iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

9/ When Tregs are depleted, CD8 T cells attack follicles presenting these viral-derived antigenic peptides, resulting in hair loss.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

8/ The rest of the story is as follows: during early anagen phase, sympathetic nerve signaling upregulates endogenous retroviral expression in hair follicles.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

7/ Another question: if Treg depletion causes spontaneous hair loss, why is the hair loss restricted to the backs of the mice? This is not clear to me. These questions deserve discussion rather than being treated as self-explanatory.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

6/ Could this observation be specific to their mouse colony due to differences in the microbiome?

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

5/ The whole paper is built on this one observation. Foxp3-DTR mice have been used for a long time, and transient Treg depletion is well established. But I cannot recall anyone mentioning spontaneous hair loss in such mice.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

4/ First, the study showed that brief DT treatment in Foxp3-DTR mice to transiently deplete Tregs caused spontaneous hair loss on the backs of the mice. This is the primary, major observation of the paper.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

3/ For me, peer review should primarily address whether a study flows naturally. This study does, but it has some findings that need to be discussed more. What are these findings?

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

2/ Actually, the peer reviews of this paper are freely available online, so you can read what the referees thought about it. It is always interesting to know how other scientists think about a subject. buff.ly/97oMu9N

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

1/ A very interesting study appeared in Nature in which the authors used several methods, including #optogenetics (2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine) to address the role of the immune system in hair loss [in mice]. #science #immunology buff.ly/q0VTCUj

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

There is also Armen Georgian on France 24.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

The Weekend Tunes Faydee - Habibti (🇦🇺Australia 🇱🇧 Lebanon) How beautifully it captures the atmosphere of ’80s Lebanon through a movie-within-a-movie concept. Shared for educational/commentary purposes only. #WorldMusic 🌍 🎧 #MusicUnites ❤️🎵

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

6/ In my view, these limitations make the data insufficiently robust to support such a strong claim about the generality and reproducibility of antigen-independent CD8 T-cell-mediated tumor protection. #science #immunology

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

5/ The study also relies on a single antigen, OVA, making it difficult to know how generalizable the phenomenon is.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

4/ That level of variability, combined with the apparent lack of randomization and blinded assessment, raises questions about how robust and reproducible the findings really are.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

3/ However, survival across experiments varies dramatically, from ~10% to ~80%, with substantial differences even under seemingly similar experimental conditions. #science #immunology

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

2/ The data do support the narrower conclusion that direct recognition of tumor-specific antigens may not be necessary for tumor protection.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

1/ A recent Nature Immunology paper has attracted considerable attention by claiming that CD8 T cells can eliminate tumors independently of antigen specificity. But I see major issues with the robustness of the evidence. @Masopust_Vezys #science buff.ly/7QCf0pN

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The Middle Corridor is now too important to the EU’s energy supply to risk alienating the GD government. The stalemate will end only when infighting within the ruling elite intensifies and the ruling party loses the political flexibility that Citizen Union demonstrated in the early 2000s.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The Weekend Tunes Los Ángeles Azules, TINI - Pa' Él (🇦🇷 Argentina 🇲🇽 Mexico) Argentina has so many interesting pop singers and their Spanish sounds so soft. Shared for educational/commentary purposes only. #WorldMusic 🌍 🎧 #MusicUnites ❤️🎵

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In 2018, Microsoft and Adaptive Biotechnologies launched an unusually ambitious collaboration to develop a comprehensive TCR–antigen map. What became of it? Did they actually succeed? #science #immunology

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"We stabilized mRNA vaccines ....Moderna ...and Pfizer-BioNTech ....compositions into solid-state formulations that retained 100% bioactivity after storage at 37 °C for more than 2 months." That sounds almost too good to be true. #science #immunology buff.ly/LJrTlCo

buff.ly

Accelerated discovery of thermostable mRNA–lipid nanoparticle vaccines using data-efficient AI - Nature Biotechnology

The thermostability of RNA vaccines is improved with AI.

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Reposted by David Usharauli

Waggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Nucleoside analogs show protective and therapeutic effects in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis and reduced risk in humans www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Weekend Tunes Kolibri, Zlata Ko - Червоний мак (🇺🇦 Ukraine) Shared for educational/commentary purposes only. #WorldMusic 🌍 🎧 #MusicUnites ❤️🎵

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Nice work, but why call this an allergy? If there’s no IgG, IgE, or T-cell-driven mechanism and the effect lasts only three weeks, I don’t think “allergy” is the right term. It could be a pseudo-allergic reaction or simply itch. #science #immunology buff.ly/m3iNmS6

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Sensory neuronal mTORC1 kinase signaling establishes neuroimmune memory that initiates allergic immunity

How cumulative environmental allergen exposures are encoded by peripheral sensory neurons to shape immune responsiveness is unclear. Zhu et al. show that protease allergens induce an…

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

But why? If there are no Teff cells at the graft, there is no reason for Tregs to be there either. #science #immunology buff.ly/ViD5vvd

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This paper is a good example of the “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” mindset. In an allograft setting,the authors observed that Tregs do not migrate to the graft unless Teff cells go there first, & they interpret this as something that needs to be fixed.. buff.ly/ViD5vvd

