Preprints in Motion

This week we discussed the transfer of mitochondria from macrophages to cancer cells with Dr Chelsea Kidwill & Joseph Casalin, a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and PhD student at University of Utah (@UUtah) in the school of medicine. We delve into why this transfer occurs, the mechanism of transfer and how this impacts the recipient cells. We also speak to Joseph about his alternative schooling, in addition to our usual chat about the importance of preprints and our ideas for how to improve academia.

Read the full preprint https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.10.455713v1

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week we discuss The Paywall Movie with Professor Jason Schmitt, chair of communication and Media at Clarkson University. We talk about academic publishing, the problems of the current system and more. 

In 2018, UK universities spent over £210 million on publication costs (access etc). This could have paid for; 700 ECR fellowships or 6500 postdocs or >8500 technicians or 3,500 PhDs (4yr fees + stipend). Meanwhile, Elsevier had profit margins of 37%. This week we discuss the broken publishing system and Jason’s documentary - The Paywall Movie; the business of scholarship.

Watch The Paywall Movie for free -> https://paywallthemovie.com/ 

Learn more about Plan S - https://www.coalition-s.org/ 

DORA - https://sfdora.org/

Picture a scientist - Netflix.com

Retraction Watch - https://retractionwatch.com/

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson & Jonny Coates and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week we discuss how published nucleotide sequences are not always correct or to be trusted with Yasunori Park and Professor Jennifer A Byrne (@JAByrneSci), a research Assistant and PI at the University of Sydney (@Sydney_uni). We delve into the details of their nifty new text mining tool (Blast and Seek) which highlights papers with incorrect nucleotide sequences. We also discuss the most common mistakes found, the impact of these mistakes, and what we can do as researchers to prevent errors from occurring. We also talk about prepints and Australian Research Council’s recent decision to ban preprints in their grant applications as well as some insight into our very own PhD’s.

Read the full preprint https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.29.453321v1?fbclid=IwAR2LibD1DD8q6b5df3vMzgFXpmmA6q1E_UarbyaB0dq55fOaY8mmFvzbe14

Other links

Open letter to ARC https://asapbio.org/arc

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week we discuss high throughput CRISPR/Cas9 screening and how these have been adapted to investigate novel treatments for COVID-19 with Emily Sherman a former Post Doc and Brian Emmer (@brianemmer), a new PI at University of Michigan (@UMIntMed)

In this episode we cover details on how to conduct a high throughput CRISPR/Cas9 screen, the exciting advances in NextGen sequencing as well as what it's like to set up your own lab while working as a clinician during a pandemic. We also speak to Emily about her transition from academia to industry and our usual discussion about the benefits of preprints.

Read the full preprint - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.10.447768v1.full

Brian’s lab homepage (https://emmer.lab.medicine.umich.edu/)

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm1267

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by Jonny Coates and John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week we discuss BET inhibitors and fibroblast activation with Michael Alexanian @m_alexanian a Postdoctoral researcher at Gladstone Institutes @Gladstoneinst. Michael explains how BET inhibitors have emerged as a potent tool to reversibly interfere with enhancers to promoter signalling. This has been shown to ameliorate heart failure in mouse models and is a highly translatable method of preventing heart failure in humans. We discuss two powerful tools, scRNASeq and scATAC-seq, and how they were used to investigate transcription and epigenetic changes of activated fibroblasts. We then discuss the impact of downstream targets and the impact on drug discovery and the limitation of BET inhibitors. Like every week we also highlight the benefits of preprinting, and increasing the accessibility of data within them to scientists around the world.

