iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

What about Cyan/Yellow/Magenta for showing 3-color overlap? Is that color blind safe? Or at least safer than the other options you talk about?

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

We are very fortunate that Amelia is staying on as a lab technician for a few months as she prepares to head off to grad school in Middle Earth/New Zealand.

A photo of two people: on the right, a middle-aged man wearing glasses, a check shirt, and jeans, and on the left, a young woman wearing glasses, white t-shirt, and blue pants.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

...which was titled "Coordination Between Nuclei in HIV-Induced Syncytia". I won't spoil any findings here as we are still working on replicates, but (if these hold up) we really think they will be of broad interest despite the niche-sounding topic!

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

4. Amelia Worth: Amelia joined the lab in Fall 2023, and has worked on several projects, including helping set up a number of qPCR assays for HIV DNA detection, and evaluating the cell cycle state of HIV-infected T cells using the Fucci system. That latter project became Amelia's DUR thesis...

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

...in Stafford 216) will be felt for years to come, despite the relatively brief time she spent with us. I'm very happy to say that, like Madi, Eve has also just secured a job in Boston, and will be working on cancer immunotherapy in the Hahn/Wu lab at Dana Farber!

A photo of two people: on the right, a middle-aged man wearing glasses, a check shirt, and jeans, and on the left, a young woman wearing a red sweater and jeans.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

3. Eve Brzoza: Eve joined the lab in Fall 2025, then finished her degree and joined the lab again as a lab technician at the start of 2026. Eve worked on so many different projects in the lab that I've lost count! Her impact on every aspect of the lab (including helping me set up my new lab space...

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Madi defended her DUR thesis and finished her degree this month, and is now moving on to the Gummuluru lab at Boston University to study HIV and the CARD8 inflammasome (hot stuff! sorry.) Madi was a true joy to work with and I feel so proud of the progress she made during her time in our lab.

A photo of two people: on the right, a middle-aged man wearing glasses, a check shirt, and jeans, and on the left, a young woman wearing a white headband, a red sweater, and jeans.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Madi also proposed to study another aspect of suppressyn biology, which l will describe here soon when we post our preprint for the resulting paper! No spoilers, but it's really, really exciting, and was 100% driven by Madi and her curiosity and ingenuity.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

...CRISPRi stable knockdown hTSC lines and evaluating their differentiation into ST by RT-qPCR and hCG ELISA. Like Wesley, Madi also spent a summer in the lab as a full-time student employee, continuing her research and taking over lab technician duties from her predecessor, Madeline Carr.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

2. Madison Tatarian: Madi joined the lab in Fall 2024 and took over one of the lab's most challenging projects, working with human trophoblast stem cells (hTSCs). Her main project focused on the role of suppressyn in regulating syncytiotrophoblast (ST) formation. She achieved this by establishing...

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I will always remember Wesley as "the singing man" (as someone who didn't know his name once actually called him, because he frequently sings Broadway tunes - very well - at the top of his lungs while working), but also for his excellent work ethic, infectious personality, and magic cloning hands.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Wesley worked full-time as a student employee during summer 2025, and continued working in the lab through to the completion of his undergraduate studies and successful defense of his DUR thesis in December 2025. Wesley is now working in the clinical space as he prepares to head to medical school.

An image of a diploma awarded to Wesley Quist for Distinguished Undergraduate Research by the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics department at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Vermont. The research project title is "HIV latency dynamics".

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

1. Wesley Quist: Wesley joined the lab in January 2025 and executed a remarkably successful iterative series of lentiviral plasmid construction and cell line generation (>15 of them!) as part of his Distinguished Undergraduate Research thesis project entitled "HIV Latency Dynamics".

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

The Symeonides lab had four remarkably talented undergraduate researchers finish their degrees this year. This thread will highlight them (in no particular order) and their work:

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Prolong Glass and keep the slides at -20? Just an idea, have only tried this for PSF bead slides.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Oh I doubt your myeloid cells are safe from this. First they came for the lymphocytes...

