Discovery could explain the origin of complex life www.semafor.com/article/02/2...

New feature to help plan Modular Cloning (Golden Gate) experiments and streamline the otherwise confusing dance of overhang compatibility and vector hopping. Gonna find some time to try this out and compare to my current SnapGene workflow. Tools all day!

You go, Katy! 🚀 I’m so proud of you, and so happy to finally see this in its final form! Count me in on your corner to keep on cheering for you! Looking forward to doing more amazing science together 💪 Check @katyappler.bsky.social thread below for highlights and the full paper here: rdcu.be/e4A70

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thrilled to share our new study! We show that mirusviruses include lineages packed with spliceosomal introns and likely replicating in the nucleus of unicellular eukaryotes—a sharp contrast to most large and giant eukaryotic viruses that replicate in the cytoplasm.

#Virus discovery has accelerated but linking viruses to hosts is hard. @sullivan-lab.bsky.social use synthetic #microbiomes to optimize & benchmark #Hi-C for virus-host linkage inference, applying this to existing #soil data to reveal 100s of novel linkages @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3MlAENO

🚀New preprint from our lab! I am very excited to finally share what has been the main focus of my PhD for the past almost 3 years! It is about viral dark matter and a powerful tool we built to shed light on it. 🧬💡 Continue reading (🧵)

#AsgardArchaea team, led by @archaeal.bsky.social fr @texasscience.bsky.social — sequencing the DNA collected fr mouth of Rio de la Plata to the continental shelf of Uruguay to detect Asgards, a group of single-celled organisms & our closest microbial relatives on the tree of life. bit.ly/3MdniTH

The Drain of Scientific Publishing details very clearly how for-profit publishers making >30% profit margins have corrupted any solution the research community has attempted. Let's cut ourselves free. Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS Oligopoly: bit.ly/OligSciPub 12/12

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

Ocean-M: an integrated global-scale multi-omics database for marine microbial diversity, function and ecological interactions academic.oup.com/nar/advance-... #jcampubs 🌊

Congratulations to Philip J. Kranzusch, Ph.D., Professor of Cancer Immunology and Virology, who was one of three scientists awarded top honors at the 2025 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Watch to learn more about his work: bit.ly/4pZUDkF

Anecdotal, but a lot of highly trained immigrant PhD colleagues and friends have been moving back to their home countries this year. Every one of those said the reason was safety

"Breakthroughs rarely announce themselves on the good days — they are earned quietly, by refusing to quit on the lousy ones, even when impostor syndrome tells you otherwise." open.substack.com/pub/leaopel/...

Coincidental and exciting! Anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) do like carbon monoxide - two independent studies showcasing CO metabolism across freshwater and marine ANME (ANME-2d and -2b). ANME-2d: doi.org/10.1101/2025... (Welte lab) ANME-2b: reposted (Orphan lab)

Of the 10 defense systems originally discovered in Doron et al 2018, Kiwa was one of the last to be studied - until now Kiwa is a membrane-embedded complex activated in phage attachments sites to degrade phage DNA A nice study by the Nobrega lab

We wrote a review on the free nucleotide pool as a central playground in human, bacterial, and plant immunity – now out in Nature Reviews in Immunology www.nature.com/articles/s41... Was fun to write this piece with Dina Hochhauser! Here is a thread to explain the premises 1/

Just a heads-up so people don't get caught off guard. 🔥😎🔥

YES!

PARIS (AP) — French President Macron announces that France will recognize Palestine as a state.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will recognize Palestine as a state, amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza.

With all the memes and the drama over the CEO on the Coldplay cam... Let me make something crystal clear: 📢 CHARACTER IS A PERSONAL TRAIL, NOT A PROFESSIONAL SKILL Be aware of people that don't respect their partner...

Today's reading: Nature should be the model for microbial sciences journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... by @brettbakker.bsky.social @emilyraehyde.bsky.social and @pedroleao.bsky.social Looks ideal for a talk I am working on on model organisms ...

