An Asgard archaeon from a modern analog of ancient microbial mats (Current Biology) Beautiful microscopy of an Asgard archaeon, in the same family as Lokiarchaea, in syntrophy with a sulfate-reducing bacteria Very very nice paper we saw in preprint form: www.cell.com/current-biol...

#MicrobiologyMonday: Gliding motility allows cells to move smoothly along surfaces without flagella. Although this strategy has evolved independently across many microbial lineages, common mechanical principles emerge. Learn more in #JBacteriology: asm.social/2SJ

Biofilm spatial structure and superinfection immunity modulate inter-phage competition @plosbiology.org by James Winans and Carey Nadell journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

By all means, if you're deciding, take the time you need. But if you're deciding between two places, and there are three others you've ruled out, let those three know as soon as possible, not once you've picked a school You could make a huge difference to someone else's life

Annual reminder: if you’ve been accepted to multiple graduate programs and are still deciding, please let the ones you’re definitely not going to know as soon as possible! -Someone who got into his PhD off the waitlist the day after the deadline

(bacterial) cell divisionists take note 👇 the schwille lab did it again! now adding FtsN*) to the party, with FtsA, FtsZ and the Min gang already on board... *) cytoplasm.domain thx séamus for pointing this out🙏 #MicroSky

Happy #InternationalWomensDay to the brilliant women in our Hypothesis Fund community who are taking the intellectual risks to pursue bold ideas, supporting one another, and transforming science together. You inspire us every day. 💫 #IWD2026

#OnThisDay in 1938, American evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis was born. Margulis is most known for developing and popularising the endosymbiotic theory, which explains how eukaryotic cells evolved organelles from simpler prokaryotic organisms that resided within another and became incorporated.

At long last! Check out the link to our publication in @nature.com to learn more. doi.org/10.1038/s415... 12/12

One of the biggest questions in biology is how complex cells evolved about 2 billion years ago. Here's my new story on how scientists are solving the mystery of eukaryotes like us. Gift link: nyti.ms/4qMbo22

Preprint on the permeability of Gram+ bacterial cell wall from a few months ago. Intriguing findings, elegant methodology. Cell wall is largely impermeable to molecule sizes of mNeonGreen (27kDa) and above. How do larger secreted proteins get through? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky

a daring approach: looking at LUCA's ancestors, i.e. pre-darwinian evolution. but not surprising it's coming from @kacarlab.bsky.social 👏 glad to see Iwabe et al. (1989) among the references (blew my mind when it came out >30 y ago)

Seema Mattoo on Bordetella pertussis and whooping cough! Matters Microbial, @mattoolab.bsky.social @markowenmartin.bsky.social #MicroSky

@poojag96.bsky.social work on the bioenergetics of spore germination is now published- Pooja had a really nice summary that I've put below but essentially we think the role of bioenergetics in spore germination has been completely overlooked! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Friends, please help spread the word about our microbiology REU program at Montana State University. www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/ Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided. Details in the attached pic--Feb 14 deadline 🧫🧪🦠#microsky

Metabolite toxicity as a driver of bacterial metabolite externalization www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

Metabolic diversity of microorganisms toward atypical sugar enantiomers https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.17.700050v1

Registration to GRC Microbial Stress Response is open! Can't wait!👍 @stallingslab.bsky.social @fredbarras.bsky.social & @anjbadri.bsky.social @laahrs.bsky.social

Valuable data sets are often overlooked because they are difficult to locate. The NIAID Data Ecosystem Discovery Portal provides a centralized, searchable interface that empowers users with varying technical expertise to find and reuse data. #mSystems: asm.social/2Lo

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Pete Greenberg's view in #JBacteriol: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, my model for research on quorum sensing, biofilms, and opportunistic infections journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Some of the longest-lived organisms on Earth aren’t whales, trees or corals, but microbes buried deep in the earth. This eye-opening essay examines the slowest lives on Earth, asking what such lives mean for how we define life itself @karenlloyd.bsky.social

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known" - Bertrand Russell, 1976. Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

Can’t wait!! My bacterial cell bio friends, you’re gonna want to go to this GRC and GRS.