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Regulatory CD4 T cells minimally migrate to inflamed allografts in the absence of effector T cell responses

CD4+Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Treg) are essential for maintaining immune tolerance in both lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues, including transplanted organs. Understanding the mechanisms that…

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The Weekend Tunes Faydee - Helwe (🇦🇺Australia 🇱🇧 Lebanon) The retro effect for the fictional Lebanese TV show and the choice of actors is so great. Are these real actors or AI-generated? Shared for educational/commentary purposes only. #WorldMusic 🌍 🎧 #MusicUnites ❤️🎵

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Reposted by David Usharauli

Waggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Dietary pectin remodels commensal bacterial surfaces to promote IgA-mediated protection from intestinal inflammation @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In my view, If AI can solve a math problem it may mean that the problem is already conceptually understood in terms of how to solve it. What remains is often the tedious work of formal derivation and verification which AI can do much faster. #science buff.ly/pFbdIRm

buff.ly

OpenAI breakthrough triggers ‘existential crisis’ in math

Claimed Navier-Stokes solution has polarized mathematicians over AI’s role—and what it means for the next generation

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Reposted by David Usharauli

Mohamed ElTanbouly @plasmacellguy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Hello! I've started my lab and we're looking to hire at multiple positions: 1-Postdoc 2-Scientist (primarily Computational biologists) 2-Lab manager 3-Tech If you're interested, please reach out to my institutional email. Looking forward to discussing further.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Notable observation: chow-fed mice showed an increase in T cells specific for corn-derived zein, but surprisingly, the same was not observed when mice were fed purified zein. Then the typical scientific investigation began. #science #immunology buff.ly/KARg4ON

biorxiv.org

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.01.748748v2

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Scientists just won't give up searching for the needle in the haystack. That's what cancer neoantigen-specific T-cell discovery feels like. New paper by none other than Ton Schumacher, quite literally the Schumacher of this field. #science #immunology buff.ly/ZUE6EKB

biorxiv.org

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.07.749948v2

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You’re too young to remember but in 2003 Saakashvili while in the opposition didn’t win by asking foreign leaders to help him win an election or pressure then government. He won village by village.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This is a very fair and reasonable ruling. Every judge with self-respect should show this kind of impartiality and refuse to be a rubber stamp, especially when no one is even pressuring them. This is pure self-censorship.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The Weekend Tunes CHUNG HA (청하) - México ( 🇰🇷 South Korea) All that World Cup kissing in Mexico really got their imagination going 😂 #Kpop Shared for educational/commentary purposes only. #WorldMusic 🌍 🎧 #MusicUnites ❤️🎵 youtu.be/KsZ3pMrFeKU?...

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

First, a paper suggesting that random-sequence mRNA vaccines enhance anti-tumor effects, and now another claiming that random, nonspecific T cells are sufficient to eliminate tumors. So much for antigen specificity. #science #immunology buff.ly/tvOuCe4

dictionary.cambridge.org

so much for something

1. used to express disappointment at the fact that a situation is not as you…

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Then do we know why regular consumers’ electricity bills keep going up whenever a data center is built if their energy usage isn’t as big as people assume?

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The Weekend Tunes BLOK3 - KAYIP KALP (🇹🇷 Türkiye) 79M Shared for educational/commentary purposes only. #WorldMusic 🌍 🎧 #MusicUnites ❤️🎵 www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Sh...

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Reposted by David Usharauli

Carolina Lucas @carolilucas.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Dengue vaccines face a uniquely difficult challenge: protecting against four distinct viral serotypes at once. 🦟 Our new study in JEM: rupress.org/jem/article/... A 🧵 on why tetravalent vaccine design does not necessarily mean tetravalent immunity.

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

If you think about it, nowadays peer review often focuses less on analysis of the presented data and more on requests for additional experiments, which can look more like reviewer-driven experimentation than actual peer review. #science www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Can AI help solve the peer-review crisis? Here are its promises and pitfalls

Amid a shortage of human reviewers, tests indicate AI can assist—but is not a savior

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Does the amino acid glutamate keep skin young? From the abstract, it’s not clear whether these results were obtained in mice. Skin aging in animals covered in thick fur could be quite different from skin aging in humans. #science #aging #rejuvenation www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

cell.com

Skin-innervating glutamatergic neurons modulate aging

Within the skin, glutamatergic neurons expressing neurofilament heavy chain (Nefh) play a role in aging. Loss of Nefh during aging drives skin fibroblast senescence and collagen loss, whereas…

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Notable observation: Tasl KO, which disrupts the SLC15A4–TASL complex downstream of TLR7/8/9 signaling and its IRF5 activation pathway, protects against #autoimmunity across multiple SLE models, highlighting TASL as a potential therapeutic target. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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The SLC15A4–TASL complex is essential for lupus development in mice | PNAS

Nucleic acid sensing by endolysosomal Toll-like receptors is critically involved in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and related autoimmune disea...

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David Usharauli @davidusharauli.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The news said that he holds dual citizenship.

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Reposted by David Usharauli

Waggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

A pervasive RT–qPCR artifact inflates RNA knockdown by RNA-targeting CRISPR @natbiotech.nature.com @hopkinsmedicine.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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