roliroberts.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

𝗡𝗼, 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝟮-𝟭𝟴𝗯'𝘀 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲. K2-18b is back in the news, now with a bold claim that biosignature molecules (DMS and/or DMDS) have been 'detected at 3σ'. Most exoplanet astronomers are extremely sceptical about these claims, let's see why (1/n). 🔭🧪🪐 #exoplanet

submitted 17 hours ago • 28 comments

One of the largest open questions in anaerobic metabolism solved. The best work of my lab yet, performed by the incredible hard working, talented and motivated coworkers: @fidelormz.bsky.social , @sophia-pa.bsky.social and @rnfr2d2.bsky.social. I am a proud PI today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

NASA’s Curiosity rover has uncovered a hidden chemical archive of ancient Mars’ atmosphere, which suggests that large amounts of carbon dioxide have been locked into the planet’s crust, according to a new Science study. Learn more in this week's issue: scim.ag/3Ed9kOl

submitted 16 hours ago • 0 comments

"The Ministry for the Future" has been the most mentioned book at #EMBOclimateResilience, but we have a real live minister here! Closing remarks from Prof. Grace Carvalho, Ministra do Ambiente e Energia (an academic engineer as well as a politician - perfect!).

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

"The Ministry for the Future" has been the most mentioned book at #EMBOclimateResilience, but we have a real live minister here! Closing remarks from Prof. Grace Carvalho, Ministra do Ambiente e Energia (an academic engineer as well as a politician - perfect!).

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

#EMBOclimateResilience welcomes @ronmilo.bsky.social to Bluesky!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Another neat factoid at #EMBOclimateResilience, this time form @abbasz.bsky.social: "Global healthcare, if it were a country (Healthcareistan) would be the 5th greatest carbon emitter."

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Here's one of the incredible dataviz images that Ron Milo just showed at #EMBOclimateResilience, from the excellent Greenspan et al PNAS paper www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

How economically feasible is microbial carbon fixation using H2 from renewable energy and CO2 from air capture or flue gas? Ron Milo's back-of-the-envelope price is ~$2/kg. So feasible for high cost food and chemicals, not for staple foods or fuel. #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

One of several shocking (traumatic?) slides shown by Ron Milo in the first minute of his talk at #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Eric Danquah (U of Ghana) looking at engineering African food crops for improved properties, including bambara groundnuts, pigeon peas, taro, etc. #EMBOclimateResilience [N.B. I have eaten bambara beans, and can confirm that they are "flatus-causing," a property that Eric proposes to correct!]

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Aiptasia, an anemone as lab-rat proxy for corals (can do symbiosis, bleaching, RNAi, CRISPR, transgenics). But @pcleves.bsky.social now inducing coral spawning in the lab (identifying genes involved in heat stress, symbiosis, etc.) using Galaxea fascicularis #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

From science... to art. Visual artist @dianapolicarpo.bsky.social talking to #EMBOclimateResilience about her exploration of extreme environments, ciguatoxins, lab collaborations, space and the oceans.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

“No Water, no Life. No Blue, no Green.”💙💚 @floravincent.bsky.social from @embl.org revealing the beauty of diatom symbiotic interactions, which enable these globally important phytoplankton to adapt to environmental stresses and pollutants. Such cool science here at #EMBOclimateResilience 🧪🌊🌍

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

See the best of the 1st day of #EMBOcells4planethealth #EMBOClimateResilience youtu.be/KFRFSPHdjFM?..., amazing people and very inspiring discussions!! @embo.org. We will be posting interviews so that you can actually follow some of what is happening!!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

#EMBOClimateResilience “The way in which our universities have divided up the sciences does not reflect the ways in which nature has divided up its problems” @embo.org @monicabettencourt.bsky.social

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Breaking news: The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage — a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China www.ft.com/content/20d0...

submitted 3 days ago • 876 comments

Good talk from @sorayazwahlen.bsky.social - how do xenic vs axenic diatoms cope with a panel of pesticides? Sees a spectacular rescue of diatom death by the microbiome (now identifying the bacterial species and breakdown products). #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

From science... to art. Visual artist @dianapolicarpo.bsky.social talking to #EMBOclimatResilience about her exploration of extreme environments, ciguatoxins, lab collaborations, space and the oceans.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Samuel Lovat #EMBOclimateResilience: "We cannot continue to produce food the way that we do." Economic/impact sanity check on proposed solutions - #VerticalFarming? Nope: electricity costs alone challenge sustainability.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Tomer Antman uses machine learning scrutiny of >1000 metagenomic tetranucleotide sequences to infer temperature of sample (gives R^2=0.82). Finds that marine & soil microbial GC content have opposite relationship to temperature, even when correcting for taxa. #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

