Here’s published version of our manuscript using GWAS to investigate tailocin sensitivity in Pseudomonas syringae. TL:DR pretty clear LPS is tailocin receptor but also that P.syringae often completely swaps out its entire O antigen biosynth pathway w/ recombination academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

6/14

DYK most P. aeruginosa carry filamentous phage(s) that don't need to kill the cell to reproduce? We 👉🏻@nanamikubota.bsky.social show that these Pf phages can go ROGUE. "Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness" 🔗 authors.elsevier.com/c/1lt5I3QW8S...

$5 says every single one of these is an LLM-powered bot at some farm trying to influence public opinion by arguing with and griefing certain points of view

Faculty meeting as memento mori

Most graphs of the fertility rate depict the 'period fertility rate', which is based on a single year's data and doesn't necessarily reflect how many children women actually have across their lifetimes. I've used data from the Human Fertility Database to show the cumulative number instead:

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget. “Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump Administration Opens New Front to Strip Harvard of Federal Funding apple.news/ALbyXj8lfRAi...

View from the lab now. Did I mention that we are recruiting faculty microbiologists? www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

What are people using for calling m6A from pacbio revio data? This is for analysis of fiberseq library. Any suggestions appreciated, we are newbies with m6A analysis!

Do you like theoretical biology, mathematical&conceptual modelling and want to apply yourself to cutting-edge research at all levels of biology, from molecules to ecosystems? Come to EMBL! Scope includes physics-based models, emergence, statistics, ML/AI embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Did The Feed recently transition from a boring place to buy discount prepackaged sugar to a sketchy unregulated peptide dealer, or was it always and I only just noticed?

We have allowed the lazy, grifting Silicon Valley charlatans into the front door, & in doing so, we have learned just how many of our own colleagues & administrators simply are not interested in the actual business of education. It's incredibly demoralizing. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

It is, far and away, the most challenging thing I’ve encountered since entering the academy. And that is saying a lot. I might be working on this but I keep putting it aside because I’m not medicated enough to describe how demoralizing it all is.

Whether you think limiting student visas to 4 years is a good or bad thing, please comment. Be heard.

Comment period ends on Monday for a proposed rule change that would terminate student visas after 4 years. It also puts limits on exchange visitors and reps of foreign media, and shortens the length of time at the end of the visa from 60 days to 30 days. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Really cool work on anthropomorphic driven change of plasmids :)! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I truly don’t think owners of off-leash dogs near newborns and their parents understand how much danger their pets are in

thank you all for telling me it was actually half a teaspoon of chilli flakes; that is still not enough but also I can’t read idk. And now!! The ultimate test! It is time to summon my French husband

Himself finished feeding the kids and getting them ready for bed and I finished peeling the garlic! Here is forty heads of garlic in a pot. It really doesn’t look like that much idk

approximately three hundred of you have sent me this and you know what? Sure. I’ve got time today. Put 40 bulbs of garlic in my pasta, coming right up

New ERC funded computational postdoc position in my lab! We are looking for someone who will study the genomics of bacterial evolution using samples from experimental evolution and clinical trials. Lots of opportunities for interesting and fun collaboration! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Now peer-reviewed, improved and published in @microbiologysociety.org Microbiology - thanks to editor and reviewers! www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols. Thread 1/n

Yes I will beware

Reminder that the primary diagnostic tool for Dunning-Kruger is the subject's response to the verbal prompt, "Isaac Chotiner for you on line one"

2. Mira Aroyo of 'Ladytron' "I was a geneticist doing a PhD [at Oxford] and realizing lab work wasn't for me. We were doing Ladytron at the same time and I was enjoying it more. It was easier and more fun" swedeandsour.tumblr.com/post/4045975...

Pitt is an absolutely amazing place for microbiology, particularly evolutionary microbiology. And they’re hiring!

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro 2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute 3) Center for Vaccine Research 🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA NIH grants. The same judge, Rita F. Lin, previously ordered all UCLA NSF grants reinstated. Lin has now nearly entirely reversed Trump's July de-funding of UCLA research: www.latimes.com/california/s...

don't miss this SOUPER bowl!

The great thing about Rosh Hashanah and Fat Bear Week starting the same day is apples and honey is completely appropriate for both

GUESS WHAT WEEK IT IS

When we build the greatest stereotype engine the world has ever seen we should not be surprised when it reproduces bias

Does anybody know if anybody in New Orleans makes crawfish boil soup dumplings — and if not can somebody do this stat?

Immigrants, particularly on H1Bs, are the lifeblood of American innovation. If you wanted to hurt US competitiveness in the next century, I can think of few more effective ways than a move like this Even when found illegal, the mere intent will have irreparably harmed our future

I don't say this in a trivial manner. I was an H1B scientist. I am an immigrant. If I were in my mid-20s right now, with a PhD and the nothing to tie me to the US, this would be the last place I would want to be.

as someone who is a hater, i accept and welcome the fact that i have haters. what is good for the goose, etc. in fact, i think people in this business should be more open about their hating. if we think our words matter, then we should feel some kind of way about people who do bad work.

Within-Patient Evolution of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Populations During Antimicrobial Treatment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.19.677277v1

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

I may have just said on the record that I never understood why the kin vs group selection debate even existed since both obviously matter all the time, so RIP my career as an evolutionary biologist

My “death of consensus reality” t-shirt is raising questions that nobody else asked because they saw a different t-shirt

You guys were asking to share what delegations said about the US Mind you, this is off the record “American Dream is dead” “We are in hell now and next is just one big collapse” “Living under Chinese global leadership would feel rough once they seize power and demonize the western way of life”

Lol, I guess I called this one a few weeks in advance. They just won for physics! arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Congrats to my friends in the Boettiger lab for this really beautiful live imaging work. A big leap forward in understanding the dynamic side of genome organization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I am ready for the apocalypse, got my sequence of pPD95.75 and others right here #celegans

This is the list of NIH ICs which lack permanent Directors. It will be very interesting to see who is willing to take the roles, assuming NIH tries to fill the positions. (NIMH has an active search)

reading a book about china. apparently the government there has sent federal forces into cities, taken shares of major private enterprises, slapped tariffs on industries, and pressured media outlets to fire people they politically disagreed with. didn’t know this.

“I fear not the man who has transferred 10,000 cultures one time, I fear the man who has transferred one culture 10,000 times” — @relenski.bsky.social, probably

If there were a collection of E. coli with every combination of a bunch of resistance markers fluorophores on the chromosome, would this be something people would be interested in using?