iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

My cat. Is so cute. I cannot believe I get to hang out with an adorable little freak whenever I want. What a world. No it's not the toxoplasmosis talking why would you even suggest that.

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Cat being very chatty 💬🐈

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Şuayb Üstün @suaybuestuen.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

🚨 Paper out now in #ScienceAdvances @science.org 🌱🦠 Pathogens don’t just target protein degradation—they also hijack host translation. "Bacteria use P-body condensates to attenuate host translation during infection" ⚖️♻️ led by @manuelgonzalezfuen.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Tom Astle @tjalamont.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

A cool behavior I've seen with at least two different mirid plant bugs and several blister beetle sp. - the mirid (Aoplonema sp.) is not preying on the beetle (Lytta sp.), but trying to "steal" some of the beetle's toxic bug blood, possibly to sequester the defensive chemical for itself. #Bugsky 🌿🐙

A macro photo of an elongate, metallic green beetle on a pale purple flower with green fuzzy stem/leaves. Partially visible underneath the green beetle, there is a red and black bug which is poking the underside of the beetle with its needle-like mouthparts.

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Philip Leftwich @philipleftwich.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Exciting work from our lab! @amberhall.bsky.social and Matthew Shackleton-Chavez validated the first 7SK Pol III promoter in a Tephritid fly, Ceratitis capitata. A new tool for gRNA expression in #CRISPR editing of this major agricultural pest. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #SynBio #Entomology

CRISPR-mediated editing of the white locus and resulting adult phenotypes. (A) Alignment of
135 the engineered sgRNA to the white reference sequence (GeneID: 101458180); the grey bar indicates the
136 sgRNA target region. Values denote the percentage of sequencing reads assigned to each sequence
137 variant for 7SK-driven and U6-driven sgRNA constructs, respectively. The upper rows show confirmed
138 wildtype and white mutant allele sequences; the lower rows show indel sequences identified by
139 CRISPResso2 analysis. Source data are deposited under ENA project PRJEB111759. (B) Representative
140 images of post-microinjection adult flies: wildtype (left) and mosaic mutant (right).

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Very pleased to announce @mattgenetics.bsky.social and I have a 1st version preprint out today on identification and validation of the 7SK Pol III promoter in medfly. Special thanks to @philipleftwich.bsky.social and Tracey Chapman! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Edoardo Gianni @edogia.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller? Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase. 1/n

science.org

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand

The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

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weird medieval guys @weirdmedieval.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

It was believed in medieval times that hedgehogs had spikes so they could roll over fruit to carry home to their children, which is not true but is a really cute idea

A medieval illustration of a hedgehog with grapes skewered on its spines

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

so much jellyear in the woods today 🍄‍🟫

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Very excited to share that the art I made is up on the high street of Rickmansworth! Feels like a small accomplishment, but this is the first time I’ve properly had my art on public display :) (if you’re ever nearby pls take a look!) 🐸✨

Picture of a small shop front window covered in a print of the artwork with the Bluesky user standing next to it

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

After 10 Fridays, 10 flowers, and 100+ drawings, the Florédex is complete! ✨ Come take a tour of the design and science behind 10 iconic flowers 🌺🧵

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Thanks Nick for this amazing opportunity!! 🌸🌺🌼🌷

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

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Reposted by Amber Hall

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

The amount of AI generated art in slides at this conference, primarily used by older scientists, is killing me. Scientists please. Don’t use these ai platforms to make your figures or slides. They look bad and I have yet to see them meaningfully improve the message of talks.

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Friday Flower 008: Tulip 🌷 Tulip’s pastel colors and waxy cuticle that scatters light give them a soft watercolor look. The “broken” petals of Semper Augustus, created by a virus, became some of the most famous and valuable flowers in history... and their genome is 34Gb 🤯

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Alex McClelland @alexjmcclelland.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

1/13 Thankfully, both you and your plants have a lot of sophisticated ways to fight off invading pathogens. In our new preprint, we describe a new way in which animals and plants share a common strategy to ward off harmful bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

A secreted citrus protease cleaves an outer membrane protein of the Huanglongbing pathogen

Plants secrete a variety of proteases as a defense response during infection by microbial pathogens. However, the relationship between their catalytic activities and antimicrobial functions remains la...

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

I didn’t know this was today!! Cuttlefish are one of my favourite animals! To celebrate, here’s a very blurry picture of one (or what I think was one) I saw in the ocean when I was in Symi, Greece earlier this year :) 🦑

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Petunias are so cool - defo one of the best flowers 😎

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Thanks Nick! Really enjoying working on this project - can’t wait for the next few flowers!! 🌸🌺🌼

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Friday Flower 006: Aquilegia 🌸🦋 Columbines vary in stamen number, making them a powerful model for how floral whorls expand. Darwin marveled at their long nectar spurs, which co-evolve with hawkmoth tongues to reward pollinators that brush the stamens ✨

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Friday Flower 002: Mirabilis jalapa🌺✨ Four O’Clocks, like other Caryophyllales, produce red (betacyanins) and yellow (betaxanthins) petal sectors through differential regulation of betalain biosynthesis during corolla development.

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Friday Flower 001: Mimulus lewisii 🌸✨ Monkeyflowers are masterpieces of design with nectar-guide spots formed by an activator–inhibitor system of MYB transcription factors. These generate reaction–diffusion patterns across the ventral petal.

