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Might fuck around and rank my top 10 favorite features I wrote @ASBMB since it's my last day and we're all doomscrolling anyway
10. STARTING THE LIST AT NUMBER we have one from earlier this year about the longstanding efforts to develop a vaccine for Valley fever, an awful fungal illness that's only going to become more prevalent as climate change dries the west & expands its range https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/040720/stopping-the-devil-in-the-dust
I started this in January, when COVID-19 was half the world away; by the time I wrapped it in February, I had the sense that I had written a story that precisely zero people would read when we published it in April. Still, I had a great time reporting on it.
My biggest takeaway was that vaccine development was tricky but has basically been solved, except for the few hundred million it would take to finish trials.
As John Galgiani put it:
“It’s not biology. It has to do with market forces and capitalism and how things get made."
As John Galgiani put it:
“It’s not biology. It has to do with market forces and capitalism and how things get made."
Which is nothing relative to the healthcare costs that the fungus inflicts on people living in the southwest and in Bakersfield, particularly black and Filipino populations! But we get sticker shock about fucking everything involving healthcare in this country, so no vaccine
9. Speaking of expensive drugs, this next entry focused on people who have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, one of the diseases which CRISPR/Cas9 is ideally suited to eventually treat. Current exon-skipping drugs cost an eye-watering $300,000. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/090119/closing-in-on-a-cure
8. BIG FUCKING VIRUSES. Some of which get infected by their own viruses, virophages. This one was just a blast to report and write. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/110119/giant-gene-thieves
7. This one was a profile of Elaine Fuchs, who was one of the most delightful, and talented, scientists I've spoken with at length. She's also a skilled photographer, and I was glad that I convinced my editors to tag a bunch of her photos on to the end. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/people/100119/under-the-skin-and-out-in-the-world
Honestly, a forever mood.
6. was a joint effort with @LaurelOld about the links between the gut microbiome and Parkinson's. Laurel brought in a bunch of patient advocates, which ended up saving the feature after the central news peg - A MICROBE THAT CAUSES PD - collapsed https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/050118/the-gut-brain-connection
This UNNAMED MICROBE was supposed to be identified in a session at the Experimental Biology meeting and we were prepared to have an entire feature wrapped around this juicy scoop. But the researcher pulled out a week before the meeting!
We had gotten overtures that this might happen, so we still ended up having a pretty solid feature. And, I learned a TON about PD, which ended up being helpful when my mom was recently diagnosed with a Parkinson-like disorder.
Anyway I have two things I forgot to wrap up so uh WILL FINISH THIS THREAD LATER
ALRIGHT BACK AT IT AGAIN
Coming in at number 5, we've got the future of fighting flu, which my editors let me write after years of being like BUT UNIVERSAL FLU VACCINES ARE GONNA BE SO DOPE
Also got to speak with Fauci, who was just the best https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/110118/the-future-of-fighting-flu
Coming in at number 5, we've got the future of fighting flu, which my editors let me write after years of being like BUT UNIVERSAL FLU VACCINES ARE GONNA BE SO DOPE
Also got to speak with Fauci, who was just the best https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/110118/the-future-of-fighting-flu
This one meant a lot to me because I felt a bit of closure for the work I did with influenza - a summer in a lab processing samples from China and Mongolia, then a year helping coordinate and evaluate a school-located influenza vaccination - but didn't pursue to an MPH
NUMBER FOUR is the feature I did about the researchers @UBC using bacterial enzymes to shear the sugars from type-A blood to make type-O blood, and why the past efforts didn't pan out. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020119/making-type-o
For me, this was a quintessential @ASBMB feature: there was breaking-ish news that we waited to cover in greater biochemical detail and with context - what this might mean for the state of the North American blood industry - that wouldn't have fit in a quick news item
Coming in at number three, it's my favorite feature from this year, which I almost slotted at number one due to recency bias: https://twitter.com/ArnstJohn/status/1314216132648206337
And, here we are, my second-favorite feature in my four years @ASBMB: the science behind kratom's strange leaves. I definitely didn't order and sample a bunch of kratom to make the banner and cover images for this story, no sirree.
