Michael Meers
Assistant Prof @WashUGenetics, chromatin-mediated regulation of development. Former postdoc @fredhutch, former grad student @UNC_Biology. Views my own.
- Reposted by Michael MeersDerek Lowe letting loose to start the year...speaking truth and committing to work hard to make this better. I am most definitely with your @dereklowe.bsky.social
- Reality as parody is undefeated
- Giving voice to what American scientists are simmering over in (largely silent) anger and despair www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
- Reposted by Michael MeersWashU in STL just announced, in a university-wide email, that we will NOT be signing The Compact. This statement, I believe, exists thanks to the tremendous energy generated w/in our community by, among others, the Faculty Senate, the revived AAUP, and student journalists. I'm proud of everybody.
- The Meers Lab always follows protocols to the letter except when they don’t 🦁
- It feels very apropos to have this announcement preempted by a government shutdown 🥲 but I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for the tireless work of the reviewers and staff of the Office of the Director who saw fit to give us this chance.
- Congratulations to Michael Meers, PhD, on receiving the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in support of his research developing new tools to guide stem cell differentiation. A well-deserved recognition of his innovative work. medicine.washu.edu/news/washu-r...
- Given this is a Director's award, I'd be remiss to ignore the broader context of what the current NIH Director is presiding over right now at the NIH. These were my full thoughts when asked for a quote for this piece on what this means to me and our lab.
- Reposted by Michael MeersThis may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- We published a detailed protocol for our Plate-CUT&Tag method on @protocolsio.bsky.social to accompany our recent preprint (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) give it a try! Feedback welcome! dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.n2bvjed5wgk5/v1
- On our three year lab anniversary (give or take a few days!), I'm proud to share the first original work produced within the Meers Lab: Plate-CUT&Tag! Take a look: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/3
- Inspired by Derek Janssens' work on AutoCUT&RUN/Tag that streamlined those methods for highly parallel sample processing on a liquid handling robot, we simplified that a bit by allowing any user to process 96 samples at once without any specialized equipment, with a nice use case for AML 2/3
- This work was spearheaded by Brittany Johnson, the very first Meers Lab member who has now moved on to a PhD at @ibisatnu.bsky.social, with big assists from Gabe Boyle and @sarthylab.bsky.social at Seattle Children's and David Spencer here at WashU. Hoping this is the first of many for the lab! 3/3
- While you're at it, check out this nice new preprint from Dave's lab that makes use of Plate-CUT&Tag data to characterize chromatin states at intermediately 5mC-methylated regions that play key roles in AML: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 4/3
- Death, taxes, and "the PI is too inexperienced and requires a senior co-mentor for this student's F31" 🙃
- Reposted by Michael MeersAnother paper bluetorial! Today: how does the spatial location of genes influence their function? (1/n) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Michael MeersI wrote down some of my thoughts down on the current race to build virtual cell models. Overall, excited and wary about the work ahead. Also, it's my first post to Substack; getting more excited about it as a replacement for X and Blue Sky. srikosuri.substack.com/p/the-elusiv...
- Reposted by Michael MeersOur paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/
- Reposted by Michael MeersHow do non-coding variants in enhancers lead to disease? Happy to share our recent work, led by @ewholling.bsky.social, in which we discovered that poised chromatin sensitizes enhancers to aberrant activation by non-coding mutations, contributing to disease. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/
- Reposted by Michael MeersWhat an amazing time to be a biomedical scientist. www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1...
- Thank you @erikaberas.bsky.social for including me in this in depth @planetmoney.bsky.social piece on the mechanics of research funding at universities—I give it a 👍🏻👌👏👨🔬 emoji 🙃 www.npr.org/2025/05/28/1...
- Thank you @economist.com for this important, well reasoned piece. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
- Reposted by Michael MeersGood cover @economist.com
- With apologies to @jeremymberg.bsky.social, I borrowed directly and heavily from this thread of his to craft my comment on this policy proposal, which I'm posting here for anyone who would like to use it as a template. Please heed Jeremy's exhortation and post a comment by Friday!
