jkath.bsky.social
jkath.bsky.social
@jkath.bsky.social
I’m already preparing to do this in a decade or so, but from the biology side.

Restrictions enzyme cloning
Only Sanger sequencing, Illumina was for genomics
Ammonium sulfate precipitation and ion exchange chromatography (often no His tag!)
Phenol/chloroform precipitations
Westerns in the dark room
“Reminiscing” about working at Pharma in the early 90s. Like last century #ChemSky
Vax Mainframe (yes really)
No email
Ordering? Look it up in Aldrich catalog -fill out requisition by hand in quadruplicate-drop in office mail-wait multiple weeks
But we did have Bunsen Burners to pull TLC pipets…1/
October 2, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
Illinois grad here. Andreesen's fortune is built on research funded by the NSF at the UIUC super computing lab (NCSA). So on top of the vile racism, he's a hypocrite.

"NSF awarded a large grant to NCSA specifically for Mosaic development, enhancement and support." www.nsf.gov/news/mosaic-....
July 12, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
Subject for another time, but *living* outside the US, for at least 6 months at a stretch but preferably 1 -2 years or more, is incomparably enlightening. In many cases more "affordable," because longer stays usually involve some kind of job, an exchange program, etc.

(About 14 yrs total for us)
July 6, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
There would be no Google Deep mind Nobel prize for Alphfold in 2024 without these people. Either Google Deepmind, EMBL, ERC or Sanger-Wellcome centre should step up… this is a rare example of true incremental arc of scientific progress with a massive payoff for biomed.
"CASP, the 3-decade-old competition has run out of funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will exhaust emergency support from the University of California (UC) Davis... on 8 August. UC Davis has told the two researchers who run the program that their jobs will end in weeks"
Exclusive: Famed protein structure competition nears end as NIH grant money runs out
Agency silent on funding renewal for contest that inspired creation of AIs that predicted how proteins would fold
www.science.org
July 3, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
June 30, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
May 9, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Unconscionable. Sarah Fortune is an amazing researcher doing critical work.
April 15, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
There is no good time for bad news and today is no different than any day in our recent time.

Nevertheless, I write this thread to chemistry faculty job seekers in the United States. #chemjobs #facultychemjobs #chemsky 🧪⚗️
April 14, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
Harvard redid its whole homepage to push back against the administration’s demands. I mean, this is just a website but I think it’s kind of a great PR move: www.harvard.edu
Harvard University
Harvard University is devoted to excellence in teaching, learning, and research, and to developing leaders who make a difference globally.
www.harvard.edu
April 14, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Maybe it’s just because Easter is close, but this reminds me so much of the biblical passage, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Diseases of course have risk factors, but a lot of it is random and the “cruelty of nature.”
The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services has repeatedly claimed: “If you’re healthy, it’s almost impossible to die from an infectious disease in modern times.”

That is dangerously false.

www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...
Experts Push Back on RFK Jr’s Infection Comments
The new Secretary of Health and Human Services has made claims about measles and other communicable diseases that could lead to sickness, and even death, his critics claim.
www.medscape.com
April 13, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Reposted by jkath.bsky.social
Approx. 5 bullets on what I did this past week:

- singlet or triplet state
- C-H insertion
- cyclopropanation
- ylide formation
- Wolff rearrangement
Approx. 5 bullets on what I did this past week:

-drank a whiskey drink
-drank a vodka drink
-drank a lager drink
-drank a cider drink
-sang a song that reminded of the good times
-sang a song that reminded of the best times
February 22, 2025 at 11:49 PM