ChemKritzer
dad, professor, chemistry, biology
Chemical biologist at Tufts University working on small molecules, peptides, and biotechnology.
orcid.org/0000-0003-2878-6781
chem.tufts.edu/kritzer-lab
- Reposted by ChemKritzerExcited to share our new paper and lipid- and protein-directed photocatalytic labeling method (POCA) just out in @natchembio.nature.com. tinyurl.com/2kcxuvvv. Big congrats to first author Andrew Becker and the whole team for launching our lab into the wild world of singlet oxygen interactomics.
- Reposted by ChemKritzer💯 “Science isn’t a gut feeling. If you can’t defend your decision with evidence, don’t subject our kids to it.” ~ @standupforscience.bsky.social
- Reposted by ChemKritzerBREAKING: Over 680 members of the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have endorsed articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. (1/2 🧵)
- Reposted by ChemKritzerWhen research is halted and scientists are sidelined, people suffer, discoveries are delayed, and public trust is eroded. That is why, on Monday, I brought this complaint to the Office of Special Counsel. katzbanks.com/news/nih-sci...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerAcademics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/
- Reposted by ChemKritzerOf course--Sabatini had to be there
- Reposted by ChemKritzerProximity labeling users: check out this study by @zhixingchen2.bsky.social and Peng Zou, which establishes how much contact-dependence vs. diffusion is responsible for biotinylation — tl;dr TurboID has a much smaller effective radius! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/2
- Reposted by ChemKritzerTop NIH leaders addressed my scoop that advisory councils are running out of voting members at the Reclaiming Science event (I'm now watching live stream). Memoli says NIH was 3 years behind in filling slots when he came in (but neglects to say NIH disinvited dozens of people about to join them).
- Reposted by ChemKritzerReally excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de
- Reposted by ChemKritzerThe college at which I'm employed, which has signed a contract with the AI firm that stole books from 131 colleagues & me, paid a student to write an op-ed for the student paper promoting AI, guided the writing of it, and did not disclose this to the paper. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
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- Reposted by ChemKritzerNow out in Nature! We visualize infection of the RNA virus RSV in real-time with single-vRNP resolution to understand how RSV establishes viral factories, biomolecular condensates that act as sites of viral replication. A huge collaborative effort led by Dhanushika Ratnayake! rdcu.be/e1bBW
- Reposted by ChemKritzerI wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free
- Reposted by ChemKritzerJew in Amsterdam here. Please use Anne Frank as a comparison point to explain how state persecution of scapegoats impacts children, that is the point of her example, thanks
- Reposted by ChemKritzerCheck this out TuroID attached to inactive Cas to identify transcription regulators 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerOpportunity for medicinal chemist at PsiThera (Watertown MA USA) #MedChem #ChemJobs #chemsky 🧪 psithera.com/company/care...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerThe final version of our new paper is out now - and open access @acs.org Central Science!! Such a fun collaboration! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
- Excited to share a new pre-print on a joint study between my group and @chembiobryan.bsky.social! Directed Evolution of Enzymes for Bioorthogonal Chemistry Using Acid Chloride Proximity Labeling. chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... 1/n
- Reposted by ChemKritzerJane Richardson was born #OTD in 1941 + Developed the Richardson (ribbon) diagram to represent proteins' 3D structure (becoming a standard representation for protein structures) + MacArthur Fellow, 1985 + Elected, Nat'l Academy of Sciences, 1991 + President, Biophysical Society, 2012 #WomenInSTEM
- Reposted by ChemKritzerThe New York Times reports that a group of “scientific” racists misused National Institute of Health data (that families were assured would be protected) to write bogus papers on supposed to biological racial differences. Gift link.
- Reposted by ChemKritzer10/ There is also no scientific justification for reconsidering polio vaccination. Inactivated polio vaccine has an exceptional safety record and extraordinary effectiveness. No new data suggest otherwise. None.
- Reposted by ChemKritzer
Here is the newly-unsealed State Department memo confirming -- finally -- that the detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk was based on an op-ed. No antisemitic activity. No support of terrorism. An op-ed in a student newspaper. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... - 🚨This is very important 🚨 If Advisory Councils are skipped or stacked with non-vetted appointees, there are no processes left at NIH which ensure the most innovative and impactful science is funded. Instead, grants would be awarded on the whims of the institute director, with zero transparency.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerAnyone know anything about Jennifer Harvey, who first isolated the virus containing HRAS (Harvey-Ras) at Mill Hill in 1967? Prepping a lecture including the discovery of Ras oncogenes and wanted to add pics of the scientists involved. The Internet has NOTHING #sciencehistory #forgottenwomen
- Reposted by ChemKritzer"What we’re … seeing is the toll of the uncertainty." My latest story for @science.org—part of a package that explores how the U.S. scientific community has changed under Trump—includes new numbers on graduate enrollment and faculty hiring. www.science.org/content/arti...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerGreat to see another new antimicrobial in the pipeline looking promising - this one performed as well as vancomycin with less recurrence against C diff #IDSky
- New Research Safety and efficacy of CRS3123 in adults with a primary episode or first recurrence of Clostridioides difficile infection: a phase 2, randomised, double-blind, multicentre, vancomycin-controlled study www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerMy first-author paper is out in @chemicalscience.rsc.org from my time in Professor Danny Huang’s laboratory @cruk-si.bsky.social. We showed that CBL can be used as a degrader E3 to target the “undruggable” eIF4E. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerNewly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...
