Mara Duncan

🧪Dear Grad student, Are you overdue for a thesis committee meeting but feel like you have nothing to show since your last meeting? I'm begging you to schedule that meeting now! 1/🧵

Beef for F31/f32 reviews. Why are actual comments required on 5 aspects of RCR (format, duration, content, faculty, frequency) and why does it have to be a narrative? Seems like if it was a form would make it easier on reviewers and applicants. Suppose that's not the goal.

Hubs did a sabbatical in Germany and his landlords taught him how to make cherry cordials. we just uncorked our attempt. A. Those elderly German ladies know their sh&t B. Well done cheery cordials are fking amazing

No-one knows how yeast take up DNA in transformations. Really! (Ok, endocytosis is required.) We noticed that "yeast transformation mix" w/ Lithium salts, PEG, carrier DNA ... is exactly the mix that chemists use to make DNA phase separate. Our review paper in Yeast Journal! w/ Alistair Elfick 1/

Anyone have recommendations for a decent, not too expensive, digital microscope for amateur home use to look at things like diatoms, tardigrades, fungi, etc?

Registration is open for the 2027 @embo.org Workshop on Cell Polarity and Membrane Dynamics, co-organized with @alexludwig.bsky.social and @dianapinheiro.bsky.social. Join us in May 2027 in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, near Barcelona! meetings.embo.org/event/27-cel... #EMBOCellPolarity

Have you ever had a control become the experiment because of unexpected biology? It’s happened to me or my trainees a few times. I would love to hear other examples.

My lab has 2 Instant Pots that handle the bulk of our media making. Let me know if you want details.

PSA: For anyone writing a recommendation for the NSF grad fellowship this year, recs are due on Fri Oct 16, 8pm Eastern, cleverly *before* the actual application deadline. This tidbit isn't on the NSFGRF front page anymore; it's buried inside the program solicitation:

We've been funded to start using Dictyostelium as a model system for early endomembrane evolution!! Now I'm hiring a Postdoc to join the lab in Edmonton and start playing with Dicty in the lab:) iaejup.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Hey Ann Arbor cyclists, Did you bike b2b through Gallup today? Is it passable? There were construction crews heading down the path this am. Trying to decide if I should risk it today.

Membrane Trafficking Seminar series returns this week with two exciting talks exploring GTPase regulation and the making of lysosomes! Join @felixmendu.bsky.social @franbottanelli.bsky.social and me for an afternoon of fun cell biology. For more details: felixcampelo.wixsite.com/membranetraf...

Voter registration deadlines are SUNDAY in Alaska, Rhode Island, South Carolina. And MONDAY in: Arizona, Arkansas Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and *Texas*. If you live in these states, verify your registration now, literally.

Does anyone (ideally local to the Netherlands) have a His-Ub plasmid? High cheese reward.

US Zebrafish PIs: Your input is critical! An NIH R24 grant has been obtained to develop 60 small epitope tag knock-in genes as a resource for the zebrafish community. Please submit your input by Sep 18: upenn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #EpitopeTag #ZebrafishResource #ZebrafishSurvey

Ooh so sneaky. I'm going to a small conference as a speaker. I just got an e-mail informing me that my entire trip was going to be sponsored click on the encrypted link to enter my details. I'm 99% certain that the conference has no speaker budget, plus I registered with my non-work e-mail.

I'm only a few days into being an AAAS Policy Fellow, but if any of tweeps here are interested in applying, I'm glad to share about my application experience and what it's been like so far. Only 2% if my cohort are "senior" (>15 years post-PhD), but it's a great opportunity for experienced faculty!

Help needed! Does anyone know of a lab that has glass (pigmentless) guppies? We are interested in getting them for a project

🧪I'm fed up with the Mr. Frosty (TM) brand cell freezer. I can't get them open and then they make a fricking mess when they are warming up after use. Do people use the foam ones? Do they work?

As you may know, NIH abruptly terminated funding to FlyBase curators based in the United Kingdom. Please help us retain these curators and thereby enable ongoing curation of bibliographic, genetic and phenotypic data by contributing annually (tinyurl.com/4jw65mbb). Thank you. #FlyBase

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at #UChicago is looking for a new junior faculty member to join us. If you or someone you know would be a good fit, please apply or encourage them to apply! apply.interfolio.com/191981

TOLEDO CellulART. Registration deadline this Friday if you want to be considered for a short talk! Same deadline for the image competition by @ibidicells.bsky.social . Send us your best picture! Remember, registration is always FREE.

Michigan peeps: CVS is now scheduling updated Covid shots. (I haven't checked out other pharmacies, but I bet they are too).

😍 #drosophila

Alright everybody, time to text the teachers in your life. The fall semester is open at SkypeAScientist and we are ready to match classrooms, scout troops, library groups, and more with scientists! Tell the educators in your life, and send them to SkypeAScientist.com

Great tribute to the discovery by Barbara Pearce of clathrin, the first protein found to act in membrane traffic, along with her mentoring and support of the pioneers (many of whom were other women) who revealed the workings of this key player in cellular function.

🇦🇺↔🇯🇵 for undergrad/masters students studying in Australia and interested in short-term research opportunities this summer (Jan 7 – Feb 18 2027) - please check out Kyoto University's KU-STAR program: www.kugd.k.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/ku-star-p... ! Application deadline is Sep. 25, happy to take questions.

If you are thinking of applying to the @uwgenome.bsky.social PhD program this fall, we have a couple of zoom info sessions set up for Oct 6 and Oct 22. Please register at the link. Our website also has a ton of useful information about crafting your application. www.gs.washington.edu/news/graduat...

💡 Looking for a publication in SGD? Quick tip: 🧬 The Locus Summary shows footnotes for that specific page 📚 The Literature tab has the COMPLETE reference list organized by topic. Find all curated publications for any gene there! Read more: www.yeastgenome.org/blog/finding... #YeastResearch 🧪 #SGD 🔬

Worm peeps doing WGS - what is fastest even if not necessarily the cheapest? U of MN is great and cheap (although they just got a bit more expensive - although $35 as compared to the $6K I paid for the first WGS yrs ago) but their turnaround time is now close to 1.5 months.

ok why are all of these festivals suddenly following me?

My MCDB Dept is hiring, again! Assistant Professor Faculty Search. Please Repost! Applications Due Oct 1st We welcome applications from all areas of cellular/molecular biology in prokaryotes, plants, and animals. More information can be found HERE: jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/679540/a...

Structural biology postdoctoral position open in my lab--apply now! For more information about the lab, see www.umassmed.edu/munsonlab/. Interested candidates should apply through the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School jobs portal (www.ummsjobs.com/job/11668/).

*JobAlert* One more week to apply for a post-doc position in my lab at Dundee to study co-translational protein quality control of secretory and membrane proteins. This is a collaborative project with @kulathu.bsky.social and @zeqiraj.bsky.social www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSM201/p...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

this lesson goes by multiple names, including "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" and "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time"