Melissa Kane PhD

It f*cking ruled

It was nice to feel good about voting for people who you knew would want to meet a baby even when they aren’t campaigning

It was absolutely wonderful to meet the other new PATH recipients at the @bwfund.bsky.social New Awardees meeting! I feel so lucky to be a part of this group and to connect with my peers across many interesting areas of infectious disease research.

My first PhD student is defending his dissertation in two weeks!! There will be mouse genetics, there will be retroviruses, there will be B and T cells, there will be champagne, there will be me trying (and likely failing) not to cry the whole time.

Remember what this is about: There is no cause more important than a renewal of liberal constitutionalism. There is no task more urgent than defending and strengthening our constitutional government.

DOGE was sold as a “massive money-saving operation.” But it actually saved nothing. The story was always about gutting the federal workforce and reshaping the agencies themselves. A new GAO report estimates federal agencies spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative

Without saying your age, what’s your favorite movie that came out when you were 20 years old?

This is a bit familiar..:

I would like to thank each and every one of you that doesn’t “reply all” unnecessarily. It’s a silent gift to everyone.

Ossoff has the juice. I think he’s going to continue to be fun to watch the next few years…

NIH has lost more than 20% of its staff. NIH has lost 1 in every 5 workers. This undermines the NIH mission. @27unihted.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/27unihte...

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social gammretrovirus-specific nAb induction is unique to infection, suggesting this is triggered by the infectious process rather than the unique nature of specific viral antigens www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @cornymel.bsky.social

Top senators consider blocking the OMB rule. www.politico.com/live-updates...

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains.

www.science.org/content/blog...

120 Minutes was essential - I taped it many times to ensure that I could hear/see again all the interesting stuff that they weren’t playing the rest of the time

This is awful and so sad

Maybe Scott Jennings can get Lindsey Graham on the phone to confirm the death of Lindsey Graham?

let this be a lesson to deal with your feelings of gender anxiety and masculine inadequacy with a hobby or therapy or something and not a high stakes senate election

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Check out this paper from my friend Francis, they developed an method for isolating native capsids and identified previously unknown mechanisms of viral protein and RNA incorporation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

OMB has proposed a new rule change. And, as @jvl.bsky.social describes it, it's goal is to disappear people and ideas. lnk.thebulwark.com/4uWvDvW

Fauci’s last act of public service should be to sue all these motherfuckers for every penny.

The Trump administration is moving to weaken environmental protections for oil, gas, and coal companies operating on public lands. Today the Interior Department has proposed cutting drilling fees and loosening methane pollution requirements,

Trump is 80 years old and unhealthy, he’s one foot in the grave but all his enablers? They still have a whole life ahead of them and we all have a responsibility to make sure each and every one of them spends that remaining time in prison.

Embedded in this appalling story about censorship by the ADA is a reminder that a formerly well respected scientist, Rick Woychik, sold out to sell the MAHA agenda & was representing NIH/MAHA at the meeting. When colleagues sell out we need to highlight their perfidy www.science.org/content/arti...

Holden Thorp is an institutionalist. He's been a university chancellor, provost, now EiC of Science. When institutionalists pull the fire alarm, we listen, because the call to action he issued this week exposes the dire nature of the threat we are facing. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I am grateful for every person taking action to prevent these f*cking a**holes from rewriting history

Excellent summary of how Vought’s proposed rule will destroy science. Please be ready to comment tomorrow, call Congress, tell your friends. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to speak up, that moment is now.

I am so tired of these disgusting, selfish people who don’t believe in humanity. It cost us next to nothing to provide aid that could help contain this type of epidemic.

The shame of it is that Trump's failure is America's failure.

“Memorial Day reminds us that it is possible to sacrifice for people you disagree with, and that unity does not require total alignment.”

Yeah, I know. I know. Print is dead. This is still a thrill for me.

Hands up if you know what they're talking about.

It’s pretty surreal to see my name on this list… I am so fortunate to be at the Cold Spring Harbor Retroviruses meeting this week celebrating with the best community of scientists Wins are harder to come by these days and this is a big help for keeping motivated!

Most people at NIH who comply do so out of fear or a misguided (IMO) sense that this is the best way to save science & NIH. Then, a few over zealously leverage the recent changes into career opportunities: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w... And then of course there’s Jay Bhattacharya himself.

Jared Polis is so completely full of shit. His commutation of Tina Peters' sentence has nothing to do with freedom of speech. What a joke. What an insult to the law-abiding citizens of Colorado. What an assault on free and fair elections. An embarrassing profile in cowardice.

Piece is from two months ago. Abrupt pushback in March forced him to delay. Now it’s apparently time for accountability. Paywall has been removed, and it’s up to @coloradodems.org now…

Glad to see the attack on scientists getting traction at broadly focused media outlets. Sh*t is bad, folks

This is pretty f*cking shitty

Well this is bad

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Faculty everywhere should be incredibly concerned that our employers will steal our teaching materials just as Arizona State has. Absolutely shameless.

A wave is building, the kind that comes once a generation, when people have been pushed too far and they decide all at once and all together that enough is enough.

It’s insulting to suggest that Americans are indifferent to the spectacle of a sitting president laying siege to their democracy—especially when the evidence of Americans’ awareness and alarm is greater than ever.