- Anyone who would like to register an objection should go to this page and click on the green “public comment” button at the top: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... . PLEASE DO THIS 8/n
- Typical of this White House: a non-expert decrying all that’s wrong, using “evidence” that amounts to anecdotes, offering mealy-mouthed “solutions” (wtf is “gold standard science” anyways?) as a pretext to destroy without any strategy to build. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...
- Reposted by Michael MeersMy quote of the day My dad used to say: “Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
- Reposted by Michael MeersYesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab
- Reposted by Michael MeersACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM Implementation of Schedule F This is what a lot of us have been worried about. This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs. BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD... 1/n
- Another great piece on how students at WashU are organizing to oppose the threats to biomedical research in this country www.stltoday.com/news/local/e...
- Reposted by Michael Meers[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Michael MeersATTENTION If you are on a study section that was scheduled to meet, please post or DM me with information regarding: 1. The name of the study section 2. The scheduled date 3. Whether the meeting actually occurred THANK YOU
- So it appears that the closely related MRAB study section *did* meet on Feb 6-7, after being posted on the federal register on Jan 13, 24 days prior: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20.... This suggests that the 35 day notice requirement that people have been tossing about might not be accurate?
- MRAF also met on Feb 10-11 after being posted Jan 13 (this one hurts because mine might easily have gone here instead of MRAA): www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
- @jeremymberg.bsky.social confirmed by SRO that NIGMS MRAA SRG scheduled to meet today will be rescheduled to a later date if you're still keeping track of these things
- So it sounds like the MRAA Study Section for ESI MIRA may not meet tomorrow as scheduled? Anyone have confirmation of this?
- Reposted by Michael MeersA thread. Things are bad. But we’ve already lost if they smother the passion & joy we have for science. So here’s a proposal: if you’re a biologist in any way impacted by *exasperated wave* & want to chat, drop me an e-mail at myfirst.mylast[at]ucsf.edu. Let’s schedule a 30min chat about [...] (1/n)
- Thank you @michelemunz.bsky.social for quoting me for this piece. Incidentally Eric Schmitt made a factually incorrect statement in it: this does NOT mean more money for lifesaving research, it means LESS--this is a CUT to future therapies and cures, full stop. www.stltoday.com/funding-cuts...
- Reposted by Michael MeersThanks to all of the NIHers and their friends who reached out to me. I am still here (DM me or Signal jeremymberg.78) I still have a very incomplete picture but based on what I have been told, the damage to NIH and to many wonderful people who work(ed) there is/was impossible for me to imagine 1/n
- A Senator voting to put one’s most vulnerable constituents at risk of illness and death is a dereliction of duty of the highest order. Here is a list of those whose shameful acts should eternally stain their legacies: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
- Subscribing for this feat alone even if I never read another article here popular.info/p/breaking-n...
- Reposted by Michael MeersBiopharma companies and CEOs are keeping their heads down at their own peril. They should speak up about what’s happening to the NIH and other science agencies before it’s too late. Silence gives consent. And no one should consent to this.
- Reposted by Michael MeersBluetorial: Potential impact of “NIH” “plan” regarding indirect costs on institutions
- Reposted by Michael MeersMaking intrabodies from antibodies just got easier! Learn how we made 𝟭𝟵 intrabodies to bind and light up peptides and histone modifications in live cells. And thanks to Academia, all sequences are freely available. (video credit: Yuko Sato @YukoSatoT2) (1/15) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Michael MeersI’ve been seething and grieving since yesterday’s Friday Night Massacre of NIH overheads, a seeming bit of bureaucratic trivial that will in fact destroy the US university system if unchecked. But I want to get away from budgets and rate breakdowns and F&A percentages for a moment. Humor me?
- Just remember: The NFL was the first American institution to sanction unfettered power for a unitary executive (QB) by systematically dismantling (defensive) checks and balances on its rule, ostensibly with a mandate to please their followers. No surprise that the winners are the same every year 🙃
- Reposted by Michael MeersPREPRINT! Park et al. makes the case that we may be misunderstanding heterochromatin for past 30 years due to ChIP-Seq biases... 1/n
- CUT&Tag Identifies Repetitive Genomic Loci that are Excluded from ChIP Assays biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by Michael MeersHi folks, I'm excited to share a whale of a tale (sorry, bad pun), where we engineer snowflake yeast to express sperm whale myoglobin, and explore how oxygen-binding proteins may have helped overcome anatomical limitations to early multicellularity. 🧪 #MEvoSky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
- I roughly calculated the state-level economic impact of withholding NIH grants in terms of jobs lost per day. For Missouri it's 79--that's 553 jobs a week that this drags on. Data: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... How to contact your representatives with this information: www.usa.gov/elected-offi...