New online! Viromics approaches for the study of viral diversity and ecology in microbiomes

"In a competitive academic world, building bridges instead of walls may be our most powerful tool to accelerate discovery and rebuild public trust in science." I'm very happy with this article piece! 🥳 www.the-scientist.com/science-thri...

OUT NOW: Structural insights into light harvesting by antenna-containing rhodopsins in marine #Asgard #archaea @bejalab.bsky.social @labinoue.bsky.social #microsky 🦠🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The archaeal S-layer is not only pretty, it also carries crucial cellular functions, and the list keeps growing! @sshamphavi.bsky.social @marleenvw.bsky.social @archaellum.bsky.social and I wrote a little sheath sheet (+10 pts if you got the pun) 📖 Curr Opin Cell Biol 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

I wish more people could understand this! 📢 "Success lies in building a career. Fulfillment lies in building character." There is no price tag on a clean conscience. 🔥

Interested in phage defenses that natively block lytic phage used in therapies? Or do you want to figure out if a phage has a modified genome? Meet the END-nucleases, an enzyme family that can broadly restrict phages with many diverse modifications. From talented post-doc Wearn-Xin Yee!

A database of structures for ecologically relevant microbial traits - Looks cool - here's the github: github.com/timghaly/Eco...

a bit late here, but thx @hiro-imachi.bsky.social for the shoutout on 𝕏 👏 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗺𝘀 @HolgerDaims on 𝕏, Jun 12, 2020 Happy to announce cultivation and genomic/kinetic characterization of two new marine #Nitrospinae ... the elusive Nitrospinae for #MicroSky

Please join the (very good) network so I have a happier PI 🧪🧫🧬 #MicroSky

To my microbiology friends... What are your thoughts on the concept of extinction applied to microbes? we use the term "dilution-to-extinction" to cultivate microbes, but by definition it's not really extinction. I was thinking about this after coming across this: www.theinvisibleextinction.com

@pedroleao.bsky.social on a Gift from Asgard: The Prokaryotic Origin of Eukaryotic Immune Mechanisms #KNVM2025

*checks the TL* Oh, I see we're doing "authors are landlords" again. Because *checks notes* one of the world's biggest companies is profiting off torrented work. 🤦🏻

#StandUpForScience Science not silence!

If I'm speaking at a Stand Up For Science Rally, can I list that on my CV as an invited presentation? 🧪🌎💧 PS - come join us in Buffalo! www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...

New group of RNA phages ?? 👀 👀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Wow! Exciting times ahead! 🥳 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I love this sentiment, but I honestly wouldn't participate. I spoke about my experiences in science in a meeting once and a white colleague came to my office and literally cried about how she was oppressed. I'd rather not go through that again. Instead of asking colleagues to retell trauma, ....

Fun little Q&A! Thank you for the opportunity Current Biology @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

Please take a lesson from other societies. SICB and AGU have both put out strong statements about valuing diversity in science. AGU is asking for feedback from their members, which you are clearly not doing. So disappointed in your response. bsky.app/profile/napa...

"We will not retract published articles on request by an author on the basis that they contain so-called banned words" @bmj.com takes a stand: "Medical journal editors must resist CDC order and anti-gender ideology" www.bmj.com/content/388/...

1. Our questjons were not about executive ordere but about ASM doing things wihtout any communication of memebrship asm.org/press-releas...

I was going to respond to the ASM press release after having my coffee, but this is such a better response. ASMs last email was Jan 30 and does not mention taking down IDEAA sites or spotlights on Black, Indigenous, or other underrepresented microbiologists, or anything about DEI. Disappointed.

A long post about what’s happening to the science funding agencies in the US and why. As mentioned, this one just kept getting longer even as I kept stripping curse words from it. www.science.org/content/blog...

Because of strange ongoing problems with @skyfeed.xyz, I had to migrate the #VirEvol feed. It now runs on bluesky feed generator (blueskyfeedcreator.com) by @fyodork.bsky.nz. Since old posts are not migrated, I will do this by reposting them all.