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Reposted by Mel Symeonides

How HIV research drives health innovation in multiple diseases The future of HIV research — and of the USA’s scientific leadership — depends on bold, sustained action in defense of discovery, investment, and innovation. www.nature.com/artic... 1/2

nature.com

How HIV research drives health innovation in multiple diseases | Nature Medicine

The future of HIV research — and of the USA’s scientific leadership — depends on bold, sustained action in defense of discovery, investment, and innovation.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

A failure of peer review... this should have never been published.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

That would be a mistake IMO, she is way too tainted by the right wing media to have any chance of winning even moderate independents for national office. But she can definitely win a NY statewide race. She could have 100x the influence as a senator vs. running a doomed pres campaign.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Oh I was just TODAY telling my wife that it's time AOC ran for his seat. But to suggest that he agrees with the $400m cut is just wild.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

"...My worry is that this $400 million was just done in typical Trump fashion: indiscriminately, without looking at its effect." FAR cry from "Schumer says he agrees with Trump’s decision to pull $400 million from Columbia.". It's so far that I worry it's not in the same plane of existence.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

"... What is the $400 million? It could be hurting all students. Students who go there who have nothing to do with the protest, students who might have protested peacefully, or Jewish students who were victims of some of those protests. So I think we have to see..."

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Doesn't seem like he said anything of the sort. Maybe this is not a good source of information to follow. Here's what he actually said: "So what did they do? They took away $400 million. I’m trying to find out what they took away. Are they taking away money from cancer research, or Alzheimer’s?..."

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Three abstracts submitted for CSH Retroviruses this year! Particularly excited about one of them as it came together in the nick of time, but all three are going to be bangers.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

What if the indirect cost model is truly broken and wasteful... AND the idea that it would be cut to 15% across the board with 3 days' notice is just about the worst way possible to address this problem?

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

So, fully HALF of the papers do not show any good evidence that Paxlovid causes rebound and instead support the idea that this is just a normal feature of this infection regardless of treatment. @danielgriffinmdphd.bsky.social interested in your take on this.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Ref 6: P>U Ref 17: P=U Ref 19: P>U (extremely low N) Ref 20: P=U (numerically P>U, but you have to torture the data to get significance) Ref 22: P>U Ref 23: P>U Ref 26: P=U (numerically P>U but statistically non-significant) Ref 27: P=U

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Decided to pull up all those refs at the end of the quote and look at the data to see whether that statement is accurate. (below, P>U means Paxlovid caused more rebound than Untreated, and P=U means there was no difference in rebound between groups)

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Quoting this paper: Viral rebound has also been described in untreated individuals (24, 25), but often at a lower frequency compared with N-R treated individuals regardless of rebound definition (6, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27).

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

I think you know this, but MDPI is not a journal, it's a publisher of journals. The journal that paper is published in is IJMS. Also, wow, the WHN is just a who's who of pathologically online people who don't know anything about the immune system.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I did not know that. That makes a lot of sense.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

You just know that there had to have been an earlier version of this paragraph that was about Judy Mikovits instead of Duesberg...

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Installing the wrong thickness filter into a filter wheel and cramming the retainer ring on not understanding that this will not go well, only for the retainer ring to then scratch the crap out of the filter wheel housing as the wheel rotates because it sticks out.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 02/03/2024

I can't decide what's worse when coding with ChatGPT: ChatGPT-4 being maliciously lazy, or ChatGPT-3.5 being just straight dumb? Either way, what a waste of time (and money).

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 22/01/2024

Dear Outlook, no I do not want to send a read receipt for an email I just marked as Junk.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 28/12/2023

I think you're giving this way too much credit. This paper is basically meaningless and the conclusions are in no way justified by the data. Peer review fail.

Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 29/11/2023

I have my issues with FlowJo, but the new version that just came out with spectral plots is pretty damn cool!!!

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

Coat slide with CellTak, put live cells on it for an hour, then fix and mount.

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Reposted by Mel Symeonides

Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

My "Friends don't let friends make bad graphs" repository has reached 1000+ stars on GitHub! I can't believe it! Thanks everyone for the interest and support. Gonna add this to my CV. 😂😂😂 github.com/cxli233/Frie...

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 15/10/2023

On the positive side, now I have a really solid set of negative controls for this knockdown.

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Mel Symeonides @msymeonides.bsky.social · 15/10/2023

Note to self: Clone the damn thing in the right way round next time. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️