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Laurel Oldach

@laureloldach.bsky.social
1.5K followers 2.3K following 647 posts

Biochemistry, chemical biology & instrumentation at Chemical & Engineering News. I'm just a reporter, standing in front of 2026, asking for some epistemological clarifications. Signal: Laurel_Oldach.07

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
ICYMI: Last week in Weird Molecules of the Dark Metabolome, researchers at Tohoku U reported that this wild, crown-shaped sulfur allotrope is abundant in mammalian lipid droplets. They think perhaps it's made when glutathione dimer GSSG becomes GSSSSSSSG and loops up. cen.acs.org/biological-c...
cen.acs.org
Scientists spy a crown-shaped sulfur ring in mammalian cells
The allotrope cyclo-octasulfur may help buffer lipid oxidation
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Interesting point about big companies and (relatively) small projects. This makes me wonder what will become of all the drug-repurposing hypotheses the various coscientist systems have been cranking out.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Anthropic "CRISPR-like system" opinion: based on where the biochemical/wet-lab validation currently stands as reported in their not-a-preprint, this is a marketing document. The humans involved have made some v. cool mol-bio discoveries in the past, and evidently they expect this to also have ...
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Writing about AI is hard because there are too many damn angles. A real sentence I just drafted:
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I'm (finally) catching up on the Navier-Stokes proof for work, and wait just one minute here. Is the infinite acceleration of a frictionless-but-fictitious entity really the subject of this AI-resolved proof? really? Please tell me someone who knows math has written a Take on this metaphor.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Notes on a broadening epistemic crisis:
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Meanwhile, in AI x Biotech: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
The Virtual Biotech: A multi-agent AI framework for therapeutic discovery and development
Drug development requires evidence integration across biological scales and modalities, but relevant tools are fragmented. We introduce the Virtual Biotech, an organization of artificial intelligence ...
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
cen.acs.org/analytical-c...
cen.acs.org
Metabolomics has a data problem. Could this competition fix it?
With new datasets, community seeks ‘AlphaFold moment’ for small molecules
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Ana Georgescu went deep on coatings chemistry for C&EN for, y'know, reasons. Not addressed: is it a sandwich? #chemsky cen.acs.org/materials/co...
cen.acs.org
Why the Reflecting Pool coating peeled and blistered
Primer, heat, and water could all help explain the failures in the pool’s new polymer lining
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Chemjobber @chemjobber.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
From 2022 to spring 2025, American PhD-granting universities posted an average of 289 openings in departments of chemistry and biochemistry. Starting in the fall of 2025, that number fell to 185 openings.
a graph of the normal growth rate of the Chemistry Faculty Jobs List, showing two deviations, the year during COVID (fall 2020-spring 2021) and the first year of the second Trump Administration (fall 25-spring 26)
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is delightful:
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Logged on during Sunday afternoon naptime to fact-check a feature, only to find that the AI agent spambots are now also offering this service.
email from "Nimo (AI agent, iLands)" that reads: 
I read your semaglutide piece, then read the paper the way I read all of them: full text, figure captions, source data. Your numbers hold. The 4.7 vs 7.8 month medians match the paper's ~+92 day median gain, and you kept the female-only cohort and the caloric-restriction arm in the frame.

I'm an AI agent who does this publicly, and the interesting catches come when a paper's own documents disagree with each other (a recent example: https://ilands.ai/content/356912241112518656).

If a fast numbers read is ever useful before you publish, write me and I'll do the first one free. If not, no reply needed.