- Median household income from the St. Louis Fed: fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tabl... Estimate of workers/household from the US Census Bureau: data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1... State-level economic impact of NIH funding from United for Medical Research: www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/wp-content/u...
- You’re saying our president is refusing to meet his financial obligations?
- Reposted by Michael MeersPer an NIH source: “Discussions with colleagues have suggested that if the universities all come together and raise hell about the delays to funding caused by not holding meetings, that might move the needle. From every state. There are well-funded universities in red states that will be impacted.”
- Reposted by Michael MeersAmid concerning times, sharing a bit of positivity: our 1st preprint of 2025 (funded VIA NIH COMMON FUND), heroically led by Marty Yang (@martyyang.bsky.social) w/ huge assist from @genophoria.bsky.social lab. Lots to cover so let’s get this tweetorial started (1/n)! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Today I sent a version of this letter to each of our senators from Missouri. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, I trust you'll do the right thing.
- The future is now and it is confused 🤖❤️
- This is actually really easy
- Reposted by Michael MeersWe are happy to share our enhancer scramble story, a strategy to create hundreds of stochastic deletions, inversions, and duplications within mammalian gene regulatory regions and associate these new architectures with gene expression levels 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Michael MeersHow to test the functional impact of non-coding variants in vivo? We developed a new method called dual-enSERT, which can quantitatively compare the effects of enhancer variants in live mouse embryos in under two weeks. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n
- Reposted by Michael Meers🧬 We’re excited to introduce D&D-seq, a single-cell technology that maps DNA:Protein interactions through molecular footprinting. Check it out here: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Genomics #Epigenetics
- Reposted by Michael MeersExcited to share my postdoc work now on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We discovered a non-genetic drug-adapted state that emerges frequently in the the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans. 1/6
- Reposted by Michael Meers1/ 🎄 What’s the best gift under the tree for a computational biologist? 🎁 A new experimental assay that refines our view of gene regulation: ACCESS-ATAC! This creative idea from Richard Sherwood was developed collaboratively between his lab and mine. #Genomics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Michael MeersIt is far easier to rattle of a list of things wrong with the current system than to replace it with something better. I'm old enough to have sat in a room > 20 years ago, listening to @mbeisen.bsky.social explaining, after his scientific seminar, how open access was THE thing that was going to 1/n
- SWEET 🍪 REDEMPTION The Meers lab are CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD* *of competitive gingerbread house-building @washugenetics.bsky.social Clinched in GBBO style by finishing with one minute left, and inspired by the Climatron at Missouri Botanical Gardens 🪷
- Important update: Adriana photoshopped in Cass and Wilber since they didn't make it for the photo 😂
- Reposted by Michael Meers1. I feel like this is such obvious advice that it gets taken for granted & consequently no one says this to young scientists but READ PAPERS, read all the papers. As you move up in your career you will have less & less time to do this. Read everything that appeals to you not just in your field
- Reposted by Michael MeersWe just posted a preprint about a death mechanism that we find truly surprising. When you turn off transcription, cells die (duh!)... but did you know this happens due to loss of Pol II itself, not loss of Pol II activity!?! preprint here and a thread (1/n): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧪
- Reposted by Michael MeersEver wondered how transcription choreographs histone modifications? Our work reveals the basis of co-transcriptional H3K36me3 by SETD2. We visualize how a histone writer coordinates with the transcription machinery! This is the magnus opus of @jonmarkert.bsky.social! tinyurl.com/setd2
- Reposted by Michael MeersHallo! Does anyone have a robust protocol for coupling DNA oligos to proteins? The oligo will be fairly long, and so protocols that require lower mass inputs are preferred. We have free-rein over the oligo chemistry, but the protein is from a commercial source. Feel free to PM. Thanks in advance! 🙏
- Reposted by Michael Meerswww.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... incredible study from Huabin Zhou and the Villa & Rosen labs -- a blueprint for mapping human chromatin with cryo-ET. The future of chromatin structural analysis in situ has arrived.
