Professor of Medicine at @UChicago. Decoding the human microbiome. https://xitter.gq/t.co/v7TIGaAfYu
Chicago
Joined November 2012
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Ran Blekhman retweeted
This is an insane figure. Monthly arxiv submissions
What is biology research for?
Expanded version of my PLOS Biology Perspective, with very recent developments from arXiv and bioRxiv. This field is moving fast.
blekhman.substack.com/p/what…
Ran Blekhman retweeted
I feel like you could overlay this with a graph of GitHub PRs over time and they would match exactly.
So many parallels in the spam problems facing GitHub and preprint servers in 2026.
What is biology research for?
Expanded version of my PLOS Biology Perspective, with very recent developments from arXiv and bioRxiv. This field is moving fast.
blekhman.substack.com/p/what…
The authors didn't do anything wrong here - they clearly disclosed their AI use
But, as a reviewer/editor, I just cannot bring myself to read AI-generated papers. I don't reject the paper, I just step down as a reviewer. I simply can't justify spending any of my time reading it
It's time, calling for a “Rebuild American Science Act”:
- Double the NIH & NSF budgets
- Limits on executive interference
- End forward funding
- Rebuild the research training pipeline
- Full transparency of success rates
- Permanent H-1B fee exemption for universities
Reviewing a grant proposal online and this is the first question I'm asked. Folks, I think we solved peer review
The Blekhman Lab is at the Cold Spring Harbor Microbiome meeting next week 👇
Come see presentations by Tess Brunner, JJ Colgan, Pamela Ferretti, and Sambhawa Priya (@sambhawa_priya)!
This is actually completely routine in academia - many universities have these programs periodically.
This is because of tenure. The only way a tenured professor can retire is voluntarily, so universities have to pay an incentive to free up salaries and lines. Very common.
It's over. The higher ed dam has broken: Clemson is offering a voluntary separation program (VSP) to 452 eligible faculty and staff. Eligible employees who accept the offer will receive a lump-sum payment equal to nine months of their base pay.
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Ran Blekhman retweeted
Very good essay. You can read it in 5 minutes. I wrote some of my own thoughts on this over the weekend.
What Counts as Impact? doi.org/10.59350/006jq-a4y25
Some of my thoughts about the surge in AI-generated papers, why this feels like a completely new kind of problem, and what this means for how we evaluate science in biology.
Out now in PLOS Biology:
journals.plos.org/plosbiolog…
Some of my thoughts about the surge in AI-generated papers, why this feels like a completely new kind of problem, and what this means for how we evaluate science in biology.
Out now in PLOS Biology:
journals.plos.org/plosbiolog…
Fascinating/terrifying to read the comments on the "mathocalypse" on Tao's blog. If you think biology is safe - maybe safe for now, but I definitely see a "biocalypse" in the next 2-3 years
terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/…
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Ran Blekhman retweeted
Great & timely summary! I also immediately want to delete the obvious AI-emails when the same structure & almost same wording. This is the 1st impression we get with limited recruitments so please take the time to differentiate yourself & show true interest in our work- see eg👇
My inbox is being flooded with fully AI-generated emails from prospective students. I tried to work out why I can't bring myself to read them, and ended up with some thoughts and advice for writing cold emails in the age of AI.
My new post:
blekhman.substack.com/p/why-…
My inbox is being flooded with fully AI-generated emails from prospective students. I tried to work out why I can't bring myself to read them, and ended up with some thoughts and advice for writing cold emails in the age of AI.
My new post:
blekhman.substack.com/p/why-…
What am I missing? Looks like a PhD rotation-level project with marketing hype.
Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA—a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR.
We don’t yet understand what this system does, but only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them are able to cut, copy, and paste DNA. Historically, the discovery of such programmable systems has helped revolutionize medicine. CRISPR, for instance, is now the foundation of genetic medicines. But it will take much more work to learn what this system does, and whether it can be put to similar use.
Read more: anthropic.com/news/claude-di…
This is exactly why I don't think AI will lead to biology breakthroughs anytime soon.
Finding "potentially interesting" DNA sequences is easy -- the real bottlenecks are not computational
blekhman.substack.com/p/why-…
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