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- Reposted by ChemKritzerAn eye-popping discovery: early vertebrates had four eyes rather than two @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerOur latest CRISPR ring nuclease paper focusses on Csx15 - which seems to act as of a sponge as well as a canonical phosphodiesterase. Great work led by @haotianchi.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerPour a glass of champagne AND red Bordeaux—Our newest work with GSK @scripps.edu is out in @nature.com! Here we describe SB-405483, the first allosteric CRBN ligand which potentiates neosubstrate degradation. Congrats Vanessa and all authors! 🍷💫💐 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerthis was disappointing but not surprising to read and I hate that I have to repeat: there is NO conflict between pursuing diversity, equity and inclusion and hiring people based on merit.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerYup, this is absolutely something we have been tracking (and will continue to do so) We wrote a bit about the fallout of the MYF mandate in this story from last week — and how it could be a potential route to impoundment or budget cuts: www.statnews.com/2026/01/16/n...
- Reposted by ChemKritzer🙏 to all who have contributed great ideas & motivational strategies to this thread. It’s clear that the effect of ongoing turmoil is heterogeneous; everyone, incl tenured professors, are facing changes, but those in transitional stages (looking for grad/postdoc/faculty positions) have it worst. 1/
- Important how to figure out how to talk to trainees/colleagues about the present moment. Great conversation thank you @harmitmalik.bsky.social
- Reposted by ChemKritzerAnd one more thing. Students. If you have a professor who is, for some reason, outsourcing their own job to ChatGPT....drop the class. If they tell you to "ask ChatGPT" for sources, drop the class. Because they apparently don't know their own discipline well enough to teach it.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerI have some bad news. One, if you need to use ChatGPT for your graduate application letter, you are not ready for graduate school. Two, no, not "everyone is doing it" and those who don't do it aren't "losing out." ChatGPT is not an advantage.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerthe only playoff picks I trust
- Reposted by ChemKritzerThe South Carolina measles outbreak is growing at an astounding speed More than 500 people are in a 21-day quarantine and about 200 are "actively infected." The largest outbreak currently in the U.S. has spread to at least three other states
- Reposted by ChemKritzerNIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has just published a piece about his “new vision” for NIAID. Friends, it is an infuriating litany of unsupported claims and meandering nonsense that serve his political beliefs and not health or science.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerGreat news! The unethical hepatitis B vaccine trial planned for Guinea-Bissau has been cancelled. Public pressure and insisting that clinical trials pass ethics analysis worked. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... 1/2
- Reposted by ChemKritzerNew preprint from my lab!!! We took advantage of the MitoTag mouse line to study what mRNAs associate with mitochondria in axons in vivo, and we were in for a surprise! Other than our favorite Pink1, mainly cytoskeletal mRNAs hitch a ride and pave the way for axon growth. shorturl.at/rYe1U
- Reposted by ChemKritzerEpstein-Barr Virus #EBV was linked to #MultipleSclerosis - now a plausible cause has been found, misidentification by longterm memory T-cells that pick on the wrong protein, ANO2, instead of the EBV-antigen. Massive inflection towards the elimination of MS!!! 🧪🧠Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerLast night with no warning, RFK Jr. cancelled up to $2 billion in funding for mental health and substance abuse research and programs administered through SAMHSA. He and his minions did so because “they no longer believe the defunded programs align with the Trump administration's priorities”.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerThere’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it. We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics. What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerPowerful piece in STAT this morning from some NIH staff members who have resigned www.statnews.com/2026/01/10/n... 1/3
- Reposted by ChemKritzer…Probably the least vague vagueskeet ever… but just a thought. Rarely has a writer’s famous thesis been proven so true, in so brief a series of images: “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”
- Reposted by ChemKritzerNo, autistics do not “lack empathy”: “Where researchers had assumed impairment, they found autistic people applying moral principles more consistently—even to strangers, even when costly.” By Ludmila Pradlova. **This includes non-speakers &/or peeps w/ID** www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/posi...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerCan we design mutations that bias proteins towards desired conformational states? Today in @science.org, we introduce Conformational Biasing (CB), a simple and scalable computational method that uses contrastive scoring by inverse folding models to identify conformation-biasing mutations.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerIf you are submitting an NIH grant in February, you will be required to use SciENcv to prepare you biosketch. IT IS MUCH WORSE THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. Set aside *at least* 4 hours just to transfer an existing an biosketch into SciENcv.
- Reposted by ChemKritzerSCOOP: CDC vaccine experts were blindsided by RFKJr top deputy’s decision to unilaterally overhaul child schedule. Also, previously undisclosed CDC presentation refutes Trump admin narrative that US is outlier on vaccine policy. My story @Washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...
- Reposted by ChemKritzerMy quote of the day Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. Carl Sandburg
