short thread on nominative determinism: last year, @greenygreen1112 and seungjae discovered a novel splice isoform of the neural RBP Fne, which is in the ELAV family. but very few people ever studied it. i had a good feeling as it encodes my name and is well-conserved! #LAI 1/4

turns out this novel Fne microexon confers a different localization. Instead of normal cytoplasmic Fne, with "4c" it likes to go nuclear. here, Fne fulfills mRNA processing roles its more famous paralog Elav, was thought to carry out. terrible things happen in double mutants! 2/4

my first name has also been an organizing principle for my science. I spent most of my postdoc studying a protein that conveniently encoded my first name! anyone familiar with my "old" work know what this one is? #ERIC 3/4

i periodically used to blast my name to see what comes up. haven't done it in years. just checked again recently. here's a thing. we are now studying RNA methylation...turns out there is an RNA methyltransferase that encodes my whole goddamn name! is that a sign?!? #ERICLAI 4/4