Jen Stiens
LightNews LightNews
banner
jstiens.bsky.social
Jen Stiens
@jstiens.bsky.social
330 followers 370 following 4 posts
Post-doc at UCL. Quiescence, post-txnl regulation, aging, S.Pombe, bioinformatics
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Jen Stiens
jcvi.org
@jcv.bsky.social penned an obituary for Ham Smith in @nature.com. Since the early 90s, Ham has been a key figure at the Institute for his invaluable contributions and mentorship. "Ham was the best colleague that one could ever have in science and a great friend."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Hamilton Smith obituary: molecular biologist who co-discovered precise molecular scissors for cutting DNA
Nobel laureate who helped to sequence the first bacterial and human genomes.
www.nature.com
November 10, 2025 at 3:32 PM
jstiens.bsky.social
vaishananth.bsky.social Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan (She/Her) @vaishananth.bsky.social · 21d
Thrilled to share that this work has been accepted for publication @currentbiology.bsky.social 🥳
Special shoutout to the editorial team – the process was incredibly smooth and productive. Read more here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
November 3, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
matthiassoller.bsky.social
Cold-inducible RNA-binding protein CIRBP: A whales secret to long life?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Evidence for improved DNA repair in long-lived bowhead whale - Nature
Analysis of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale, reveals an improved ability to repair DNA breaks, mediated by high levels of cold-inducible RNA-binding protein.  &nbs...
www.nature.com
November 3, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
zeinabrekad.bsky.social
OMG 🤯
That's some cool science there 👇🏻
👌🏻🎉👏🏻
#RNAsky
markushafnerrna.bsky.social Markus Hafner @markushafnerrna.bsky.social · Sep 27
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to share the story of two germline RBPs - one with little (DND1) and one with no (NANOS3) intrinsic sequence-specificity - that together build a continuous RNA binding surface recognizing a 7-mer (AUGAAUU) in target mRNA 3’UTRs, leading to deadenylation.
The DND1-NANOS3 complex shapes the primordial germ cell transcriptome via a heptanucleotide sequence in mRNA 3'UTRs
The RNA-binding proteins DND1 and NANOS3 are essential for primordial germ cell survival. Their co-immunoprecipitation and overlapping loss-of-function phenotypes suggest joint function, yet how they ...
www.biorxiv.org
September 27, 2025 at 11:36 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
jbonfield.bsky.social
Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.

Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned
September 15, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
jeradwalker.bsky.social
Happy Skynet day to all who celebrate!
A scene from terminator 2: Arnold: It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29.
August 29, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share
Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu… https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team
August 23, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
lilindu.bsky.social
We are pleased to share the Schizosaccharomyces orthogroup web resource (fsnibs10.github.io/SOG/) with the pombe community.
Screenshot of the SOG home page.
August 5, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
litinice.bsky.social
how (yeast) cells re-climb the fitness landscape when they are reprogrammed to a different telomere DNA sequences (human-like)? read the latest from @melaniadangiolo.bsky.social etal , with great help and insights from Eric Gilson, Jonas Warringer and @juliamuenzner.bsky.social (& Ralser lab)
July 3, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
heineikeb.bsky.social
A paper I have been working on with Oliver Lemke in the Ralser lab has just come out: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We used predicted structures to gain insight into the evolution of metabolic proteins in yeast.

A bit more in this linked-in post (www.linkedin.com/posts/benjam...).
The role of metabolism in shaping enzyme structures over 400 million years - Nature
By combining structural biology and evolutionary genomics analyses, the evolution of enzymes over 400 million years is shown to be governed by catalytic function, metabolic network architecture, cost ...
www.nature.com
July 10, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
jayrosen.bsky.social
I will be brief. If you care about the quality of news we get, this clip is the most disturbing and important 20 minutes I have for you. If you have only 5 minutes to watch then do that. Via @michaelsocolow.bsky.social

Did you watch the clip? Now go to this link. www.cnbc.com/2025/07/01/c...
Axios’ Sara Fischer in conversation with Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince
YouTube video by Axios
www.youtube.com
July 5, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
lowrhoufo.bsky.social
Nazi grok
July 6, 2025 at 5:03 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
cryptogenomicon.bsky.social
My father worked in a tire factory in Appalachia. Friends and family in the military. Used to vote Republican. Got into college on a diversity program for the underprivileged. Ended up a Harvard professor. And now my funding is terminated because we're trying to stick it to the elites.
May 28, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
irilenia.bsky.social
Awful news. Of no benefit to the US? Clearly uninformed, shortsighted and a disastrous on many levels decision.
cryptogenomicon.bsky.social Sean Eddy @cryptogenomicon.bsky.social · May 22
NIH funding supporting the HMMER and Infernal software projects has been terminated. NIH states that our work, as well as all other federally funded research at Harvard, is of no benefit to the US.
May 30, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
londonsynbio.bsky.social
Join us next week, 15th May, at UCL!

