iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

This is prone to unfair pile-ons, though. Hard to keep faith in the wisdom of the crowd in the present climate.

did you post a comment on the preprint itself on bioRxiv? it probably should get some kind of red title, similar to what you see on preprints that have been published or updated. even authors can't unpost preprints (and outdated versions stay posted) so deleting it is probably not in the ethos.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Sept 21 1998: "A chart in Science Times on Tuesday about a method of duplicating DNA misstated the composition of the substance. Its two intertwining chains are composed of units known as nucleotides; amino acids are not a component." www.nytimes.com/1998/09/21/n...

nytimes.com

Corrections (Published 1998)

Correction: chart in September 15 Science Times section about method of duplicating DNA misstated composition of substance; amino acids are not component

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

April 3 1997: "An article in Science Times on Tuesday about research on comet Hale-Bopp and on molecules found in it and in interstellar space defined amino acids incorrectly. They are the building blocks of proteins, not of the genetic material DNA." www.nytimes.com/1997/04/03/n...

nytimes.com

Corrections (Published 1997)

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain replicates.)" "Song of Big Data," Whitman.

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Wyoming Wormboy @wyomingwormboy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Passing through the Bighorns after visiting Sheridan College - on the way to Northwest College. Community colleges provide affordable access to higher ed for millions and enroll twice the number of students than all the private colleges and universities combined.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It got itself so turned around that it told me "An F2 clonal screen is often described as an F3 screen". It certainly is... by students (and bots) who are trying to doubletalk their answer to get some partial credit!

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

GPT-5.6 could not correctly solve the C. elegans genetics problem set I wrote! There is still a glimmer of hope for people who think.

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Genetics Society of America @genetics-gsa.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

🪱 Read the latest work from @barrlab.bsky.social in #GENETICS that describes a #Celegans pipeline for mechanistic classification of conserved Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) associated missense variants. 🔗 buff.ly/R2nrikZ

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Sorry this was kind of a snotty way to express my frustrations. More productively: it would be GREAT if there were a standard formatting convention for source data, ideally something that could be submitted only once via bioRxiv, and accepted by all journals.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Counterpoint: the endless finicky journal-specific formatting requirements for source data are a massive administrative burden passed to authors at journals that charge thousands of dollars in "processing" fees.

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Marta García-Cobo @nemamarta.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Euchromadora´s cuticle in optical microscope vs scanning electron microscope #Nematoda #Euchromadora #Chromadoridae

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Totally understandable! As an undergrad in a lab for the first time, I thought the buffer was called XTAE. The stock was at a concentration of 50 (mystery units) XTAE and you diluted it to 1 (mystery unit) XTAE for running gels. Made perfect sense.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

At the most recent Madison meeting, I think my 12 min talk was maybe 14 min... and >40 slides!

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Always a gamble how much Crazy Spicy Flavor Sauce to use.

Ingredient pouch labeled "Crazy spicy flavor sauce"

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

my advice to students (that I should learn to follow myself) is that the best 15 min talk is a 12 min talk

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

oh that makes sense, thank you! I think we pay around $150 commercially and do the analysis ourselves, but we should switch. Many years ago, before NGS was widely accessible, Oliver had his own sequencer and would let us run samples free - still grateful for this! Hard to beat that price.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

hi! what do you mean regarding large deletions? what did you see (or not see)?

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

forgot the link europepmc.org/api/getPdf?p...

europepmc.org

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

From a memorial for Ira written by David Botstein (poignantly a similar memorial article is now being written for Botstein).

Colorful hand-drawn diagram of lambda gene regulation depicting genetic interactions with exuberant arrows or T-bars.

"It was about this time that Ira began to develop his unique style of blackboard and slide presentations. At first these were just elaborate arrows and drawings that could be characterized as elegant doodles; but in time they became not only a feature of Ira's style, but also an increasingly effective communication technique. Ira's 1973 review contained the first of these "Ira-grams" to be published (see HERSKOWITZ 1973, Figure 7). A later version of this diagram is shown in Figure 3. Here Ira displays his mature diagramming style and has incorporated his signature innovation, the use of arrows to indicate stimulatory action (or positive control) and the T-bar to indicate inhibitory action (or negative control).
In the 1973 version, both kinds of regulation were shown with arrows. The T-bar makes the diagram very much easier to understand. It is no wonder that it has come into universal favor and is now to be found wherever genetic regulation or signal transduction relationships are described."

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I mean, I get it, mine took 8 and things have only gotten harder, but still 150 years is a long postdoc

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Marius Beck @beckmarius.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Excited to share our new preprint! 🪲 We identify TcFabp8 as a link between lipid handling, chitin synthase-dependent cuticle formation and nanoscale cuticle organization. Combining cell biology, imaging and synchrotron SAXS/WAXS.

