@steveroyle
I'm into chord changes and cell biology. Professor - University of Warwick. Director - The Company of Biologists. Views are my own and not those of any organisation I am associated with. Mastodon: @steveroyle@biologists.social Lab: https://roylelab.org
Absolutely terrible news. I knew Alan as he was a long-serving Director @biologists.bsky.social. Our research interests were very far apart but I loved chatting with him about running, gait analysis and GPS. He was a data nerd just like me. So sad. My thoughts are with his family.
Original (left) and corrected (right) Fig. 4a in the paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10305-0 showing the chemical structures of amino acids (only the right one) the left figure is just an embarrassment
I wonder... π€π€π§ͺ #chemsky
a) what program did the authors use to make the original (left) figure in the paper? Wild guess, ChatGPT
b) how such high school science level of disgrace pass peer review in @nature.com?
Note this was Fig.4.a NOT in SI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Hereβs a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my βData Visualization: A Practical Introductionβ: socviz.co
Pls re-post: My department @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social are recruiting for several new faculty positions (links below). Broad search in molecular biology/biochemistry, across prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Interested in understanding life at the molecular level, this job might be for you!
1/n
Why canβt people (especially scientists) see that AI generated figures and diagrams shout out that they were AI generated and look awful? Youβve spend many months designing and performing experiments only to cover the resulting masterpiece in clear plastic like a cheap sofa.
A new video from UKRI on the budget. Kudos to Ian for addressing the community.
More terminology to sit alongside the buckets π:
Legs π¦΅
Jam jars π«
And a reprise of "applicant led"
I am more confused and I still have questionsπ§΅
youtu.be/osnqHbOywVY
A LOT going on in the Commons select committee hearing on STFC budget pressures
Michele Dougherty said that, despite having previously been on STFC's council, she didn't know until starting as exec chair in Jan 2025 that there was a Β£100-150m shortfall
She said it was "not what I signed up to" πΆ
Does anyone know of an anti mStayGold antibody that works for immunoblots / IP? Anyone tried the one from HUABIO (not even sure thatβs a real company)? Thanks!
#ImageOfTheMonth March 2026
Dividing Arabidopsis epidermal cells imaged by confocal microscopy after expansion. Microtubules guided cell plate formation revealed in 3D with depth-code.
Image: Magali Grison @lbm-bordeaux.bsky.social @gtexm.bsky.social
#Microscopy #PlantScience #CellBiology
Screen shot from the UKRI Funding Finder. Title: Fundamental AI Research Lab. Timeline Open 2nd March, intention to submit date 16 March, Closing Date 31 March 2026.
Can anyone think of an example of government spend of this magnitude and speed (excluding covid)??
4 weeks from call announcement to submission (no advance warning) and within that only 2 weeks to flag your intention to submit.
Β£40M total - individual awards Β£9.4M
www.ukri.org/opportunity/...
New from @dev-journal.bsky.social: we're launching a new initiative and hiring Preprint Editors to help navigate the growing world of preprints in developmental & stem cell biology
Join our community & shape the future of research
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
Specific details about PLOS Biology's mandatory code-sharing policy
In support of #OpenScience, we routinely ask authors to openly share their #research #code before publication.
We are now formalizing this practice with a mandatory #code-sharing policy and clarifying what we mean by code sharing.
May be nice to cut-out the box for reference
plos.io/47dPeOW
π§ͺ
he has a point.
*gazes wistfully into the distance*
I lived through Warwick's aubergine period. The hex codes were 3C1053 and 775887...
Someone should tell the speaker from UCL who gave a seminar here this week. He went on a mini-rant about the purple of the logo on slide 1.
bioRxiv continues to grow β a brief spike and lag in the pandemic (details of which are included) but a steady increase in submissions since then. % revisions, license choice, etc. all fairly constant. 0.1% withdrawal rate is comparable to journal retraction rates 2/n
Itβs FREE to publish in Journal of Cell Science β there are no page charges, colour charges or hidden fees. And if your institution has a Read & Publish agreement, you can publish immediate OA free of charge.
Find out more: journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/re...
#forscientists
#notforprofit
Awesome paper and super useful resource of CRISPR-based screens to identify regulators of #LipidDroplet biology under different metabolic conditions: crisprlipid.org
Just published: chemotactic sperm cells become phototactic π‘- by loading photo-activatable second messengers. This allows to "reverse-engineer" chemotactic signaling dynamics and expose cells to signals they would never see in the wild. Honoured to be part of this collaboration with the Kaupp lab.
The abstract deadline for our Motors and Filaments Meeting is approaching fast - 1st March. We have plenty slots for 15/10min talks and 3min flash talks to allocate. Thanks to generous support from @embo.org and @biologists.bsky.social, we can offer sustainable travel bursaries and a free livestream
Realised I can display live posts on the map
bluesky-map.theo.io?live=1
(there's also an option under the settings cog to display post text, in case you really want to be overstimulated)
Attention all microscopists!
#rstats Here's a useful guide to creating publication-ready #ggplot figures to journal specifications, which is often quite fiddly.
jaquent.github.io/2026/02/crea...
The Vatican Museums' Bramante Staircase provides a striking visual metaphor for a vicious feedback cycle in scholarly publishing: rising paper submissions across an expanding landscape of journals strains the limited supply of volunteer peer review labor, which in turn makes editorial decisions less predictable and encourages authors to submit their work more ambitiously, increasing the burden on peer reviewers further still. Image credit: Carl T. Bergstrom
The process of #PeerReview is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. @carlbergstrom.com & Kevin Gross use mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, suggesting ways to stabilize it @plosbiology.org π§ͺ plos.io/4kR02bo
Do you know a talented undergraduate student who would like to undertake a paid summer internship in your cell biology lab?
Applications to our summer studentships are OPEN
Deadline 31st March
For details and how to apply, see our website:
bscb.org/support-gran...
Biology Open has embarked on an initiative to find out if the time from submission to first decision after #PeerReview can be greatly reduced, whilst maintaining our high standards of quality. Watch the full video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgR1...
#FastandFairPeerReview #ScientificPublishing
#membrane seminars are back this week wirh Manu @deriverylab.bsky.social and Andela Ε ariΔ! Join us on Thursday at 5 pm CET spread the word!
I agree. I feel the same way about PIs who pass off trainees' peer reviews as their own.
After trenchant reviewing, Karnawat et al is out, showing that ATPΞ³S causes single kinesin molecules to pause under load in an Await-Isomerisation (AI) state that leaks hand-over-hand backsteps. In ATP we think this state serves to couple forward stepping to hydrolysis www.nature.com/articles/s41...
"Precarity is the one constant of academic science. Themes of instability thread themselves through everything we do."
A brief blog post from me about the @ukri.org funding pause and who the real victims will be.
occamstypewriter.org/mindthegap/2...
#AcademicSky