🧬 Using synthetic biology tools to optimise Cas9 expression in mosquito gene drives
Dr. Moeez Khan (Windbichler lab, ICL)

⚙️ Writing the future with synthetic DNA
Laurence Humphrey (Twist Biosciences)

events.humanitix.com/london-synbi...
London SynBio Network 9
London SynBio afterwork talks and networking event on Thursday 15th of May
events.humanitix.com
May 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
manu-lera.bsky.social
🚀 Just added support for Cre/Lox recombination to hashtag#OpenCloning! 🧬✨
👇 Check out an example showing excision of a plasmid from a locus and re-integration using classic LoxP sites.

👉 Try it here: opencloning.org
🎞️ Demo video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0he...
April 24, 2025 at 8:16 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
manu-lera.bsky.social
🧬 If you are in London and you want to learn about a free & Open Source SnapGene/Benchling alternative that also supports automation 🤖, come to our next London Synbio Network meeting this Thursday 24th in Imperial!🎓

🎤 I’ll be giving a talk about #OpenCloning!

events.humanitix.com/copy-of-lond...
London SynBio Network 8
London SynBio afterwork talks and networking event on Thursday 24th of April
events.humanitix.com
April 22, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
natmetabolism.nature.com
A gut hormone governing protein appetite and longevity
Nature Metabolism, Published online: 14 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s42255-025-01278-xA study in Nature Metabolism reports a protein-responsive gut hormone that regulates appetite, sleep and organismal lifespan. This finding sheds light on the evolutionarily conserved endocrine system that controls dietary protein intake.
bit.ly
April 14, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
Twitter is dead...
richardsever.bsky.social Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · Mar 28
“Bluesky has won”.

Please retweet… 😉
altmetric.com Altmetric @altmetric.com · Mar 27
THREAD

The numbers are in. @bsky.app research sharing volumes vs X Formerly Twitter

In March 2024, on most days, Bluesky hosts more posts linked to research published in 2025 than X.

By quite a lot.

Release the Kraken...

#AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics
1/11
April 9, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
commsbio.nature.com
Modelling of early tuberculosis using bovine lung cell derived spheroids combined with transcriptomics and proteomics reveals early immune signatures of TB and highlights the model’s potential for biomarker discovery and high throughput drug screening doi.org/10.1038/s420...
A bovine pulmosphere model and multiomics reveal early host response signature in tuberculosis - Communications Biology
Modeling of early tuberculosis using bovine lung cell derived spheroids combined with transcriptomics and proteomics reveals early immune signatures of TB and highlights the model’s potential for biom...
doi.org
April 8, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
ckarampelias.bsky.social
Papers like these can make a real difference in omics analysis good job benchmarking hvg methods for data integration 🖥️🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Feature selection methods affect the performance of scRNA-seq data integration and querying - Nature Methods
This Registered Report presents a benchmarking study evaluating the impact of feature selection on scRNA-seq integration.
www.nature.com
March 27, 2025 at 5:58 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
yeast-journal.bsky.social
A new link between the ER membrane complex and mitochondria: Modesto Berraquero, Víctor A. Tallada & Juan Jimenez show that deletion of oca3/emc2 in fission yeast leads to mitochondrial dysfunction, but is rescued by the disruption of ergosterol biosynthesis.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
A Key Role of the EMC Complex for Mitochondrial Respiration and Quiescence in Fission Yeasts
We used the Seahorse analyzer to accurately measure oxygen consumption rates in S. pombe cells. The analysis reveals that the universal EMC complex, a membrane protein chaperone/insertase that aids t...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
March 18, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
incarnatolab.bsky.social
#RNA rules
February 26, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
PomBase is GBC Global BioData Resource of the week www.linkedin.com/pulse/pombas...
Pombase
PomBase is the comprehensive model organism knowledgebase for the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe).
www.linkedin.com
February 17, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Jen Stiens
wkhuber.bsky.social
Do you love software engineering for exciting biological applications, open science,open source, R, Bioconductor, modern web, cloud& ML technologies?

We're looking for a software engineer to work on R/Bioconductor tools for biological data science and AI
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
Picture of the conference centre on the EMBL campus in Heidelberg
February 14, 2025 at 7:05 AM