We Should be Concerned About What Happened at the CDC
On February 1, 2025 the Inside Medicine Substack reported that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ordered agency scientists to withdraw research manuscripts under consideration for publication at medical or scientific journals. The directive, which was emailed to staff members on January 31, included a list of “forbidden terms” researchers must strip from their work. Banned terms include gender, transgender, non-binary, LGBT, biologically male, biologically female, and more.
Read more…My Mental Health and Graduate School
I gave my PhD exit talk on Tuesday September 13th, 2021, but afterward I didn’t feel like celebrating, I just felt burnt out. During my PhD I never felt like I was making enough progress. This constant thought was heavily influenced by the fact that there was only one model of “PhD success” I was aware of, and my PhD journey didn’t adhere to this model. My dry lab data weren’t enough.
Read more…Bacterial Strategies of Host Colonization
Our environment exposes us to a vast array of microorganisms some of which populate our microbiomes. Research on microbiome assembly has largely focused on host features that dictate habitability, but bacterial features that promote colonization of a host, especially in non-pathogenic organisms, remain poorly understood. In the August issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Robinson et al. investigate bacterial strategies of host colonization and identify a mechanism by which bacteria use chemically regulated motility to promote rapid immigration into the host.
Read more…The Importance of TGFβ to Skin Tissue Resident Memory T Cells
CD8+ tissue resident memory (Trm) T cells are long-lasting immune cells retained at peripheral tissue sites where they can mount a rapid and robust local response to previously encountered microbial pathogens. In the epidermal compartment, Trm cell development is critically dependent on transforming growth factor β (TGFβ). This cytokine, produced in a latent form, is activated in skin by keratinocyte-expressed αvβ6 and αvβ8 integrins, and skin CD8+ T cells exposed to active TGFβ show upregulated expression of the surface molecule CD103.
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