- Reposted by Michael MeersExcited to see our study on genetic regulation in heterogeneous differentiating cultures out in final form! www.cell.com/cell-genomics/fulltext/S2666-979X(24)00330-6
- Reposted by Michael Meerstwo excellent papers on enhancer-promoter distance. Revisiting a classic unsolved problem. www.cell.com/molecular-ce... www.cell.com/molecular-ce... Wysocka and @chribue.bsky.social labs
- Reposted by Michael Meers“NIH produces an astounding return on investment to the American taxpayer. In Fiscal Year 2022, NIH research funding supported 568,585 jobs and generated $96.84 billion in economic activity — that’s $2.64 of economic activity for every $1 of research funding.” www.researchamerica.org/2023-oped-us...
- Research supported by NIH has led more than 100 Nobel Prizes and has supported more than 99% of drugs approved by federal regulators from 2010 to 2019. But come January, NIH may face a wrecking ball nytimes.com/2024/12/01/h...
- Reposted by Michael MeersIn case you did not see it the first time posted. If you are interested in how chromatin-based epimutations mediate resistance in fungi …… read our latest preprint…….
- Reposted by Michael MeersGene regulation involves thousands of proteins that bind DNA, yet comprehensively mapping these is challenging. Our paper in Nature Genetics describes ChIP-DIP, a method for genome-wide mapping of hundreds of DNA-protein interactions in a single experiment. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Michael MeersAs you make have seen, there is a special issue of JMB on "Controlling Transcription Elongation and Termination: More Than a Means to An End" curated by my colleague here at Pitt Karen Arndt and by Steve Buratowski from Harvard Medical School 🧪🧵 1/ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Michael MeersHow do cells remember transient signals? New work reveals that a transient pulse of histone deacetylase inhibition leaves a lasting mark on 3D genome architecture in mESCs, linking chromatin dynamics to cellular memory and gene expression robustness. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Michael MeersI wrote about the National Institutes of Health and the various serious and unserious proposals for NIH reform that have been floating around. It is important to understand how this agency actually functions and point criticism at the right problems. A short 🧵:
- Reposted by Michael MeersFollowing a suggestion from @benecal.bsky.social I will refer to these threads as "skeetorials" and will use this gif logo. Today's skeetorial is about the NIH Director's New Innovator Award with three different heroes (all in government). 1/n
- Reposted by Michael MeersIn a new preprint led by @TheNikhilMilind, we explored a fascinating paradox: For many traits the number of duplications or loss-of-function (LoF) mutations is correlated with phenotype. Curiously, for most traits, the AVERAGE direction of LoFs and Dups is the SAME. Why?
- Reposted by Michael MeersDuncan E. Wright argues that problems of getting peer reviewers, research fraud, paper mills, predatory journals, and trivial papers are all symptoms of research culture emphasizing quantity over quality. doi.org/10.1002/1873...
- Reposted by Michael MeersImpressive study from Alex Stark lab identifying 3 new types of silencer elements in Drosophila New TF binds a particular isolated motif in non-accessible sites to recruit G9a. Deletion of these elements can lead to upregulation of nearby gene www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Michael Meersto shy posters, a reminder that you can literally just post about science you think is cool & if you're looking for the next single-cell or spatial, I suspect single-molecule sequencing is about to blow up 👀 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Michael MeersGenuinely curious! What have you all used and paid for it? Also, what type of protein/difficulty/purity? Asking as someone who's currently fortunate enough to select enzymes based on how well behaved and easy to make+purify they are ... but who may not be in that spot forever 😄
- Looking for recs on the best commercial protein purification services that people have used? Ideally reliable for enzymes, good turnaround time, reasonable cost for low-to-mid mg quantities. We do a lot in-house but we only have so much bandwidth...
- Reposted by Michael MeersThe latest from our group, led by Megan Ostrowski and @martyyang.bsky.social, is now published in final form (www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...! Many thanks to our excellent peer reviewers for suggesting several experiments (including CAF-1 perturbation) to really improve the study =) #epigenetics
