Grayson Barker
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graysonbarker.bsky.social
Grayson Barker
@graysonbarker.bsky.social
⚕️ MedSky ⚕️ 🧪ScienceSky🧪
PhD Candidate in the Cancer Biology Department at Wake Forest School of Medicine
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Scientists crafted glow-in-the-dark #succulents that recharge in sunlight. Injected with light-emitting phosphor, the plants can shine as bright as a small night light. cell.com/matter/fullt...

@cp-matter.bsky.social
#SCAU Shuting Liu & colleagues
September 11, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Which states have the most kids not getting vaccinated? ID (20%), AK (15%), and WI (15%). The states with highest vaccine coverage include WV, CA, NY and MS.
parequirements.com/img/blog/mea...
June 3, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Meet the Dougherty Plain Cave Crayfish (Cambarus cryptodytes), an underground species endemic to Florida and Georgia. 🧵⤵️

📷 hydrophilus on iNaturalist
📍 United States
🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations...
#ObservationOfTheDay
April 30, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Interested in synthetic approaches to both understand and manipulate gene expression? We (the Bintu lab) wrote a review that discusses just that - how modern low- and high-throughput approaches can dissect gene regulation at the DNA, RNA, and protein level. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
April 28, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
They should lose their accreditation; all the schools that do this should. I’m sorry, it’s time to be brutal. Like Republicans. (NB: this has nothing to do w/ the fact that it would be a thing of the purest beauty to start w/ #OSU, but I fully support the same for my superior alma mater, #Michigan.)
Gov. DeWine just signed SB1, a law ending “DEI” in Ohio public higher ed.

Now that it’s law, U of Toledo just killed the following BA programs:

• Africana Studies
• Asian Studies
• Disability Studies
• Middle East Studies
• Philosophy
• Religious Studies
• Women's/Gender Studies

And…

• Spanish
April 23, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Shout out to the Turtle Frog, Myobatrachus gouldii, from Australia. Image from Vertucci et al. 2017 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... 🌿🐸🧪
April 13, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Thank you to the #Cancer Straight Talk podcast through @mskcancercenter.bsky.social for bringing my attention to this useful database on herbs and other dietary supplements.
www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/...
Search About Herbs
www.mskcc.org
March 13, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
The number of ways to activate the immune system attack vs cancer keeps increasing. Here, using bacteria to amp up the response to wild tumor, the mechanism via a surge of interleukin-10 is elucidated
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... @cellpress.bsky.social open-access
March 3, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Gut microbiome composition may predict ICI response in patients with melanoma or renal cell carcinoma. Interesting work from this group out of Cambridge in collaboration with @mskcancercenter.bsky.social
rdcu.be/eb2YL
Gut microbiota-derived hexa-acylated lipopolysaccharides enhance cancer immunotherapy responses
Nature Microbiology - Hexa-acylated lipopolysaccharides from the gut microbiota are associated with efficacy in patients with cancer receiving anti-PD-1 and stimulate host immune activation for...
rdcu.be
March 3, 2025 at 4:54 PM
New evidence in this 48-year-old paradox. A finding in S4B seems to show that the longer mammals live, the less likely they are to experience neoplasia. The mechanism may be similar to r/K selection, not just parents are invested in longevity, it's encoded in the genome.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
No evidence for Peto’s paradox in terrestrial vertebrates | PNAS
Larger, longer-lived species are expected to have a higher cancer prevalence compared to smaller, shorter-lived species owing to the greater number...
www.pnas.org
February 28, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Though fungi make up a tiny part of the human microbiome, they play an important role in disease prevention and development.

Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum joins us to discuss what scientists are learning about the “mycobiome.”
You’ve Heard Of The Microbiome—Welcome To The Mycobiome
Though fungi make up a tiny part of the human microbiome, they play an important role in both the prevention and development of many diseases.
buff.ly
February 28, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Did you know cancer cells can be electrically active, just like neurons? This electrical activity plays a key role in tumor progression. Excited to share my first postdoc paper at @crick.ac.uk (and first paper from Leanne Li lab), published in @natureportfolio.nature.com!
Intrinsic electrical activity drives small-cell lung cancer progression - Nature
Electrical excitability in neuroendocrine SCLC cells promotes tumour progression through action potential firing, increasing ATP demand and oxidative phosphorylation dependency, whereas non-neuroendoc...
www.nature.com
February 26, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Scientists! An open letter from @ucsusa.bsky.social urging the Trump admin to leave NOAA intact 🧪

secure.ucsusa.org/a/2025-prote...
Science at Risk: Protect NOAA
Scientists & experts: Add your name to this open letter calling on Congress and the Trump administration to ensure that NOAA and its sub-agencies remain fully funded and staffed, and that the independ...
secure.ucsusa.org
February 26, 2025 at 8:58 PM
While there are still many ways that global warming will impact the biosphere, this is a little piece of good news that brightened up my feed.
A study in Nature suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may be able to withstand future global warming and could avoid collapse. This important ocean current has a role in regulating temperatures around the planet. https://go.nature.com/4blFMKA 🧪
February 27, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Artificial sweetener triggers an insulin spike, which negatively impacts cardiovascular health #inmice 🐁 www.cell.com/cell-metabol...

Learn more @cp-cellmetabolism.bsky.social
#ShandongUniversity Yun Zhang, Yuguo Chen, Cheng Zhang
@ki.se Yihai Cao
February 19, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Happy 61st to CRISP-Cas9 co-discoverer Jennifer Doudna! Her work on ribozymes led her to questions about bacteria's self defense systems against viral attack that laid the groundwork for the discovery of CRISPR's powerful gene editing ability.

tinyurl.com/z4krfuk5

#WomenInSTEM #BioSky #HistSci 🧪
Taking the Wheel: Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, and the CRISPR-Cas9 Revolution in Gene Editing.
Over the course of the last two decades, humanity has taken its first quiet steps from being the blind victims of genetic-molecular chance towards becoming purposeful actors in our biological fates.  ...
tinyurl.com
February 19, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
The Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise is out! Herculean effort bringing together >200 estimates of glacier loss outside the ice sheets. Bottom line is 273 gigatonnes per year of ice loss since the year 2000! 😲

Open-access article: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🥼❄️ @natureportfolio.nature.com
February 19, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
February 15, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
A Review in Nature Medicine examines how organoid research is moving beyond developmental and disease biology, driving insights into current and emerging health threats and enabling personalized and regenerative medicine applications. 🔒
Clinical applications of human organoids - Nature Medicine
Organoid research is moving beyond developmental and disease biology, driving insights into current and emerging health threats and enabling personalized and regenerative medicine applications.
go.nature.com
February 18, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
A study in Nature Communications found that insecticides, fungicides and herbicides have negative effects on non-target plants, animals and microorganisms within terrestrial and aquatic systems. https://go.nature.com/4aY865i 🧪
February 16, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
A study in Nature Medicine shows how global aircraft-based wastewater surveillance networks would perform in identifying sources of pandemic outbreaks and what the optimal location of monitoring sites would be. https://go.nature.com/3QkT549 #Medsky 🧪
February 17, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Melero&Co discuss the crucial role of conventional type 1 dendritic cells in cross-presenting antigens to prime CD8+ T cells to mount anti-tumour immunity and highlight how this can be exploited for #CancerImmunotherapy
@unav.edu
📖 ⬇️
Cross-priming in cancer immunology and immunotherapy - Nature Reviews Cancer
www.nature.com
February 11, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
TWiV 1187: The tau of herpesvirus

This week TWiV discusses the article: Anti-herpetic tau preserves neurons via the cGAS-STING-TBK1 pathway in Alzheimer's disease

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Kathy Spindler, Brianne Barker, Angela Mingarelli, Alan Dove
January 29, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Grayson Barker
Genetic diversity has declined within two-thirds of more than 600 species over the past three decades, according to research published in Nature. The findings highlight the need for conservation efforts to prevent genetic diversity loss. https://go.nature.com/42EpVo5 🧪
February 5, 2025 at 2:43 AM