Pleased to share our recent article in PNAS - a collaboration with @jessicaandreani.bsky.social & Pablo Radicella, with important roles played by many members of each team. A tripartite protein complex promotes DNA transport during natural transformation in Firmicutes www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

One of my favorite preprints of the year from the great @mollyschumer.bsky.social. A foamy virus that makes things sparkle, now up on TWiEVO episode 120 for some podcast peer review www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65...

#microsky #phagesky #phage plasmids & other #MGE in the bee #microbiome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Rewiring holobiont systems with synthetic biology www.cell.com/trends/biote...

Please share this with anyone who may be interested in a post-doc in Germany: jobs.awi.de/Vacancies/20... This is quite an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of what is known regarding the molecular basis of the formation and demise of photosymbiotic relationships in marine habitats.

For population genetics and evolutionary biology folks in the Bay Area: the next BAPG will be hosted by Stanford CEHG and the Petrov lab at Stanford on 12/6. Registration is free but required. The deadline for talk submission is Nov. 16. Hope to see you soon! Pls RT! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

AI still ain’t got it

With Jeff Barrick's return to #MSU, the #LTEE was restarted today after a short pause (frozen) for the move. Today was daily transfer 12,301. With ~6.6 generations per day, they are now at ~82,007 generations. 100,000 generations is fast approaching! Are you ready, #Spartans? @msumgi.bsky.social

The ecology and evolution of bacterial immune systems'. #phage #phagesky A bunch of interesting reviews royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Many bacteria use #QuorumSensing to control genes based on population density. @jrchandler.bsky.social &co explore a @plosbiology.org study showing that in P. aeruginosa, 2 QS circuits activate each other, enhancing robustness & explaining redundancy 🧪 Paper: plos.io/3I7DhRG Primer: plos.io/4niSZZd

TINY FUNGUS. Absolutely magical. Specifically, Cannonball Fungus (Sphaerobolus stellatus). 📷 ezatars on iNaturalist 📍 Latvia 🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations... #ObservationOfTheDay

A new theme issue of #PhilTransB examines the evolutionary history of bacterial immune systems, their modes of action, and the patterns how different bacterial immune systems are distributed across different ecosystems. Read: buff.ly/Z4qdxY1

Drs @minealtinli.bsky.social‬ @spleonard1.bsky.social‬ @alainkohlvirology.bsky.social & @mosquitomicrobe.bsky.social review #bacteria-mediated #dsRNA delivery for #mosquito-borne #virus control. #RNAi #vectorcontrol #symbiont #engineering #mosquito #arbovirus www.cell.com/trends/paras...

The original circos plot? From the 1947-1948 Carnegie Yearbook, the page prior to McClintock's Mutable Loci in Maize paper.

Homeward Bound! Yes, the #LTEE is homeward bound. After a few thousand generations in Texas, the lines are coming back to #MSU, along with Jeff Barrick, and his team. telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/h...

#phage #phagesky Phage-based delivery of CRISPR-associated transposases for targeted bacterial editing | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In case you’re wondering, the “caterpillars are hybrid worms” paper at PNAS remains alive (and guessing won’t be retracted ever) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

If you're not taking the time to draw your own horny baseball art, man, what are we doing here. What is the point of being alive if not to draw your own horny baseball fan art?!?!?!

Excited to share our new call for papers at @asm.org's MRA journal. Do you have a database, software, or web-based tool that would be a great resource for the micro community? Consider submitting it to MRA! journals.asm.org/journal/mra/...

How likely are SNP-based phenotypic reversions during human infection/coloniziation? Our latest paper on the rare CF pathogen B. dolosa -- a great collaboration with folks I've worked with since my PhD and led by Alex Poret -- adds to the evidence that reversions are likely in large populations.

We are on the lookout for postdocs for two different projects at the intersection of ecology, evolution, and the human microbiome. See thread for more information and reach out!

I hope these two purslane sawflies weren't looking for privacy.

Good morning bright eyes. Paracantha genera, a tephritid fruit fly. The larvae live inside sunflowers and adults hang around. From the Pollinator Garden just now. 🌿

Please share! Our lab is recruiting a PhD student to join us starting fall 2026. Our group is broadly interested in plant molecular evolution and comparative genomics. More info about our lab and grad programs at Colorado St. is available on our lab website. sites.google.com/site/danielb...

And also gonna re-read this: The Hologenome Concept: Helpful or Hollow? journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Re-reading this journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... “Holes in the Hologenome: Why Host-Microbe Symbioses Are Not Holobionts” and agreeing with a lot of it

Maintaining my view that the “holobiont” is a useful descriptive word, but kinda useless for informing ecological and evolutionary predictions or phenomenon outside of what coevolution and multi level selection theory already provide

Super proud of amazing lab alumnus @mbottery.bsky.social who has been awarded a prestigious @wellcometrust.bsky.social fellowship to grow his lab @officialuom.bsky.social studying the evolution of fungal pathogens! Mike has multiple postdoc positions available on his exciting project (details 👇)

Mutations generate variation, critical for #evolution, but #MutationBias restricts the choice of mutation type. @deepaagashe.bsky.social &co use #Ecoli strains with different mutation biases to show that changing an old bias should yield more beneficial mutations @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46LjCRt

must-read for phageophiles 👇 from sigal ben-yehuda's lab "𝗬𝗷𝗯𝗛 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀" in Gram-positives (𝘉. 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴) 🙏 @bacteriophile.bsky.social for pointing this out #PhageSky #MicroSky

I consistently forget this place exists and just randomly walk back here every few months so I might as well load yall up with pet pics

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

TATTOO THIS ON MY BACK

Some thoughts on the performance of current AI models in a research setting. open.substack.com/pub/clauswil...

The post includes an elaborated pretty hilarious scenario of actually having an LLM as your PhD student. Very compelling 😅 clauswilke.substack.com/p/phd-level-...

Pico content for the true fans

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Big Fantastic Virus Database (BFVD) version 2 improves 31% of predictions through 12 ColabFold recycles. PAEs and MSAs now also available for download and in the webserver. 🌐https://bfvd.foldseek.com 💾https://bfvd.steineggerlab.workers.dev/ 1/3

We are excited to share our new preprint describing the inclusion of selection models to stdpopsim, our community-maintained library with an extensive catalog of population genetic models. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The administration’s key demand is not just that they can send anyone they like to a foreign labor camp, it’s that you will accept without question their assertion that the people they choose are dangerous menaces who deserve it. They want your unquestioning obedience.

Spatial transcriptomic imaging of an intact organism. Mind blowing www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚀 Exciting news! Our latest research is out in Nature Microbiology! 🌾 "Seed-borne bacteria drive rhizosphere microbiome assembly via niche partitioning and facilitation." Seed-inherited bacteria are the architects of #wheat #microbiome assembly! 🌱🦠 @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social rdcu.be/efagM

"we are currently clean on OPSEC", you write to the group chat with the journalist

Ooh, looks yummy

Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.

New online! Genetics, ecology and evolution of phage satellites

Imagine if the entire government were run according to the plans of that guy in your class everyone thought might become a school shooter

Imagine what a competent opposition party could do with this stuff