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Reposted by Amber Hall

Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

First of the Friday Flower Concepts series coming tomorrow! 🌹✨ Can you guess the first flower?

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Reposted by Amber Hall

Karen's Nature Art @karensnatureart.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Finally finished the right page on my August 2021 moth survey from my IL Prairie Nature Journal. Just love the diversity of all these moths from the Midwest! #SciArt #moths #naturejournal #prairie

Two page spread of realistic watercolor paintings of a diversity of moths plus handwritten inked information including the common name, wingspan, and larval foods. The moths have shadows beneath them which makes it look like they're on a white sheet ready to take off. The moth survey is from August 18, 2021 at the Schulenberg Prairie at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL.

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S ONLY EIGHT LEIBNIZ!?!?

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Matteo Gravino @matteogravino.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

🎉Thrilled to share our latest work, now published in @newphyt.bsky.social! 🧑‍🔬 @matteogravino.bsky.social, @samtmugford.bsky.social, @saskiahogenhout.bsky.social et al., @johninnescentre.bsky.social #️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantImmunity 📄 Read the full paper👇 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/8QSRJ9...

Model: Activation and suppression of defences in plant–aphid interactions. Upper left panel: aphid stylet penetration of the cell wall releases oligogalacturonides (OGs), which induce PAMP/DAMP-triggered immunity (PTI/DTI) in a process dependent on BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE 1-ASSOCIATED RECEPTOR KINASE 1 (BAK1), ENHANCED DISEASE SUSCEPTIBILITY 1 (EDS1), and CPK5/6/11 (data herein). The stabilisation of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and coreceptors at the plasma membrane may rely on the deubiquitination (DUB) activity of ASSOCIATED MOLECULE WITH THE SH3 DOMAIN OF STAM (AMSHs; Gravino et al., 2024). Upper right panel: the Mp10 effector, introduced by aphids into the cell cytoplasm (Mugford et al., 2016), suppresses OG-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) (data herein) and flg22-induced PTI (Bos et al., 2010). Mp10 targeting of plant AMSHs is implicated in these processes (Gravino et al., 2024). EDS1 is essential for Mp10-mediated ROS suppression and PRR destabilisation (data herein), acting through an unidentified mechanism (denoted by the double-sided arrow with an asterisk). Lower left panel: effector-triggered immunity (ETI) is activated through EDS1, either directly or indirectly, upon recognition of Mp10 and/or its activities by a TNL (Gravino et al., 2024; Rao et al., 2024). Salicylic acid glucosyltransferase 1 (SGT1) is also required for TNL/ETI activation (Bos et al., 2010). Lower right panel: aphids secrete additional effectors, such as cathepsin B proteins (e.g. CathB6), which target EDS1 to suppress ETI (Liu et al., 2025). Solid arrows, increased activation; solid blunt-ended arrows, increased suppression; Dashed arrows, reduced activation; Dashed -blunt-ended arrows, reduced suppression.

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plasmidsaurus @plasmidsaurus.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

This is exactly what happens inside our sequencing machines. 😌

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Sam Mugford @samtmugford.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

We are excited to share our latest preprint from the Hogenhout lab (@matteogravino.bsky.social @saskiahogenhout.bsky.social , @johninnescentre.bsky.social ) on plant-aphid interactions, showing that the aphid effector Mp10 balances suppression of DAMP responses and activation of ETI via EDS1.

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Tom Heaven @tcheaven.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Our preprint is now live! We have sequenced the genomes of three psyllid species. These insects pests transmit devastating plant diseases like 'zebra chip' in potatoes and 'carrot yellows' in carrots. 🥕 #MolecularEntomology #MPMI #PlantPathology #psyllids #liberibacter

hubs.ly

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Really enjoyed giving my talk today for APH day on the work I’ve done for my predoc project so far! 🧪 #science

Me standing at a lectern on a stage giving a talk on characterising and engineering different phytoplasma effectors

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Qun Liu @qunliu07.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

We're happy to present a pre-print from the Hogenhout lab (@saskiahogenhout.bsky.social), describing how a family of proteases in aphid oral secretions suppress plant immunity.

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Sam Mugford @samtmugford.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

We’re delighted to share our latest preprint from the Hogenhout lab (@saskiahogenhout.bsky.social) on the molecular mechanisms on plant-aphid interactions. Here we show how the aphid Mp10 effector protein acts as a local anaesthetic to suppress the plant perception of aphid attack

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Thank you for 100 followers! 🪲

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Post a picture you took to bring some zen to the skyline 🦋

Swallowtail butterfly on some pink flowers. White flowers surround

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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

But can it run a gel?

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Sophien Kamoun @kamounlab.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Leafhoppers are not phytoplasmas... #NatureRipoffs @Nature "Similarly, SAP05 from the plant parasite Macrosteles quadrilineatus was found to target host transcription factors to the proteasome in a process that is key to the life cycle of the parasite..." doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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Amber Hall @amberhall.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Hi everyone! Just wanted introduce myself as a newbie here :) my name’s Amber and I like bugs, frogs, mushrooms and drawing! I’m currently doing a Predoc characterising Phytoplasma effectors and soon applying for PhD projects! 🐛 Here’s a picture of me and a scarlet tiger moth that landed on my arm 🦋

Author + scarlet tiger moth (very pretty moth) landed on left arm.

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