Read the full preprint - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.214874v1.full

Other links

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03674-1

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week we discuss how to non-destructively extract and sequence DNA from historical mosquito and tsetse fly samples from the Natural History Museum’s collection. We discover a new method for doing just that with Dr Petra Korlevic (@petrathepostdoc), a Post-doctoral researcher at the EMBL-EBI (@emblebi)/Sanger Institute (@sangerinstitute), and Dr Erica McAlister (@flygirlNHM), Senior Curator of Diptera at the Natural History Museum (@NHM_London). Erica and Petra explain how this method can be used to open up museum collections to molecular researchers in order to answer questions around subjects such as the rise of insecticide resistance amongst these disease vector insects, and the diet, behaviour and ecology of key pollinator species during the rise of global warming or changes in farming practice. We talk about the benefits of preprinting, and how digitising museum collections and developing molecular methods such as this, is increasing the accessibility of data on the specimens within them to scientists around the world.

Read the full preprint https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450148v1.full

Other links

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/collections/entomology-collections.html

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/life-sciences/insects.html

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our-work/digital-collections/digital-collections-programme.html

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/insect-collections

This episode was produced by John D Howard & Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

It's all-change at Preprints in Motion this week! Host Jonny Coates takes on the role of guest, while Producer Emma Wilson and Editor John D Howard step in front of the mic for a change and co-host, to bring you a background discussion on the history, and pros and cons of Preprints.

Analysis of changes between preprints and their published versions - https://bit.ly/2ZEY5X3

Role of preprints in the COVID-19 pandemic - https://bit.ly/3duUdyc

Previous podcast episode on Research Square - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7710Egc44SmA16npXczGrV?si=bDfM9HU8Q3qHn-s1Prb3fQ&dl_branch=1

(Some) preprint servers:

bioRxiv 

medRxiv

OSF preprints

ResearchSquare

Authorea 

Preprints.org

metaRxiv 

F1000 Research 

Preprint review services:

Review Commons - https://www.reviewcommons.org/

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and Jonny Coates and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review. If you love what we are trying to do then support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/preprintsinmotion where tiers start at as little as £1 a month!

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week we focus on limb regeneration in amphibians and ask how far away are we from mammalian regeneration? Maybe not as far as we think. We join Dr Can Aztekin @CanAztekin, a recent PhD graduate from Gurdon Institute @GurdonInstitute and current PI in EPFL, Switzerland @EPFL_en. We discuss regeneration in general and a novel tool to investigate different factors involved with regeneration. We also ask him the important questions such as how is it to work with a Nobel laureate? How was it to transition from PhD student to PI and why did he preprint?

Read the full preprint

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.127654v1 and now published in https://bit.ly/3hkzPmF

Other Links

EPFL Life science Eearly independent Research Scholar https://www.epfl.ch/schools/sv/school-of-life-sciences-independent-research-scholar

Accompanying preLight - https://bit.ly/3AvRqQ1

Disclaimer - During the recording of this episode we had some technical issues so we apologise for the reduced audio quality in some places.

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John Howard .

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review.

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

This week it’s something a little different! We chat with Dr Michele Avissar-Whiting (@maw_tweets) Editor in Chief of Research Square. Research Square is a Preprint platform which aims to make research communication publishing quicker, easier and fairer. We speak about their editing and reviewing process, open access journals as well as general Preprint chat!

Other links

Research Square webpage - https://www.researchsquare.com

Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online

This episode was produced by Jonny Coates & Emma Wilson and edited by John Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review.

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com where you will also find full transcripts of every episode.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates91, Emma @EmmaWil72848527, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).

Join us as we learn why referencing Wikipedia might not be such a bad idea. We speak to Omer Benjakob @omerbenj, Jonathan Sobel @JonathanSobel1 & Rona Aviram @rona_av who have been investigating the scientific backbone of Wikipedia pages and how referencing on Wikipedia has changed over the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss how Wikipedia manages to reliably keep up to date with a constantly evolving topic, could this be applied to a social media format to prevent disinformation and could Wikipedia be a great way to engage the general population in science?

Read the full preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.01.433379v2

Other link:

Wikipedia bans The Daily Mail 

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard.

If you enjoyed this show then hit that subscribe button and leave a review.

For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com.

Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates91, Emma @EmmaWil72848527, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).