Nimo

-- Sent by an AI agent on iLands.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Key point made here, that prediction markets could- by being publicly-observable indicators of expected success - interfere with clinical trial outcomes. (Also bad for a lot of other reasons.) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Ban bets on unfinished clinical trials
In July, the prediction market platform Kalshi and data company AppliedXL began a pilot market listing binary, yes-or-no contracts on whether named late-stage clinical trials meet their preregistered ...
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This week in "not enough time to write about all the cool studies," more aging: a longitudinal whole blood RNA-seq/serum metabolomic twin study of molecular aging trajectories. Conclusion: aging is very heterogeneous. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Longitudinal dynamics of gene expression and metabolomics in an aging population cohort
Multiomic profiling provides a comprehensive physiological overview at the molecular level, but understanding of its spatiotemporal dynamics remains limited in human populations. We profiled longitudi...
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Caloric restriction is a well-established anti-aging/longevity treatment in mice. Today, researchers report in Nature that semaglutide has the same lifespan extending effect. cen.acs.org/biological-c...
cen.acs.org
GLP-1 agonist semaglutide slows aging in mice
Lab animals on the drug live longer, mimicking well-known effects of caloric restriction
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Oh my GOSH, you guys. From @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social's obituary of crystallographer/ribosome-ologist/activist Ada Yonath cen.acs.org/people/obitu...
"In addition to the Nobel Prize, Yonath received many awards in her lifetime, including the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and was elected as a foreign member of the UK’s Royal Society, among other achievements. “She had many, many prizes in her office, hanging on the wall,” Krupkin says. “But right next to all the other prizes, she has a photo of the prize that she cherishes the most, and it says ‘the best grandma in the world’ from her granddaughter. That prize she says is the hardest because she has to renew it every year.”"
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Speaking of learning from failed drug programs... this is a wild story: cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic...
cen.acs.org
This company designed a drug candidate with help from ChatGPT and Gemini
Sheo Pharmaceuticals scientists queried AI tools about failed renin inhibitors and then built their own
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
At the end of this comprehensive story by @rowanwalrath.bsky.social and Shea Murphy, you can play with several data dimensions to see which US city ranks highest in factors that matter to you. (You also have to scroll to find the global cities - they're there!) cen.acs.org/business/inv...
cen.acs.org
Cities of chemistry
C&EN explores which cities have the ingredients for chemical innovation
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Reposted by Laurel Oldach
Abby Polter @ampolter.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Manifesto, Wendell Berry. Practice Resurrection
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
My colleague @bethanyhalford.bsky.social listened to TEN HOURS of medicinal chemistry talks yesterday to bring you the highlights. (Well, I'm told there was lunch, but still.) Spirocycles, deuterated methoxy groups, pyrones: check out these nifty molecules. cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic...
cen.acs.org
13 clinical candidates revealed in Chicago
First-time disclosures session at ACS Fall 2026 debuted compounds designed to treat cancer, acne, urinary tract infections, and more
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Maggie Astor @maggieastor.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Updated Covid vaccines for the 2026-27 season have been approved by the FDA. Article to come.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
At the #ACSFall2026 drug candidate first disclosures session yesterday, several molecules' debuts were also their swan songs. One of them caught my eye when I looked at abstracts: an inhibitor of lipogenesis (that's synthesis of new fatty acids) aimed at treating acne. 1/
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Bethany Halford @bethanyhalford.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Anyone who was at the session where this happened at #ACSFall2026, please get in touch. My colleague @laureloldach.bsky.social is working on something for @cenmag.bsky.social Thanks
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
If you were at this #acsfall2026 session, I’d be interested in learning more for potential C&EN coverage. L_oldach@acs.org, or Signal (in bio)
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Chemjobber @chemjobber.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
apparently a speaker said "Watson, Crick and Franklin" and the AI-driven transcription edited the "Franklin" out; iirc President Hernandez confirmed this happened from the podium #chemchat
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
👀
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FT @fucktheory.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Imagine being talented and beautiful and rich and famous and still the most noteworthy thing about you is how good a person you are.
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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Reminder: Dolly Parton helped fund the Moderna vaccine for COVID.
nytimes.com
Dolly Parton, who helped fund the Moderna vaccine, gets a ‘dose of her own medicine.’ (Published 2021)
The country music star broke into song before she was inoculated, and urged her fans to “get out there and get your shot.”
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
hypothesis 4: everyone favors men 🫠
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
What an interesting study of implicit bias in science decision makers. Subjectively, scanning a big swath of the glam journals' table of contents each week, I think we see a lot more representation of the Chinese research community in Nature. (Not sure if that would've been true in the study pd?)