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/060117/the-science-behind-kratom-s-strange-leaves
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/060117/the-science-behind-kratom-s-strange-leaves
Again, this hits the @ASBMB sweet spot: @angelahopp had heard a segment on WAMU about the FDA's legal battle to classify kratom as a schedule 1 drug despite the fact that the drug interacted with opioid receptors in a different fashion than opiates - namely, heroin - did
There was a biochemical/neurochemistry angle there and a social justice side, since kratom was being embraced by a community trying to quit opiates (both things that were covered elsewhere), so I chatted up every scientist I could find working with kratom & mitragynine
The scheduling of mitragynine and 7-OH-mitragynine seem to both still be in limbo, more than 4 years after the FDA declared its intention. I don't write about FDA affairs regularly, but it seemed bizarre to me that after being on a warpath through 2018 they just....stopped
(Scott Gottlieb left as commissioner in early 2019)
And, before I wrap things up here, I wanted to make a note of the best two Q&As I've published about the society's journal editors:
my January 2020 Q&A with new @jbiolchem AE Craig Cameron, and my June 2020 Q&A with new AE @molcellprot Mike Gillette
my January 2020 Q&A with new @jbiolchem AE Craig Cameron, and my June 2020 Q&A with new AE @molcellprot Mike Gillette
@CameronLabUNC is just an all-around great guy, and has become one of my favorite scientists to chat up, especially whenever I have questions relating to retroviruses (which, there have been a FEW this year!). https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/people/010820/serving-societies-and-investigating-viruses
Even before COVID-19 swamped the ICU he works in, Mike Gillette manages to get an absolutely bananas amount of work done, both in the clinic and on the analytical side of proteomics. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/people/061220/n-the-front-lines-of-coronavirus-care
I call these two Q&As my "best" because I've done dozens of these associate editor pieces, and these are the two where I felt like I truly broke the mold that had been effective, but too easy to fall into
Might as well also mention the best headline I've ever written, The Cyanides of Titan, about the presence of vinyl cyanide and what it might mean for the formation of membranes (possible?) and life (not at all possible) on Saturn's largest moon.
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/100117/the-cyanides-of-titan
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/100117/the-cyanides-of-titan
Also @JoAnnaScience and I were tickled that it was the first and only time while she was at @AGU_Eos that we found our wildly different subject matters converging on the same story
Also a shout out to my best headline that, for obvious reasons, did not run:
"The Shit That Sticks to Ships"
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/040117/the-slime-and-grime-that-stick-to-ships
"The Shit That Sticks to Ships"
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/040117/the-slime-and-grime-that-stick-to-ships
And, at last, my favorite feature: mouse lemurs, and how they're being used to build a new genome atlas for human lung disease.
I actually won a Bronze EXCEL award for magazine feature articles for this one in 2018, which was a fun night. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/110117/mouse-lemurs-a-model-in-the-wild
I actually won a Bronze EXCEL award for magazine feature articles for this one in 2018, which was a fun night. https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/110117/mouse-lemurs-a-model-in-the-wild
The mouse lemurs? Adorable. The sustainable science and education work being done with them? Inspiring. Patricia Wright, conservationist and lover of lemurs (who told me that her favorites were Aye-ayes because they have the kindest dispositions)? Delightful.
The best part came when I finally went to the
@DukeLemurCenter with @typicalfeminist, and asked the tour guide if we could see the mouse lemurs (in the nocturnal building).
She said no, they were hiding, but that they were actually kind of mean and loved to bite their handlers!
@DukeLemurCenter with @typicalfeminist, and asked the tour guide if we could see the mouse lemurs (in the nocturnal building).
She said no, they were hiding, but that they were actually kind of mean and loved to bite their handlers!
Anyway, if you've enjoyed this thread, have been writing about science for at least 3 years, and thought "yo sick I wanna write features like that and work with the kickass team of @angelahopp, @cdorn56, @LaurelOld and @allisonfrick" please apply at:
https://www.faseb.org/About-FASEB/Careers?id=3789&ws=True&cl=True&external=False&externallink=&title=Science+Writer+-+American+Society+for+Biochemistry+%26+Molecular+Biology+(ASBMB)&FileNameHere=ASBMBScienceWriterOctober2020.pdf
https://www.faseb.org/About-FASEB/Careers?id=3789&ws=True&cl=True&external=False&externallink=&title=Science+Writer+-+American+Society+for+Biochemistry+%26+Molecular+Biology+(ASBMB)&FileNameHere=ASBMBScienceWriterOctober2020.pdf