For those who want to know more about the Tara expeditions, name-checked by @floravincent.bsky.social at #EMBOclimateResilience, here are two articles about Tara Oceans and Tara Pacific in @plosbiology.org: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Two other points of interest from @floravincent.bsky.social's #EMBOclimateResilience talk... a) Bringing the lab to the field - cool "lab vans" (EMBL TREC project). b) Vindication of the Tara project, once viewed with scepticism, and now seen as a massive resource for the marine micro field.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Great talk from @floravincent.bsky.social - working on Chaetoceros diatoms' symbiosis with bacteria (needed for survival in challenging environments) and ciliates - complex interface between diatoms & ciliates revealed by cryoEM (ciliate rapidly creates a glue) #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Really nice work from Katelyn Sageman-Furnas (@luciastrader.bsky.social lab) - she used 230 Arabidopsis accessions to do GWAS on biomass plasticity in response to eCO2 (400 ppm versus a dystopian 800 ppm), getting some very unexpected hits. #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

"Plants are master integrators of environmental cues." @luciastrader.bsky.social at #EMBOclimateResilience All cues & outcomes are funneled via auxin – how? Cellular responses are regulated by protein condensates, and many process probably integrate temperature info via effects on condensation.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Cool system of the day (so far...) at #EMBOclimateResilience: Bryopsis, a giant unicellular seaweed, >10 cm long. Gohta Goshima found that a bacterium (Ruegeria sp.) is essential for growth & development. So we need to check effect of climate change on bacterium as well as seaweed...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

I was today years old when I first heard this gorgeous quote at #EMBOclimateResilience: “The way in which our universities have divided up our sciences does not reflect the way in which nature has divided up its problems” (Kurt Salzinger) - thank you @luciastrader.bsky.social!

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Astounding factoid from @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social: 80% of the nitrogen in your body has been through the industrial Haber-Bosch process that makes nitrogen fertiliser. #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

In a new Science study, cryo–electron tomography captures the in-cell architecture of the mitochondrial respiratory chain, illuminating how the coordinated action of molecular machines drives life’s fundamental energy conversion. Learn more in this week's issue: scim.ag/3FA3Ygq

submitted 28 days ago • 15 comments

To avoid photorespiration, autotrophs can compartmentalise #rubisco with a CO2 source in pyrenoids (evolved 100s of times). Diatom pyrenoid has a protein shell (PyShell); @taraoceans-science.bsky.social samples show that PyShells are v widespread. @cellarchlab.com #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Beautiful CryoET of mitochondrial respiratory chain (from a rather acute angle!) by @cellarchlab.com at #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Can we prioritise sampling of fungi to maximise translation, to capture “practical” biodiversity while fuelling curiosity science? Need to accelerate analysis & fund biobanks, etc. @gladfelterlab.bsky.social at #EMBOclimateResilience. Also role of condensates in evolution of thermotolerance...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Nina Gunde-Cimerman @extremefungi.bsky.social looks at fungi on the "dry edge" - environments where (liquid) water is scarce. Some spectacular finds from her global trawl of extreme environments (one - in the Kalahari? - lives in 4M NaBr and nearly 2M CaCl2!). #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

So excited to be here at #EMBOclimateResilience, a cool new meeting integrating cell and planetary scales. Inspiring first night keynotes by Jeremy Farrar (chief scientist of @who.int) and Pam Silver. Thanks for organizing, @monicabettencourt.bsky.social! 🧪🌊🌾🌍

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

First full day at #EMBOclimateResilience - Jan Ellenberg sets the scene... How to translate cell/mol bio to ecosystem & planetary scales? Leveraging AE for prediction: Alphafold, Alpha-Cell, Alpha-…? Irony that we have these tools at a point when the "human ecosystem" is falling apart...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Wow - I've somehow never seen Pam Silver speak before. Spectacular romp through decades of #SyntheticBiology - cyanobact carboxysomes in E. coli, photosynthetic clothes, a bionic leaf, tunable bioplastics, artisanal chocolates made from bacterial fats, PFAS biomonitors... #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Anyone baffled by the horseshoe crab comment from the floor at #EMBOclimateResilience? Read this piece in @plosbiology.org journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Farrar at #EMBOclimateResilience Q&A - Asilomar, DURC, balance of risks... "Scientists have to accept that their work will be challenged. This hasn't happened much in the past, but it is now, for good or ill, and we must accept that science doesn't happen in a vacuum."

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Jeremy Farrar "At the moment when we need global solutions to global problems, some nations are seeing the answer to lie instead in nationalism..." #EMBOclimateResilience

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Sir Jeremy Farrar (chief scientist at WHO) laying out the issues at #EMBOclimateResilience. Loss of US fed employees from national & international organisations (e.g. 12% of WHO experts) is an acute loss of global expertise at a time when we can least afford it.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Kick-off of #EMBOclimateResilience - organisers @monicabettencourt.bsky.social, Amy Gladfelter, @gautamdey.bsky.social & Samara Reck-Peterson setting a tone of openness and creativity for the next 2-3 days.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Just made it to #EMBOclimateResilience in Lisbon, by the skin of my teeth. @monicabettencourt.bsky.social is encouraging us to share matters arising from this meeting on socials, so I'll try and do my best here on Bluesky...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment