John Janetzko (@jjanetzko) header
John Janetzko (@jjanetzko) profile picture

Asst. Prof. Univ of Colorado @CU_BMG. Chemist, sometimes structural biologist, bike racer 🚴🏼‍♂️, 👦 & 🐶 dad, 🇨🇦, 🎓 Stanford/Harvard/UToronto.

Denver, CO
Joined September 2009
Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)Photo by John Janetzko (@jjanetzko)
Throughout his career, Jon Clardy helped shape the field of natural products. His record of discovering the most influential naturally occurring small molecules is extraordinary and unmatched. He was a humble man, and his kindness and warmth will be deeply missed
Jon Clardy: 1943-2026 One of the most impactful, creative, and (quietly) irreverent practitioners of chemical biology. Transformed how we think about nature's chemicals: their structures, their role in biology. Loved him -- he had tremendous influence on my thinking.
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John Janetzko retweeted
Hard for me to see someone who was a colleague at MIT relishing in my destruction. Particularly since they barely knew me and never bothered--as perhaps scientists should--to check if there was another version of events.
🚨 BOMBSHELL COURT EVIDENCE EXPOSES EXPLOSIVE PRIVATE MESSAGES REVEALING COORDINATION BETWEEN KRISTIN KNOUSE AND MIT PROFESSOR SANGEETA BHATIA IN THE DAVID M. SABATINI ORDEAL. 🔱 NEW REVELATION — Court evidence exposes how Knouse and Bhatia privately celebrated Sabatini’s removal, discussed the potential destruction of his professional career, and anticipated the revocation of his @MIT tenure. An 80-message exchange between Kristin Knouse and MIT Professor Sangeeta Bhatia, dated August 20–21, 2021, reveals their private reactions immediately following Whitehead Institute and HHMI's severance of ties with Professor @DMSabatini. The communications contain statements that deserve serious public examination. 🔴 1. “YOU DID IT” — “AND HE’S OUT.” On August 20, 2021, Bhatia congratulated Knouse: 🔴 “YOU DID IT. You crossed the finish line. It's out in the open. And you're not out in the open. And you're on the faculty. And he's out.” Knouse responded: 🔴 “You connecting me to Nancy [Hopkins]was the turning point. I will never forget that walk in Lexington.” 🔴 2. “THIS WAS THE OUTCOME I DREAMED OF.” The following morning, as news coverage spread, Knouse discussed the possibility of Sabatini losing his MIT tenure: 🔴 “Hard to imagine MIT will be left with any choice other than to revoke tenure.” Bhatia responded: 🔴 “You're right about tenure” She subsequently wrote: 🔴 “This was the outcome I dreamed of but NEVER certain I would get it.” Knouse also described her assessment of Whitehead's handling of the matter: 🔴 “And as skeptical as I was of Whitehead's end game, in the end I think the overall process was perfectly executed.” Bhatia expressed her approval of Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann: 🔴 “I'm proud of Ruth [Lehmann]” These exchanges occurred months before MIT's April 2022 tenure-revocation recommendation. 🔴 3. THE PROFESSIONAL CONSEQUENCES — BEYOND WHITEHEAD. The participants also discussed Sabatini's corporate affiliations and prospects for future employment. Knouse wrote: 🔴 “I know of one company already speaking with lawyers to remove him on grounds of morality clause.” She subsequently stated: 🔴 “Hard to imagine how he can be gainfully employed anywhere after the past 24 hours ...” These were not merely discussions about an institutional investigation. They extended to the potential consequences for Sabatini's career, tenure, corporate affiliations, and future livelihood. 🔴 4. THE DIVERSITY SURVEY AND PROTECTION FROM PUBLIC IDENTIFICATION. In another particularly consequential exchange, Bhatia wrote: 🔴 “Also the dei survey and subsequent investigation really protects you, which I love. There is not even a scent of whistleblower in all the press.” This statement takes on particular significance alongside the previously disclosed communications in which Knouse and Nora Kory discussed using Whitehead's diversity survey to conceal an investigation already under consideration (📑 see the original court evidence in the first comment below). 🔴 5. “WE DRANK CHAMPAGNE” — CELEBRATING AS THE NEWS SPREAD. Perhaps the most striking exchange appears on KK011419. On August 21, 2021, Knouse declared: 🔴 “I KNOW! Young people took down a relatively young king. Progress, progress, progress.” Knouse also wrote: 🔴 “Two other women who came forward and I drank champagne while watching the Tweets and articles roll in last night. It felt like campaign headquarters after an election victory. Really special.” Bhatia responded: 🔴 “That's awesome.” These exchanges reinforce the serious concerns about coordination and conflicts of interest raised by our previous disclosures. Their significance must be assessed alongside the full documentary record and the subsequent jury verdict. The scientific community deserves full accountability for any misconduct established by the evidence, including the roles of individuals who participated in or improperly influenced the institutional processes that subjected Professor Sabatini to a devastating ordeal and profoundly damaged his career. 📑 REVIEW THE ORIGINAL COURT EVIDENCE BELOW. 🔱 ScienceGuardians™ Legal and Investigative Team MORE COURT EVIDENCE. MORE REVELATIONS. STAY TUNED. ⚠️ @SciGuardians 🔱
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John Janetzko retweeted
Today I smiled for real for the first time in more than 5 years. Thank you to the jury, judge, court officer and clerk. And of course to my rockstar legal team. I truly wish the best for everyone involved.
A civil jury ruled in favor of ex-MIT scientist David Sabatini, who was accused by a younger colleague of inappropriate sexual conduct in his Cambridge research lab, and awarded him $6 million in damages. trib.al/s3v9VIX
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500 million people - 6% of humanity -are G6PD deficient. G6PD is key to cancer, aging & exercise, but >230 variants remain poorly understood. New preprint: “Structural divergence of G6PD variants shapes red blood cell storage and transfusion performance” biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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John Janetzko retweeted
If the Irkutsk researcher died of plague, she was presumably unvaccinated and did not receive antibiotics per protocol. Alternatively, the strain was vaccine-evading and antibiotic-resistant. That seldom occurs naturally. Pneumonic plague is only moderately transmissible. 1/5
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John Janetzko retweeted
Russia's five-hospital quarantine, FSB involvement, and reported hazmat use in response to the death of a single researcher at a weapons-lineage Irkutsk lab are inconsistent with a lab-acquired plague infection, which would have been treated with prophylactic antibiotics. 1/4
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Ahhhhhhhhh!!! Congrats to @KarlDeisseroth 🎉 this was not unexpected but it’s so amazing to see it. Wishing I was at Stanford right now to experience the energy and joy.
BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
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John Janetzko retweeted
Do you use self-labeling proteins (SLPs) like HaloTag and SNAP-tag? Then check out Jody's new preprint to learn about LUCI-tag! Jody built LUCI-tag starting from K-Ras(G12C), using protein design to erase K-Ras from biology 🤯!
Excited to share a preprint of my main PhD work in @nickpolizzi_'s lab - introducing LUCI-tag, a new orthogonal self-labeling protein tag based on K-Ras(G12C) and its covalent inhibitors! biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… (1/16)
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John Janetzko retweeted
Lilly's acquisition of Merida is remarkable. You gotta love seeing big pharma take bets on innovative science like this. Feels like we are about to see some big battles between 'immune reset' and precision autoantibody deletion. Patients win either way!
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John Janetzko retweeted
1/3 Exciting News! We're hiring at all levels immediately for our lab @UUNeurobiology Join us in cutting-edge research at the intersection of neuroscience and chemical biology! We aim to explore how neuropeptides modulate behavior and physiology. Pls RT!
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John Janetzko retweeted
It’s been an extremely strange past few months in the Panda lab. Rumours, gossip, secrecy, lies, manipulation. It’s been confusing, taxing, and relentless for all of us (to say nothing of what it must’ve been like for the most recent victim!). Very grateful to @Sara_Reardon for her reporting on this and to @salkinstitute for handling things as well as they could, given legal constraints. Since I do not represent Salk, I am able to speak more freely. This article is extremely fair. There are plenty of other examples of bullying and abuse that will probably never see light of day. Hopefully some transparency brings a sense of justice to the victims and normalcy to us remaining lab members. It might also help funding bodies decide whether to leave grant money with the lab members actually doing the work at Salk, or whether to give it to Satchin. I know that he has already tried to persuade @WuTsaiAlliance to do the latter, before these allegations were made public. It’s remarkable that many of my colleagues in the lab will be finding out about some of the details here for the first time today. The secrecy and confusion, combined with good individual relationships with Satchin and a fear of career-death, has led many to defend him loyally. Everyone is entitled to their perspective. Allowing everyone to form that perspective free from persuasion by Satchin and with full knowledge of events seemed to me to be the right thing to do.
Exclusive: Satchidananda Panda, a prominent biologist known for his work on circadian rhythms, light sensing, and intermittent fasting, will resign next month after 22 years at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. scim.ag/3RjNpLG
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Some days people in the lab work hard on their science… Other days, they spend time making a South Park themed version of the lab photo… #newPIlife
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John Janetzko retweeted
Anthropic is a drug company now. Of course their models are too dangerous for biology. It's unsafe for Anthropic if their competitors can use them. In all seriousness, the conflict of interest makes it difficult for any biotech/pharma to continue to use their models.
My feed has been nothing but Anthropic hate for the past 24 hours. Good. Although I favor open source, proprietary models don't offend me so long as people can actually use them. The real motivations for nerfing the best use cases for AI like bio are obvious and insulting.
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John Janetzko retweeted
Since the 1960s, the genetic code has been used to predict protein sequences from DNA and mRNA sequences.  Our @Nature article demonstrates that these predictions miss thousands of protein sequences present in human tissues. Across >1,000 human samples, we identified numerous abundant proteins whose amino acid sequences differ from those predicted by the genetic code. These proteins are not rare translation byproducts. They accumulate to thousands of copies per cell. Some are more abundant than the proteins predicted by the genetic code from the same transcripts. Their abundance reflects a combination of alternate RNA decoding mechanisms — including codon-anticodon mismatches, tRNA abundance, and RNA modifications — and selective stabilization of the resulting proteins. The last factor – protein stability – emerges as a major determinant of protein abundance across proteins, proteoforms and cell types: slavovlab.net/research.htm#P… Alternate RNA decoding is pervasive across functional groups of proteins, healthy and diseased tissues. It affects proteins playing key roles in neurodegeneration, and some alternately decoded proteins show strong enrichment in tumors compared to their surrounding tissues. This discovery has been a long and exhilarating journey with Shira Tsour and the @slavovLab team. It started in 2019 and proceeded through many challenges and thrilling highs. A journey that has opened new perspectives that we long to explore! 1/
We report many proteins not predicted by the genetic code. They are stable & abundant O( 10³ ) copies / cell. Generative mechanisms include codon-anticodon mismatches & RNA modifications. Their abundance depends on codon frequency & protein stability. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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John Janetzko retweeted
New online! How ligands tune the parathyroid hormone receptor’s grip on β-arrestin dlvr.it/TSTxh4
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