pigeons really are unable to home to their destination using a magnetic field. But I'm not entirely convinced by the mechanism these authors propose. The main claim is that these iron-loaded macrophages "align" in a magnetic field, and that they shift according to the bird's orientation so that it can fix its direction. These macrophages (somehow) send signals to the nerve fibers in the liver, which then pass the messages to the brain, which allows the bird to navigate. The news coverage for this story suggests how this might happen: "One idea is that as the bird shifts its position relative to Earth’s magnetic field lines, the ferritin changes orientation and tugs on the web of fibers within a macrophage, possibly triggering the release of signaling molecules." (All you need to do is read the 2016 Meister paper, from the images below, to understand why such a mechanism is physically dubious.) The problem, though, is that the authors show (in their own study) that the iron in these pigeons' livers only act as a stable magnet at super low temperatures, below about 12 degrees Kelvin (or -260 degrees Celsius). At normal, physiological temperatures, the iron would be scrambled by the thermal motions of the tissue. Every measurement in the paper is taken at cryogenic temperatures, but a bird's body temperature is much higher, which means heat would likely destroy any magnetic alignment. The authors claim that MILLIONS of iron particles in the liver are all acting together to escape this effect, but they don't demonstrate the mechanism convincingly at all. If this claim is true, why not take homing pigeons (control vs. macrophage-depleted) and then rotate a magnetic field around them? You could record their neurons to see if there is some kind of signal coming from the liver.

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Here are the results. By far the most prevalent was cocaine, followed by the cocaine metabolite (Benzoylecgonine). I assume the high amount has much to do with how cocaine is consumed. Snort -> touch nose -> touch money. 1/

Marc Johnson @SolidEvidence

2 weeks ago

Results are in. Guess what we detected the most of on money? 1. fentanyl 2. Norfentanyl (fentanyl metabolite) 3. Synthetic opioid (we tested several) 4. Cocaine 5. Benzoylecgonine (cocain metabolite) 6. Naloxone 7. Cotinine (nicotine analog) 8. caffeine

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First plate is done. No Hanta, no Ebola. Flu season is over, and COVID is 100-times lower than it has been. The only respiratory viruses on the rise are Rhinoviruses and Parainfluenzavirus 3, but they always surge in late Spring and I have no idea why.

Marc Johnson @SolidEvidence

4 weeks ago

2 more Novaseq 25B plates about to finish. 55 wastewater samples, ~30 million people, 3 coasts. Before anyone asks - yes, we would be able to detect Ebola Bundibugyo. If it has an RNA or DNA genome, we can detect it. afro.who.int/countries/demo…

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Ensitrelvir succeeded where Paxlovid had failed to show efficacy, in post exposure prophylaxis. It’s also been known for years that it prevents severe late disease in those already symptomatic as well as Paxlovid. Ensitrelvir should have been approved long ago. If it were from an American rather than Japanese pharma, it would have been.

nature @Nature

4 weeks ago

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus go.nature.com/4nAMi6g

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Transient tertiary structure in intrinsically disordered proteins revealed by multithermal enhanced sampling: nature.com/articles/s4146…

SPEx: Compartment-Resolved Proteomics via Expansion Microscopy–Guided Microdissection biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

UBQLN2 links proteotoxicity with lipid metabolism in neurodegeneration: nature.com/articles/s4159…

Here is our updated database of grants for early careers researchers in all fields. It goes way beyond traditional NIH and NSF funding opportunities. We list 428 types of grants. Download it here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-op…

That’s not how science works

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1

4 months ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — EPA revokes scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health, removing key basis for climate change fight.

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@Welnesschick Yes, asymptomatic SARS2 infection is common, and people can be contagious without ever having symptoms. health.clevelandclinic.org/asymptomatic-c…

@JerryMoran @JerryMoran, deny funding to DHS and ICE! Countless lives have been lost or irreparably upended without due process, including citizens, legal residents (not that it's any more acceptable for non-legal residents!). It is imperative that you stand up against authoritarianism!

@JoannaRunge Non-citizens are already not allowed to vote. The Senator knows this. I bet he also knows that voter fraud in the U.S. is very rare, according to the Heritage Foundation's own data. And now you know it too, so you can rest easy about your way of life. brookings.edu/articles/how-w…

Sent from Tehran. #IranMassacre

I don’t know how long it took me to read this in full this morning. An hour and a half? Maybe more? Hard to tell because of the engrossing nature, intermittent grappling, drawing parallels to real people and experiences, questioning starting premises and their logical conclusions, recognizing evidence of rationalism divorced from emotional weight. Whatever time I spent lost in this was worth it. Highly recommend if … I guess if you’re anyone trying to make sense of what is happening at the frontier of technological transformation, the human archetypes that reside there, and how the framing of these might influence our perspective of the outcomes. Kind of just want everyone I know to read it so we can talk about it. possessedmachines.com

@grok Hi Grok, what are the current best estimates that you can find for rates of transmission and/or likelihood of transmission of SARS-COV-2 from people who are not symptomatic?