Monique van Hoek

Sometimes, bacterial names are just funny! Looking at a member of the Neisseriales family: the bacterial name is "Snodgrassella alvi wkB2". Who was Dr. Snodgrass and why does he have this bacteria named after him!? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snodgrass….

"they found peptides mapping to unregistered bacterial species in human samples confirmed via PCR this means diagnosis from proteome alone, no genome, no culture, no priors"...

"detected pathogens from wounds without prior DB" via proteomics.

Be careful where you spit out your gum! Forensic archeologists could be studying your DNA from it in 6000 years! smithsonianmag.com/science-nature…

@tangming2005 Tommy, how does RefSeq capture or hide slight differences between related bacterial strains, which often have highly similar genome sequences, but could have crucial differences also. Are these lost in the RefSeq?

NCBI RefSeq: reference sequence standards through 25 years of curation and annotation academic.oup.com/nar/advance-ar…

Interesting thread about "mirror bacteria"

Introducing ESM Cambrian. Unsupervised learning can invert biology at scale to reveal the hidden structure of the natural world. We’ve scaled up compute and data to train a new generation of protein language models. ESM C defines a new state of the art for protein representation learning.

Could one envision a synthetic receptor technology that is fully programmable, able to detect diverse extracellular antigens – both soluble and cell-attached – and convert that recognition into a wide range of intracellular responses, from transgene expression and real-time fluorescence to modulation of innate cell behavior (excitation or inhibition of neurons, induction of cell migration, etc.)? Today we report in Nature a new technology platform that provides a step in that direction: PAGERs, for Programmable Antigen-gated G protein-coupled Engineered Receptors, convert recognition of extracellular soluble or cell-attached antigens into diverse user-selected responses. PAGERs are based on G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), which themselves are not structurally modular, but we were able to build in modular antigen gating by fusing an antagonist peptide to the extracellular N-terminal end, and then gating the antagonist with a fused antigen-binding nanobody.  When antigen binds, it sterically interferes with the antagonist, leading to relief of receptor inhibition. Drug or agonist can then turn on PAGER. nature.com/articles/s4158…

New antibiotics! bbc.com/news/articles/…

someone said on a call today that @Illumina's iSeq are cheap enough that they basically are at the bottom of kids' cereal boxes now. LMAO... a few minutes later they posted this in the meeting chat... everyone like💀

Answer any biology question with AI insights from over 122k full papers biologpt.com

Big Nature paper this week on improved lifespan (in mice!) using an antibody to block IL11 Old mice without IL11 even look healthier 🧵

We’re thrilled to share our new pre-print exploring how we can design and control dynamic proteins! (1/6) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Peptipedia v2.0: A peptide sequence database and user-friendly web platform. A major update - Expand collection by over 45%, improved functional biological activity tree (managed by managed by PostgreSQL) - Train over 90 binary classification models using protein language models and machine learning. Over 100,000 peptides with biological activities and 3.8 million sequences with predicted activities Preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

#GeorgeMasonResearch Brett Froelich of @GMU_Biology comments in this story: YouTuber Billy LeBlanc’s girlfriend Natalie Clark died after eating raw oysters. What to know about 'flesh-eating' bacteria. ca.style.yahoo.com/youtuber-billy… @GMU_COS

Advice my graduate advisor gave me over 20 years ago... When writing a technical document: never use the word "very" - it smacks of opinion. You can do better than very. I can still hear his voice saying this ... like every single time I read a paper and see "very" 😂

🌟📚 Attention #postdocs! The @BWFUND CASI awards offer stipends of $80K-$85K and $5,000 for caregiving expenses. LOI Deadline Sept 4! 🚀 #bwfcasi #ResearchFunding Please RT! bwfund.org/funding-opport…

Perhaps it is the other way around, and metabolic syndrome/obesity/diabetes is throwing off peoples circadian rhythm, leading to difficulties sleeping, cognitive challenges, emotional challenges and more poor eating habits, further eroding the circadian rhythm.