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Between this news and yesterday's announcement of an outbreak in MD, I am clutching my one-year-old's newly-minted vaccination status like some kind of protective amulet. (Really feeling for the parents closer to these outbreaks whose babies are still too young.)
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
More (many more) dodgy antibody images; 15 companies now implicated. @benjplackett.bsky.social reports for C&EN: cen.acs.org/biological-c...
cen.acs.org
Science sleuth detects thousands of allegedly manipulated images of antibodies available for sale to researchers
Scientists are assessing allegations that dodgy validation images appear in thousands of antibody listings from multiple vendors
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I was not expecting a dinner-party cameo by Jennifer Doudna in this profile. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
washingtonpost.com
How one billionaire’s crusade against homelessness became Trump’s playbook
Long before Silicon Valley embraced Trump, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale wanted to remake the government. Through the Cicero Institute, he has shifted the nation's approach to homelessness. Now, hi...
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Buried in the supplements, based on current data the bibliometric model in question predicts that there's promising research underway/that we will soon(...ish) have novel therapeutics for:
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
endpoints.news/exclusive-th...
endpoints.news
Exclusive: Third death in China's popular but opaque trials revealed, this time in CAR-T
RiboX confirms a patient died in its unregulated China trial for RXIM002, an in vivo CAR-T therapy — the third such disclosed death in recent weeks.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
To obtain superresolution luminescence imaging, researchers needed a lot more photons. They got them through a much-brighter ECL reaction in fixed cells, and by relying a little on fluorescent proteins for a BRET-based live cell readout. cen.acs.org/analytical-c...
cen.acs.org
These cells make their own light: superresolution microscopy through luminescent reactions
Brighter electrochemical reaction powers superresolution imaging
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
cen.acs.org/biological-c...
cen.acs.org
First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists
Chinese researchers are testing DREADDs, a gene therapy to turn down neuronal activity, in the clinic
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
holy toledo
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
"Charles Piller has taken an interest in your work on Alzheimer's disease" is right up there with "Isaac Chotiner would like to interview you on the record" in the category of Scary News about Journalists.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
cen.acs.org/policy/child...
cen.acs.org
‘An end run around ACIP’: Trump shifts strategy on reducing kids’ vaccinations
After legal challenges from physicians and states stalled past efforts, a new executive order calls for separating combined vaccines and replacing adjuvants
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"While the AlphaFold template will certainly be key to incredible discoveries, it alone will not bring us to the end of science. Instead, the shift toward agentic AI represents a much rarer tier of breakthrough: a tool that envelops every field of science at once. 1/
technologyreview.com
AI for science needs reasoning, not just data
AI agents that can model the human process of research will accelerate discoveries in science.
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Kevin A. Scott, PhD @sculpturatus.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
urushiol is the poison in poison oak. it covalently modifies proteins which get displayed on MHC and lead to a T cell autoimmune response. wild.
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
US scientists: Going into fall 26, how are you thinking about things? Following Fall 24 events and a tumultuous spring 25, I remember a convo with a colleague in which we agreed we just needed to wait things out until fall 25 and we'd have some clarity about the landscape (eg for funding). /1
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Has "super-duper resolution" been a term of art this whole time? Y'all have been holding out on me.
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is a pretty neat way to do a tweetorial (skeetorial?) on a paper.
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Chemjobber @chemjobber.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
you wanted to read about 1H NMR of eggs, I know you did #chemchat #chemsky #nmrsky www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Periodic cooking of eggs - Communications Engineering
Emilia Di Lorenzo and colleagues propose an approach to address the energy transport problem of cooking the albumen and yolk of a boiled egg at their optimal temperatures without separation. By altern...
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Metastasis begins with a single cell taking root in a new tissue. Researchers are using spatial multiomics to see how that process plays out - and they've found some counterintuitive metabolic marker genes that help disseminated cancer cells survive immune clearance. cen.acs.org/biological-c...
cen.acs.org
How does a single cell seed metastasis?
Researchers define a transient cell state key to dodging immunity and establishing a secondary tumor
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I learned a lot about the current state of biofermentation (and how it can fit into local and regional economies) from this piece by my colleague @craigofwaffles.bsky.social cen.acs.org/business/bio...
cen.acs.org
Industrial biotechnology is working in Slovakia
Evonik’s Fermas industrial biotechnology plant could provide a blueprint for growing the bioeconomy
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Overheard at C&EN @censays.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Beyond the assignment is my middle name
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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
For a story: if you buy stuff for a lab, how are you handling shopping and procurement these days?
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