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Marius Beck @beckmarius.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

How is chitin synthase delivered to the right place in epidermal cells? In our recent work, we identified Sec8 and Myo15 as CHS1-interacting proteins required for its proper localization and cuticular chitin biosynthesis in insects. 🪲 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Great images! I would like to know if the socket glial cell ending is a spiral. If so -- when does that twisting back in itself happen? iIf not -- does it transiently spiral up during cuticle synthesis to pattern the cuticle like that? Also, are there spiral cilia in there?

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

who is still going strong (spotted today)

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

We can also talk some time if this is getting complicated for 300-character exchanges!

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The anatomy is a bit confusing to me. In C. elegans, sensory neurons with elaborated cilia morphology are embedded in the sheath glia which provides important support for them. But my impression is that the spirals are cuticular and presumably made by the socket glia?

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Some inspiring images from Leduc and Verschelde, Eur. J. Taxonomy 2015

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

To be honest, I'm not sure what experiments to do, but they are so beautiful! We have worked on morphogenesis of amphids (and other sense organs) in C. elegans. I guess my first question is how the spiral forms developmentally. I'd also like to know about the spiral cuticle in molts!

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Spiral amphid! If any species like this can be cultured I would love to look at them.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

ok, ha ha, but seriously did you know that Santa Anna (the Mexican general who took the Alamo) eventually moved to New York and helped invent Black Jack, the first US chewing gum, after importing one ton of chicle that he had intended to sell to make tires?

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

anecdotally, I think there's a non-random correlation with having out-of-state grandchildren

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

ok, so you crossed two phenotypically wild-type strains and ... why was it not informative? I am working on problem set prompts this week so I could use a good puzzle. (Students, do not read this thread.)

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

did you cross two dominant sterile mutants?

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Kevin A. Scott, PhD @sculpturatus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

it’s been almost 20 years since i set up my first chemical reaction. it's still magical to me that by understanding chemistry you can fundamentally change physical matter. rearrange the same atoms in the right way, and you change the practical and monetary value of a molecule.

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Development @dev-journal.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Apical extracellular matrix development Read this Spotlight from our special issue #DevSIextracellular by Maxwell Heiman @heiman.bsky.social and Meera Sundaram @meera-sundaram.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1242/dev....

Composite figure showing the diversity of apical extracellular matrices (aECM) across animals. Arthropod examples include a butterfly wing and electron micrographs of butterfly scales, crab cuticle, and layered spider cuticle. Drosophila examples show sensory structures, olfactory nanopores, tracheal cuticle, and larval denticles. Vertebrate examples include crocodile scales, a bird feather, hamster zona pellucida fibrils, and cracked elephant skin, illustrating wide variation in aECM structure and function.

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Katrina Velle @katrinavelle.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Teaching advanced cell bio this morning and including a cautionary note about using AI. So I asked AI to draw a microtubule, thinking it would have subtle but important errors. But wow. I think dissecting everything wrong here could take all semester! Maybe a fun exam question?

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Can an ant person tell me what these brown crawly ants and black flappy ants are up to? Other than a major ruckus.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

"The brain is one of the most important organs in your entire head"

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Curious if the actual binding sites are conserved, ie would a given drug be likely to bind to a more ancestral version of its target protein, or if this is mostly that functionally important genes tend to be ancient.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

We have SO many of them. But we used to have them as free-range apartment and then house pets, and the outdoor ones are easier! By trial and error I've found a bunch of stuff they don't eat. But they let the hibiscus grow 4-5' tall and flower before they destroyed it -- they only ate the blossoms!

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

the next day -- OBLITERATED by lagomorphs!

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Del Mármol lab @delmarmollab.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Can we design molecules that rewrite how organisms interact with the environment? I'm delighted to share our lab's latest work, where we use structural biology and chemistry to modulate insect behavior in a clade of destructive agricultural pests. Congrats Steve and team!

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Journal of Cell Biology @jcb.org · 25/08/2026

Tran, @dumontlabucsf.bsky.social et al. show that mammalian #metaphase #kinetochores undergo large-scale, complex, and elastic deformations under forces of different timescales, magnitudes, and directions. rupress.org/jcb/article/... #CellDivision #Biophysics #Condensin #Microtubules

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Same same. Planted this last year, was really happy it came back after our winter.

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Meera Sundaram @meera-sundaram.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

#aECM (apical extracellular matrix) is a subset of #ECMatrix that is distinct from stromal matrices or basement membranes. Anybody out there studying #mucins #ZPproteins #cuticle #glycocalyx #surfactant or the like? We need to find each other and start talking!

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

"D. dracula and D. priapus" -- what's going on here?

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

aECM Club sign-up: forms.gle/DDJUxGLkcSRb... **New this year - trainee-only aECM journal club to discuss papers from the upcoming session, with the goal of helping trainees build their peer network and become more confident asking questions of speakers the next day. Please join!

forms.gle

aECM Club 2026-27

Dear aECM researchers, Thank you for your interest in aECM Club! Feel free to forward this brief survey to any colleagues and trainees who may be interested.

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