Latest work from my lab, in which @amycrobes.bsky.social probes the evolutionary consequences of prophages potentiating death at otherwise sublethal antibiotic doses

So I'm finally thoroughly parsing through this preprint from @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social & Patrick Lypaczewski where they homebrewed targeted ONT library prep, and it's even more brilliant than at first glance. Plus they've been so generous in answering my questions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#ShowYourStripes I've updated my Svalbard collage of beautiful Hjortfjellet in Longyearbyen with the warming stripes from Svalbard - showyourstripes.info Svalbard is among the fastest-warming places on Earth!

I met a microbiologist yesterday. He was much bigger than I expected.

"So you expect every author to check every citation is real and accurate?" YES, in fact, we do. The very *best* explanation for having a fake or inaccurate citation is that you were misleading your readers by dishonestly padding your citations! That's unacceptable!

I wrote about being inundated with AI writing at every turn, unwittingly turning my brain into the AI police, and how shitty AI writing is randomly showing up in my real life outside of the internet www.404media.co/your-ai-use-...

"Stop messing with rumen microbes and focus on reducing ruminant populations for environmental and human health" There are nearly 4 billion domesticated ruminants on Earth. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Congratulations to Lea Kneissle on successfully defending her Masters thesis at UNIS & University of Stuttgart!

Preservation Mike Gough 2023

See also #Greenland. Yesterday it was 11C in Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund), the average for april is -8.5C www.dmi.dk/vejrarkiv/no...

Svalbard is thawing in April, and it’s not supposed to. 2026 ground temperatures at 0.2m depth in Svalbard spiking to 0°C in April, far exceeding the 1998-2025 median and maximum

Svalbard’s weather is fickle, but one might expect highs of -9*C in April here, 1200 miles from the North pole. But over recent days it’s more like June. Max of +7*C, T shirt weather, and rivers starting to flow, snowmobiles stranded. In my student days +7*C would be a hot July day.

Still on a month long busman’s holiday to the Arctic 20 years later.

Polar bear walks in to a pub, goes up to the bar and says… Could I have a gin and … Tonic Sure, says the bartender. But why the big paws? #freshlyclicked #fieldphotofriday

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives." Carl Sagan

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in

I have to give a big shout out to Aberystwyth University library for emailing us students with the message: Don't like/trust/approve of AI? Don't feel pressured into using it. You're not missing out if you don't. It's potentially wasting your time and eroding your confidence with false flattery.

Very cool job opportunity with us: CL3 lab manager and biosafety officer @aberdlsagb.bsky.social closes 22/03/26. Join a great team with fantastic facilities in a lovely corner of the planet: jobs.aber.ac.uk/en/vacancy/b...

AI has huge promise for genomics -- but it has consistently failed at microbiome-based prediction. My new post on why simple models keep winning, where deep learning actually earns its place, and where the field is headed blekhman.substack.com/p/ai-keeps-f...

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

If you're interested in particle fluxes, sinking plankton and the Arctic, then the fantastic Emilia Trudnowska has a great 2.5 year position open for you: Work on data from our Arctic expeditions to study how microbial dynamics around Greenland and Svalbard are responding to climate change 🌊

🔔Seminar Opportunity🔔 We're looking for (self)recommendations for a Postdoc who is working in the area of AMR (any area, any discipline) to give an online seminar in May. Reply, DM or email me, there will more opportunities in the future as well so will be good to have a list. #MicroSky #AMR

A new era for #ONT amplicon sequencing? We show that #ONT #amplicon sequencing now achieves accuracy sufficient for #ASV resolution using standard Illumina-based pipelines. We validated this by sequencing identical amplicons on #ONT and #PacBio. @nanoporetech.com www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Polar researchers are so often great storytellers. Here's a compilation of stories from the field by polar scientists, including @aberdlsagb.bsky.social 's @tir5.bsky.social apecsnetherlands.nl/tales-from-t...

A great read on saving endangered microbes (and not just from glaciers) “The world is at a critical inflection point,” says @gilbertjacka.bsky.social “If we don’t do something now, shit’s going to get real, and microbiology needs to be considered in this space.” www.noemamag.com/saving-the-l...

If you want to know what Reform would be like in power, look at how it threatened Bangor University | Gaby Hinsliff

Excellent commentary, but I think we mustn’t lose sight that tourists are not the only visitors to glaciers. Last-chance glaciology also has its impacts and paradoxes.

Hi Bluesky microbiology/limnology/hydrology/field folks! Has anyone used this style of cordless drill peristaltic pump for sample collection or field filtration? The design checks a lot of our boxes (replaceable tubing, decent suction height, compact batteries), but doesn't seem widely available.

Remember, a fish sunsets from the head down…

A new era of bioclimatic extremes in the terrestrial Arctic www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Poor bears. First the climate change and now the fatshaming. #svalbardtillegget www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Announcing a new tool for "denoising" long-read amplicon sequences: savont. Savont enables amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) directly from nanopore (or HiFi) long reads. Tested on 16S nanopore amplicons -- seems to work okay. 1/4 github.com/bluenote-157...

Looking for a tool to estimate abundances of aerobes versus anaerobes directly from metagenomes? Here you go: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some unorthodox ice coring techniques… #fieldphotofriday #fieldworkfriday

New blog post with some thoughts on @nanoporetech.com and their recent announcement that the P2 Solo will be discontinued: rrwick.github.io/2026/01/21/p...

Big news in one of those weeks where decades happen.

Copenhagen town hall square, Denmark right now. Massive solidarity with Greenland demonstrations. Source: dr.dk

How do new soils develop after glaciers vanish? ❄️🧬🦠🏔️ The first microbial colonisers use flexible chemoautotrophic strategies to overcome nutrient scarcity, including scavenging H2, CO and CH4 from the air! ⛅ Led by Francesco Ricci, Sean Bay @greening.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m so greatful to #PAM26 for the opportunity to present some of my work on identifying deep Antarctic subglacial populations. This was my first experience of an extended presentation, and a great first day. I’ll take away so much from this presentation and the conference as a whole.

Fabulous start to 2026 - it’s been great fun to share some surprises from our sampling of Arctic glaciers as well as meet old friends and new at polar & alpine microbiology. Haribo served in whirlpaks is definitely on-brand if you’re a veteran fieldworker... #PAM26

I am calling for a complete and total boycott of the Mercator projection in all news stories about Greenland until every member of the American public has seen this

Article in the Guardian by @mountainogre.bsky.social Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing www.theguardian.com/environment/...

TBT Fieldwork, Spring 2025 Arrived at a distant hut — first open the hut, fire and snow clearing. Slowly, warmth returns after a day in minus 20. Svalbard fieldwork blends presence of harshness, long hours with awe. Even with a busy mind, the beauty is hard to be unnoticed.

Very rare shot of the Arctic Platypus

Heading up for the @aberdlsagb.bsky.social Festival of Research today. I’m looking forward to hearing lots of exciting talks, and this afternoon I’ll share the story of how a literal “snow day” on Arctic fieldwork in 2019 evolved in to two (2!) NERC projects.

The number of glaciers disappearing worldwide each year is projected to sharply increase, peaking at 2,000–4,000 per year around the middle of the century, depending on the level of warming above pre-industrial levels, according to a study in Nature Climate Change. go.nature.com/4pEfbP5 ⚒️ 🧪

Last day of term, first day of DOING research not just administrating it this term #hammertime

Come to Birmingham and do a PhD with myself and @wvschaik.bsky.social!

Turns out one of the more pereceptive things said to me near the end of the pandemic's restrictions was that we would either start treating COVID like flu, or ending up treating flu like COVID. And here we are.