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Michael Reese

@notoriousiptg@fediscience.org

I'm an Associate Professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center. My lab combines biophysics, imaging, and molecular genetics to study the human #parasite Toxoplasma.

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13 Posts

Joined November 07, 2022

Website:

https://reeselab.org

Interests:

SciCom, Mentoring, DEI

Research:

Parasites, molecular evolution, cell biology, biophysics

Non-science:

Baked goods, donuts, SciFi, rock climbing

Posts

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Jul 11, 2026

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

@futurebird@sauropods.win ha! I should have waited before responding to your first post. Since I just ended up paraphrasing you contemporaneously

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · May 13, 2026

Replying to @xjasminelu@hci.social

@xjasminelu@hci.social welcome! And congrats on the new job!

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · May 03, 2026

Replying to @Frischling@wehavecookies.social

@Frischling @MCDuncanLab @varx @futurebird @BenjaminHCCarr I believe that's pretty well understood. I believe that's why eg human skin uses melanin to protect from UV. Maybe a surprise it's generalizable to other ionizing radiation. I believe different polymer forms have wildly different absorption properties. Don't have references off the top of my head, sorry

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · May 03, 2026

Replying to @MCDuncanLab@mstdn.social

@MCDuncanLab @varx @futurebird @BenjaminHCCarr some mass spec and transcript level difference should us everything we need to know. The gold standard would obviously be to do add back to a lab strain (or parental whatever if it's not close enough to anything wet normally culture). That is potentially crazy complicated. I'd settle for some crosses/back-crossed to genetically map genes that correlate. Or a KO screen. With CRISPR that's probably not too hard

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · May 03, 2026

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

@futurebird @BenjaminHCCarr i heard about this in the early 00s. My understanding is that the metabolism theory, while it captures the imagination, isn't very well supported at this time. My understanding is also that the most interesting part of this is that melanin absorbs ionizing radiation with a far higher efficiency than any other compound known. But we don't understand it (melanin) very well; it's a somewhat odd molecule that has unpredictable physical properties. If we understood it better, we might be able to use it effectively. All that said, recent changes in how people view biological structures (so-called phase separation) has laid the framework for better understanding "membrane less" organelles. This melanin structure could certainly act like that and a (hypothetical) melanin-organized organelle could possibly evolve through simple emergent properties. But I don't think we know what enzymes/reactions might involved.

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · May 01, 2026

Replying to @doctormo@floss.social

@doctormo@floss.social interesting idea. Tho I would think a bunch more PRs by a third party is only helpful if you also have funding for a bunch more (trustworthy) people to do the review.

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Apr 27, 2026

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

@futurebird@sauropods.win @lispi314@udongein.xyz @phryk@mastodon.social fwiw I'm pretty sure that salmonella is rarely on vegetables. Like E. coli it's a digestive tract bug. Outbreaks on eg spinach tend to come from "organic" which means manure from industrial cattle (so, not vegan, unfortunately). Also, apparently pathogenic bugs tend to colonize grain-fed cows much much more than grass fed. But industrial organic needs industrial levels of manure. (So you're likely double protected in your rooftop garden)

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Mar 31, 2026

Replying to @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org

@ZachWeinersmith if there are multiple rates, what causes it at a molecular level? How does the cell keep track of which chromosome should recombine at which rate? Perhaps it's just an emergent property of the DNA sequences themselves, in which case there's an additional evolutionary pressure on those sequences to maintain that function that you couldn't possibly imagine Sorry for the obsessive nerd dump

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Mar 31, 2026

Replying to @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org

@ZachWeinersmith as a for instance, (just off the cuff, not an expert) if some chromosomes never recombine in dogroses but others do, that implies there are either mechanisms to block recombination in some chromosomes or to allow in others versus a constant system behaving across all chromosomes. Does that happen in animals too? Or is it a necessary result of managing polyploidy?

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Mar 31, 2026

Replying to @ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social

@ZachWeinersmith while often it is exactly and you say, just a bit different, sometimes those small adjustments seem teeny tiny, but lead to all sorts of different emergent properties that are mind boggling.. Sometimes the difference is a single protein, physically tiny, but if it's a protein almost all branches of eukaryotes use for essential process X but your favorite weirdo doesn't, then where did it come from??? In the boring case (minor variation), it's business as usual for evolution. In the other, more extreme cases, it's also business as usual, but it shows us how hard it is to imagine what complex evolutionary pressures (that are multi front) allow these changes.. (dunno if that made any sense at all)

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Mar 30, 2026

Replying to @ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social

@ZachWeinersmith @mighty_orbot I'd assume it's all corporate publishing/profits. I'd say that in most academic fields, if you contact an author they're probably so happy somebody cares that they will send you a copy of whatever you want. But accessing books and stuff is always painful.

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Sep 26, 2025

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

@futurebird@sauropods.win @mjr@masto.bike @MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk 🤷‍♀️ many policy decisions I just don't get. That def sounds frustrating

Michael Reese @notoriousiptg@fediscience.org · Sep 26, 2025

Replying to @futurebird@sauropods.win

@futurebird@sauropods.win @mjr@masto.bike @MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk while it's not surprising, I'm still a wee surprised the NYC cops don't prioritize it at all. My understanding is that bike theft often helps fund a lot of other (much more headline grabbing) criminal activity. I can't find any of the articles that I recall having read on it, but I know in the Bay Area that's the case, and that there are major police ops on stolen bikes.

Michael Reese

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