Absolutely stoked to have this published in @plosbiology.org We looked at the metabolism of #Klebsiella pneumoniae 🦠🧫. We not only demonstrated lineage-specific #metabolism, but that lineages can cross-feed and support each other. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... #MicroSky #microbiology 🧬 🧪 💊

The diderm cell envelope is not a stack of layers but a unified scaffold of Inner Membrane–Peptidoglycan–Outer Membrane. We discuss how tethering the OM to the PG in E. coli preserves integrity — and extend the concept across diderm bacteria. Curr Opin Microbiol: doi.org/10.1016/j.mi... #microsky 🔬

I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026! The Microbial Ecosystems Lab @hot-mes-asu.bsky.social at ASU studies microbial interactions, spatial ecology, and imaging-driven microbiome science. If you love microbes, microfluidics, or single-cell analysis, let’s talk! www.microbialeco.systems

Essential reading if you care about the health of scientific inquiry in the US www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Each such discovery is a game changer for our understanding of eukaryote evolution, and this paper is no exception. Meet Solarion, which displays yet again novel types of subcellular structures. Congrats to all authors on a fascinating story. #protistsonsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Introducing ** Incendiamoeba **, a eukaryote that can live at temperatures well beyond what we thought possible. 63C!! Read @hbrappap.bsky.social thread to see what we’ve already started to learn from this amazing organism! doi.org/10.1101/2025... #MicroSky #protistsonsky 🧪 #evobio

Very happy to share our work on lipopolysaccharide assembly by the Lpt complex, published today in @natcomms.nature.com Fantastic collaboration with @raffaeleieva.bsky.social l and t @pstansfeld.bsky.social Congrats to all authors, especially Haoxiang, Axel & Violette 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s414...

New release of the TrackMate single particle tracking plugin for ImageJ by @jytinevez.bsky.social looks amazing! forum.image.sc/t/trackmate-... Loads of new features, most excitingly to me deep learning segmentation algorithms including Omnipose (for cells), and Spotiflow (for spots) #bioimaging

Weird word of the day: "kleptosquamy." The testate amoeba Awerintzewia cyclostoma steals scales from other amoeboid organisms to build its own shell. This one has robbed Quadrulella, Netzelia, various euglyphids, and even an Acanthocystis. Kleptosquamy! #amoebae #ProtistsOnSky #biology #nature

Fluorescein-based dyes are not valid reporters of oxidative stress in bacteria, and conclusions based on their use must be reconsidered | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Resolution limits attmepts to deconvolute spatial transcriptomics & estimate cellular composition. This study presents Cell2Spatial, which maps #scRNAseq data to #SpatialTranscriptomics spots, facilitating precise reconstruction of tissue architecture @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47MhTvl

Prashant Singh in the lab of Tina Iverson at Vanderbilt published this image of the bacterial 🦠flagellar motor, a detailed molecular model made possibly by CryoEM 🔬. The similarity to mechanical motors are strong enough we can use terms like stator, rotor, rod & gearing to describe it.

Happy to share our latest T6SS review: nature.com/articles/s41... Thank you, Jan, Danny (@dannyjamesward.bsky.social), Joana (@joanampereira.bsky.social), as well as reviewers and editors @natrevmicro.nature.com!

In muddy sediments all over the world, tiny bacteria eat and grow by building electrically conducting wires into the muck. Now, researchers say they have discovered how these miniature electricians, known as cable bacteria, do it. https://scim.ag/4i2s2Yu

We're just 6 months away from @keystoneSymposia.bsky.social Beyond #Antibiotics : Emerging Strategies Combating #BacterialInfection, May 2026 in Breckenridge! 👉Scholarship and short talk abstract deadlines are Jan 7! 🧐 keysym.us/KSBeyondAntibiotics26 #KSBeyondAntibiotics26

Ray: Just a note to say STC is officially back up and running!! You can view our new home via smallthingsconsidered.blog

“Cellular Olympics” our catalog of freeky ultra fast cellular superhero’s is freely available “Ann Rev of microbiology” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... This is a compilation of world’s fastest single cell organisms - enjoy this buffet of rare delightful protists with mind bending speeds. 🧪

Holy moly

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

New in JB: Déraspe, Roy et al. perform a comparative genomics study of the PA7-clade of P. aeruginosa - now recognized as a distinct species, Pseudomonas paraeruginosa. This analysis revealed 2 sub-clades, the lack of T3SS & multiresistance. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @asm.org #JBacteriology

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...

Metabolic response of a chemolithoautotrophic archaeon to carbon limitation journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

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

New in JB: In this minireview, Rotaru, Kotoky et al. explore the Kotoky review the surface biology of Methanosarcina, an archaeon, with respect to their EET strategies, and biogeochemical and industrial roles. Some cool biology! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @asm.org #JBacteriology

There seems to quite a few new faces lately, so if I haven’t already added you, but you’d like added please let me know and for anyone interested in following more microbial natural products folks, then our starter pack is now 100 strong go.bsky.app/72NeGsT

PhD fellowship in biofilm-phage interactions - with Mette Burmølle at University of Copenhagen 🇩🇰 deadline 1 October 2025 employment.ku.dk/faculty?show... #phagesky #microsky