Caleb
@cembree.bsky.social
RNA biologist and bioinformatician. Interested in RNA regulation pathways and how they interact, with a little science policy on the side. Postdoc in the Borden Lab at Northwestern.
(He/they)
(He/they)
Running into the lab quickly on the weekend feels way different when it takes me longer to get into lab now than it does to harvest cells.
November 16, 2025 at 9:54 PM
Running into the lab quickly on the weekend feels way different when it takes me longer to get into lab now than it does to harvest cells.
It was very cool to see Lynne Maquat talk about her labs work on FMRP today. It was the perfect intersection of my interest in NMD in grad school and my current postdoc work on cap binding proteins.
November 11, 2025 at 2:06 AM
It was very cool to see Lynne Maquat talk about her labs work on FMRP today. It was the perfect intersection of my interest in NMD in grad school and my current postdoc work on cap binding proteins.
Reposted by Caleb
A day late but STILL IMPORTANT
August 2, 2025 at 4:14 PM
A day late but STILL IMPORTANT
The first paper from my postdoc is now out on BioRxiv! I was very lucky to join the Borden lab in time to work on bioinformatics for this project. We find that NCBP2 and eIF4E cause altered splicing when overexpressed, affecting largely distinct sets of transcripts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Nuclear RNA cap-chaperones eIF4E and NCBP2 govern distinct fates for 1000s of mRNAs uncovering an unexpected regulatory point in gene expression
mRNA processing constitutes a series of steps in the nucleus to generate mature mRNAs that can be translated into protein. This relies on the methyl-7-guanosine (m7G) "cap" on the 5'end of mRNAs which...
www.biorxiv.org
August 2, 2025 at 8:50 PM
The first paper from my postdoc is now out on BioRxiv! I was very lucky to join the Borden lab in time to work on bioinformatics for this project. We find that NCBP2 and eIF4E cause altered splicing when overexpressed, affecting largely distinct sets of transcripts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
It's so fun explaining the normal academic career path to non academics, because none of them understand why you do it. People look at me like I have two heads when I explain that as a postdoc I'm still considered a trainee most of the time.
July 12, 2025 at 4:33 AM
It's so fun explaining the normal academic career path to non academics, because none of them understand why you do it. People look at me like I have two heads when I explain that as a postdoc I'm still considered a trainee most of the time.
The more I use rMATS the more I hate it. It's so annoying trying to get any information more granular than gene level or event level summaries.
June 17, 2025 at 5:47 AM
The more I use rMATS the more I hate it. It's so annoying trying to get any information more granular than gene level or event level summaries.
I'm so glad the revisions on my grad school paper isn't extensive because I don't know how many weeks of 10 hours work days just to come home and work on revisions I can take.
May 20, 2025 at 1:40 AM
I'm so glad the revisions on my grad school paper isn't extensive because I don't know how many weeks of 10 hours work days just to come home and work on revisions I can take.
I'm training someone that mainly does computational stuff in the wet lab and it's funny seeing his reaction when I get honest about procedures. Yes, letting a blot incubate in primary overnight can help the signal, but mainly I just don't want to stay late.
May 16, 2025 at 12:21 AM
I'm training someone that mainly does computational stuff in the wet lab and it's funny seeing his reaction when I get honest about procedures. Yes, letting a blot incubate in primary overnight can help the signal, but mainly I just don't want to stay late.
I was talking to my family about the devastation of academic science and it was so frustrating them not getting how bad it is. It feels like being a cow lead to slaughter, each day hearing the sound of the gun getting louder, and then being told they think it's just a thunderstorm.
May 2, 2025 at 3:25 PM
I was talking to my family about the devastation of academic science and it was so frustrating them not getting how bad it is. It feels like being a cow lead to slaughter, each day hearing the sound of the gun getting louder, and then being told they think it's just a thunderstorm.
While moving to my postdoc I lost a flash drive I had been using since high school. I paid the same price to replace it as it originally cost, and got 128GB instead of 8GB. The craziest part is that I wasn't that close to filling up the 8GB because everything moved to cloud storage.
April 11, 2025 at 9:27 PM
While moving to my postdoc I lost a flash drive I had been using since high school. I paid the same price to replace it as it originally cost, and got 128GB instead of 8GB. The craziest part is that I wasn't that close to filling up the 8GB because everything moved to cloud storage.
Thank you protein tech, this validation data is very helpful.
April 10, 2025 at 9:15 PM
Thank you protein tech, this validation data is very helpful.
Not telling the university until the media reports it is a great way to make this even more chaotic.
April 9, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Not telling the university until the media reports it is a great way to make this even more chaotic.
The vibes around campus are about to get really weird. I've already had non-biology grad students I've talked to ask me how everyone is coping with the broader NIH cuts, so this certainly isn't going to help the sense of dread that I think a lot of people are feeling.
