Matt Pratt
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mattrpratt.bsky.social
Matt Pratt
@mattrpratt.bsky.social
Professor of Chemistry at University of Southern California; https://www.theprattlab.com; glycoscience, protein aggregation, neurodegeneration
Reposted by Matt Pratt
🚨 3 weeks to go! 🚨
Join us for the 2nd LA Mass Spec Day 🧪✨
📅 Oct 17, 10am–5pm
📍 UCLA South Bay Campus
Plenary talks • Contributed talks • Posters • Networking
👉 Register: lnkd.in/gFdW9rfG
👉 Abstracts: lnkd.in/gb-Qq7d5
September 27, 2025 at 9:25 PM
September 8, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
Congrats to Benjamin Cravatt on receiving the 2025 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry from @elsevierconnect.bsky.social, honoring his pioneering activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) to study and target disease-relevant proteins.
Benjamin Cravatt awarded Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity - Scripps Research Magazine
Benjamin Cravatt, the Norton B. Gilula Chair in Biology and Chemistry at Scripps Research, will receive the 2025 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry. Established in ...
magazine.scripps.edu
August 13, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
“This Executive Order is nothing short of obscene," said Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). "In what world does Donald Trump think that Americans want political appointees – who, need I remind the President, are unelected bureaucrats – making decisions on what science gets funded?”
Ranking Member Lofgren Calls Trump Out for Corrupt Executive Order Requiring Political Appointees to Approve Federal Grants | House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
democrats-science.house.gov
August 7, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
The NIH budget will INCREASE by $400 million — not slashed by 40%, as Trump proposed — according to a proposal by Senate appropriators, says Sen Murray.

"Some have asked if there will even be an NIH by [2029]. The commmittee's resounding message is yes—Congress has your back", she says.
July 31, 2025 at 1:53 PM
35 non airport-only visits
How many y’all have visited? I’m up to 14
July 31, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
A major NIH grant to study ways to restore hearing was terminated by the Trump administration bc it was awarded through a DEI initiative—to a researcher who qualified bc of his own hearing loss www.cnn.com/2025/07/29/h... @manorlaboratory.bsky.social
July 29, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
This piece in Science:
*confirms that the push for multi-year funding is coming from White House, against NIH wishes
*White House is deliberately slowing spending already appropriated to then cut it via rescission
www.science.org/content/arti...
July 29, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
🧬Power your research with GlycoNet Integrated Services’ Molecular Glycobiology node at the ‪@ualberta.bsky.social‬

Offering:
Custom cell & mouse models (CRISPR, transgenics)
Siglec-Fc protein production
Cell engineering & expert support

Explore more services: canadianglycomics.ca/services/
July 10, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
🔥 Job alert! We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate in the new Chemical Glycobiology Lab at @tudresden.bsky.social! Master in Chem or similar, experience in organic chem including chemoenzymatic, and most importantly: enthusiasm!

Deadline 8th July:

www.verw.tu-dresden.de/StellAus/ste...
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
June 25, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Humans don't reproduce long enough to put evolutionary pressure against amyloids. Other animals? We find older-living animals (whales, crocs, etc.) have synuclein that is less prone to aggregation (in vitro) than shorter-lived animals, independent of evolutionary distance: shorturl.at/MtgcR
α‐Synuclein Sequences from Long‐Lived Animals Display Generally Diminished Aggregation Compared to Shorter‐Lived Animals Including Humans.
The overall process of protein aggregation from soluble species to amyloid fibrils is toxic to neurons and can propagate along neuronal connections in ways that potentially explain the pathological p...
chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 24, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
Universities are not passive beneficiaries of government largesse. It is the federal government that depends on universities to conduct the research that keeps our nation healthy, safe and economically competitive.I discuss in the Washington Post.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Opinion | Universities and the government: Which needs the other more?
From public health to high-tech innovation, universities are the workhorses of national progress.
www.washingtonpost.com
June 3, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
DeLAURO: Are you planning to break the law by impounding appropriated funds?

RFK Jr: If you appropriate the funds, I'm going to spend them

D: We have! You're cutting the NIH by $18b. Congress appropriated those funds. How can you justify cutting billions from the biomedical research budget?
May 14, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
Bernie Sanders' office has put out a report this morning on Trump's NIH cuts: "Trump officials effectively cut $2.7 billion in [NIH] funding in the first three months of 2025 – including a 31 percent cut to cancer research through March, compared to the same timeframe last year."
May 13, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.
Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund
scim.ag
May 8, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
Amplifying this. NIH money not used by end of summer is gone.

I've had a new R01 pending for months now, the award is prepared (according to ERA commons), what steps are left before the NOGA and funds released? Feel like many grants are being slow rolled before they are then not funded.
May 5, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
This is a great piece. Bhattacharya insisted that the reporter not "write about rumors" because "it spreads panic.” Hours later, those very leads were confirmed.
www.science.org/content/arti...
‘It’s been a tough period’: NIH’s new director speaks with Science
Jay Bhattacharya discusses staff morale, grant cuts, and “rumors”
www.science.org
May 6, 2025 at 3:03 AM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
The AAU, the APLU, and ACE and a bunch of named universities (including @cmu.edu) filed a challenge to the arbitrary cut of indirect costs at the National Science Foundation

(As I write two NSF proposals...)

#SaveNSF #SaveScience

www.aau.edu/newsroom/pre...
Statement of AAU, the APLU, and ACE Regarding their Legal Challenge to the National Science Foundation’s Cut to Critical Research That Strengthens America | Association of American Universities (AAU)
This is a statement of the Association of American Universities, Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities, and American Council on Education regarding their legal challenge to the administratio...
www.aau.edu
May 6, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Heard this story in person from @laurakiessling.bsky.social at a conference and glad to see it out. I really love approaches where I get to say to myself “man I wish I had thought of that”…simple and elegant.
May 6, 2025 at 2:35 AM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
The current administration’s narrative that Harvard (and all universities) feel “entitled” to federal dollars misleads the public. Nor are these funds a “privilege” 1/n
Harvard may have a lot of issues, but none of the accusations in this acid-tripping letter are it. Don't know whether to laugh or cry as I watch monkeys tear up pearl strings.
🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants.

Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.
May 6, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones
US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.
www.nature.com
May 1, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
The president is recommending a 40% cut to next year’s NIH budget. This would be disastrous for our nation’s health and economy. Please contact your representatives, especially if they are Republicans, and tell them why this cannot happen. An easy option: 5calls.org
May 3, 2025 at 3:20 AM
Reposted by Matt Pratt
FYI: The Spencer Foundation, Kapor Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have collaborated to offer $25K rapid response grants.

"This rapid response bridge funding opportunity is for scholars and teams whose grants have recently been cancelled by NSF."
Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program
In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...
www.spencer.org
May 2, 2025 at 9:16 PM