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...

See this? This = implanting mouse embryo. Usually this happens inside its mother and is invisible to us, but we can actually watch implantation ex vivo with the hope of understanding why implantation goes awry in embryos of older women. A 🧵...

This moment from our latest episode with science writer @edyong209.bsky.social is 🔥 We asked Ed — how do we talk up the benefits of science in the face of government cuts? He told us that's the wrong approach. 🧪 Listen wherever, or watch on Spotify 👇 open.spotify.com/episode/7Evh...

High-accuracy SNV calling for bacterial isolates using deep learning with AccuSNV [new] Deep learning enhances bacterial SNV calling by integrating alignment data across multiple samples, improving precision via learned patterns.

Assistant/Associate Professor in Structural Biology, Biophysics or Biological Imaging www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/open-positio... #biozentrum #University #Basel #Professor #Structural #Biology #Biophysics #Biological #Imaging

Precisely calling mutations across hundreds of bacterial isolates has been hard, requiring manual filtering and expertise. Until now, using AccuSNV. Herui Liao trained an ML model based on our previous meticulously called SNVs. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I just love that our civilization is capable of being curious about termite fungus farming and pest control behavior. They use soil balls to contain contamination of their crop, which also happens to carry fungistatic bacteria. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪🦠🧫

If you want to deep dive in to immunology you could do worse than Gabriel's evolutionary landscaping www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New STI surveillance data from the CDC shows declines in gonorrhea, chlamydia, and primary and secondary syphilis (though tragically congenital syphilis continues to increase). What explains these declines? (1/2)

There's always something new to see. This absolutely wild little thing is the insect-egg slime mould (Leocarpus fragilis). Each fruiting body is about 1.5 mm long. Bob Orr Pond Trail, Caughey-Taylor Preserve (Nature Trust NB), near St. Andrews, New Brunswick.

These 3-L bottles contain one million tiny colored spheres each. One sphere is black (1 ppm). Finding the black sphere is comparable to detecting a protein present at ~ 6,000 copies in the proteome of a human cell. Quantifying the protein requires analyzing multiple jars.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) causes over a million deaths each year, and is rising. Scientists analysed 40,000 bacterial plasmids across 100 years and six continents, to reveal that a few plasmids evolved after antibiotic use to drive most multi-drug resistance. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/r... 🧬💻

Our Department of Microbiology & Immunology at UCSF is running a faculty search this year for a new Assistant Professor! Please see the ad below for details. Searching for a great colleague, mentor, and scientist! aprecruit.ucsf.edu/JPF05807

Thrilled to share my work from the @jkagan1.bsky.social lab! TLDR: O-acetylation and wall teichoic acid compete for space on S. aureus peptidoglycan. This competition regulates DNA release, and thus immune receptor activation, during infection! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky #immunosky

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

But as shown in a massive 2.5M+ children study in Sweden over 25+ years, putative, small associations between acetaminophen and autism, ADHD and intellectual disability disappeared when controlling for outcomes between siblings. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Phenomenal. In my 10 year update of A Brief History, I make the point that in the first edition, not one disease had been successfully treated using gene therapy. Today that number is at least 7.

Deadline today (Wed) for short talks.

Fecal filtrate is less effective than donor stool (FMT) for the treatment of C. difficile recurrence. Now shown in a multicentre trial, out today in @lancetgastrohep.bsky.social . Congratulations to Dina Kao @ualberta.bsky.social & team! Gift link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lphg8nByr...

🚨 Last chance! Submit your abstracts or apply for scholarships by Sept 23 (11:59pm MDT) for the joint Keystone Symposia: Microbiome Metabolism & Metabolites / Human Microbiome. #KSMicroMetab26 #KSMicrobiome26

Phylogenetic tree inference from single-cell RNA sequencing data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #singlecell

How much of selection in human microbiomes is driven by phage? Excited to share our latest, led by A. Delphine Tripp, showing a case where phage is just not that important: Phage-mediated lysis does not determine Cutibacterium acnes colonization on human skin www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

/ps If somehow twin studies never happened and we started here: among siblings, genes account for 10% of the variance at the most abstract level, and 2% on the ground, people would have shrugged and said, that sounds about right. The whole modern nature-nurture debate wouldn't have happened.