April 9, 2025 at 12:23 AM
The vibes around campus are about to get really weird. I've already had non-biology grad students I've talked to ask me how everyone is coping with the broader NIH cuts, so this certainly isn't going to help the sense of dread that I think a lot of people are feeling.
Reposted by Caleb
in case you're wondering, "what's the harm in claiming an extinct species has been brought back from the dead" when it most certainly has not, our interior secretary is already using it to justify taking animals off the endangered species list
April 8, 2025 at 7:59 PM
in case you're wondering, "what's the harm in claiming an extinct species has been brought back from the dead" when it most certainly has not, our interior secretary is already using it to justify taking animals off the endangered species list
I don't know why I always leave writing methods until last. It's the hardest to do and way too energy draining.
March 24, 2025 at 10:55 PM
I don't know why I always leave writing methods until last. It's the hardest to do and way too energy draining.
Reposted by Caleb
Anyone could have predicted this. Columbia could fire or expel everyone who isn’t a white cis male and they’d still never get a penny of those grants back.
School Bully Shocks Nerds With Further Lunch-Money Demands
March 23, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Anyone could have predicted this. Columbia could fire or expel everyone who isn’t a white cis male and they’d still never get a penny of those grants back.
The only way you could think that assistants don't do anything at universities is to have never interacted with academia outside of going to class. They're the ones that make the entire thing run at an administrative level.
3/ Even worse than I thought. Here's the full criteria/algo.
March 18, 2025 at 11:17 PM
The only way you could think that assistants don't do anything at universities is to have never interacted with academia outside of going to class. They're the ones that make the entire thing run at an administrative level.
Reposted by Caleb
Meanwhile… in Chicago ❄️ 🌧️ #StandUpForScience 🧪
March 7, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Meanwhile… in Chicago ❄️ 🌧️ #StandUpForScience 🧪
It still feels weird to get emails addressed to Dr. Embree and have them not be predatory journal spam.
March 7, 2025 at 8:51 PM
It still feels weird to get emails addressed to Dr. Embree and have them not be predatory journal spam.
Reposted by Caleb
I've tested out a couple different electronic lab notebooks, but I honestly think the best one is just Obsidian for note taking and organization + git for version control. Its so much easier to link to bioinformatics stuff, and I can customize everything.
February 23, 2025 at 8:10 PM
I've tested out a couple different electronic lab notebooks, but I honestly think the best one is just Obsidian for note taking and organization + git for version control. Its so much easier to link to bioinformatics stuff, and I can customize everything.
People outside of academics are clueless about the whole process, and I assume don't realize how big of a setback this will be. They really don't understand the time or the number of people that goes into the whole endeavor.
In the coming years it's going to be important to demystify academia.
In the coming years it's going to be important to demystify academia.
Not just the National Institutes of Health, now the National Science Foundation is put on pause.
Reminder: research is a multi-step process. Pausing the peer review panels by itself creates months of delay.
Reminder: research is a multi-step process. Pausing the peer review panels by itself creates months of delay.
I’m an NSF panel reviewer that was scheduled to meet today. Just got notice that all NSF panels were canceled today. I reviewed some innovative proposals in support of students. Devastating if these scholars don’t get to do this work. For the love of science & students I hope this is just a delay.💔
January 27, 2025 at 7:14 PM
People outside of academics are clueless about the whole process, and I assume don't realize how big of a setback this will be. They really don't understand the time or the number of people that goes into the whole endeavor.
In the coming years it's going to be important to demystify academia.
In the coming years it's going to be important to demystify academia.
There's nothing like being ready to leave to make you acutely aware of how long your code takes to run.
January 25, 2025 at 12:02 AM
There's nothing like being ready to leave to make you acutely aware of how long your code takes to run.
I'm very excited to start my postdoc tomorrow. Having a couple weeks off has been nice, but I'm ready to start thinking about science again. Let's hope my coding skills haven't atrophied.
January 21, 2025 at 3:06 AM
I'm very excited to start my postdoc tomorrow. Having a couple weeks off has been nice, but I'm ready to start thinking about science again. Let's hope my coding skills haven't atrophied.
I'm at a bar watching the OSU game, and they found out that I was new to Chicago and made me try a shot of malort. It was not as bad as I had heard, honestly just tasting like a worse version of absinthe.
At least I've done that initiation rite, so I guess I can call myself a Chicagoan.
At least I've done that initiation rite, so I guess I can call myself a Chicagoan.
January 21, 2025 at 2:58 AM
I'm at a bar watching the OSU game, and they found out that I was new to Chicago and made me try a shot of malort. It was not as bad as I had heard, honestly just tasting like a worse version of absinthe.
At least I've done that initiation rite, so I guess I can call myself a Chicagoan.
At least I've done that initiation rite, so I guess I can call myself a Chicagoan.