Two conferences, one reg! Sign up for Microbiome Metabolism & Metabolites + get Human Microbiome FREE. Joint keynotes: Emily P. Balskus & Mohamed S. Abou Donia. keysym.us/KSMicroMetab26 @pieterdorrestein.bsky.social @mfgrp.bsky.social @inesthiele.bsky.social #KSMicroMetab26 #KSMicrobiome26

Join us in Banff for the January 2026 Keystone Microbiome Meeting! We have a great lineup, which will occur in parallel with a special meeting on metabolism in the microbiome. The deadline for both short talks and scholarships is TOMORROW September 23rd!! www.keystonesymposia.org/conferences/...

You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range. @rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Have you ever wondered how the exact location of a gene affects it's activity? The main story of my PhD deals with exactly that question, and is now published in Science! ✨ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... My amazing co-author and friend @mathiaseder.bsky.social summarized the highlights for you

First they came for the Immigrants. And I wrote a memo. Then they came for trans people. And I wrote a memo. Then they came for the comedians. And I wrote a memo. Then they came for me. And there was no one to write a memo for me.

Ecological diversification in rapidly evolving populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.15.676408v1

This is one of the main "immune systems for the genome" - sophisticated machinery that can detect and suppress genome parasites (transposons). It's cool molecular biology and hat's off to @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social and team for working out yet more detail of it.

Microgeography of staphyloccoci in human tissue explains antibiotic failure https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.12.675782v1

Phage-mediated lysis does not determine Cutibacterium acnes colonization on human skin https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.09.675206v1

We're hiring! 5 tenure track assistant professors. 2 #microbiology, 2 #Evolution, 1 #biologicalclocks jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/675062/f...

In many cases, crowding results in greater disease transmission. However, in monarch butterflies high host density can reduce per capita infection risk. This happens when caterpillars gobble up parasites on milkweed, removing them from the environment.🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Crazy thing is that those with meat allergies due to lone star tick bites can actually eat the meat from these pigs too

Amazing real world (well, real cheese makers) evolution of Penicillium over 8 years from @benwolfe.bsky.social. "The most common genetic disruption of the alb1 genomic region was caused by putative transposable element insertions upstream of the gene.". Causes the fungus to grow better in the dark!

@science.org ⤵️challenges prevailing notion—repressor and activator act by distinct mechanisms: repressors block via steric hindrance/activators enable Pol II binding to promoter🧬 E. coli transcription factors regulate promoter activity by a universal, homeostatic mechanism | Science bit.ly/adv2064

We are looking for a postdoc to study single-cell transcriptional heterogeneity in the human skin microbiome. We have a new protocol mostly developed, but need someone to see it through. Experience with protocol dev or RNAseq appreciated. Funded by a new grant from MIT-HEALS.

Strongly recommend working with Felix in amazing Berlin!

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi... #microsky #microbiome

New online: Computational design of sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins

A framework to detect positive selection using variant effect predictions reveals widespread adaptive evolution of human neurons https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.11.675696v1

Join EMBL AI! We have ambitious plans to transform life sciences research through AI. Interested in using ML/AI to solve complex interdisciplinary challenges? We’re looking for two senior leaders based at EMBL Heidelberg👇

Sam Hart describes and applies a method to distinguish differences in mutational processes between groups of cancers without signature decomposition (joint work with @kelleyharris.bsky.social and in collaboration with @nalcala.bsky.social )! #Genomics 🖥️ 🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Comparing EcoFab 2.0 results from 5 labs on 3 continents‼️ Breaking the reproducibility barrier with standardized protocols for plant–microbiome research @plosbiology.org by Vlastimil Novak et al from Trent Northen @jgi.doe.gov journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.

NEXT WEEK we are at #EESMicrobiome in Heidelberg @events.embl.org Full program: www.embl.org/about/info/c... On Tuesday, 16 Sept. see you at Session 1 from 15:30 ✨Liviana Ricci will give a talk "Microbial strain transmission between infants in nurseries drives gut microbiome development" 1/3

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians. It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical. While here, he developed a new way of aligning to millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here is a word cloud of the words that were missing from the noncompetitive renewal awards but had been present in the parent award. 3/4

Really excited to share our latest paper led by @simonaube.bsky.social. Fascinating results examining whether regulatory mutations can lead to adaptation as fast as coding mutations do. #mevosky #evobio #evoSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...