Rookie mistake, returning to the US: signed up for an FSA and forgot about it. In other (not unrelated) news, I am the proud new owner of a fancy foot massager 🙃

In our new study we were the first to experimentally simulate the origin of sociality! By controlling how many wasp 🐝daughters could help their mom, we found that early helpers don't just add to colony success—they multiply it!

Here is a video that I think might be the best I’ve seen to give students an idea of what is involved in transfers and competitions. I’d like something less detailed/ specific to LTEE, though, while still covering logistics www.jove.com/v/65342/dail...

4/ #DYK during pregnancy🤰, cells are exchanged between mothers + offspring, & even twins? Awardee @elizostrow.bsky.social will study how microchimerism mediates genetic conflict and drive resource competition. 🍾 Congrats Dr. Ostrowski! @uwbothell.bsky.social 🙏 #HFScout @paulturnerlab.bsky.social

3/ Awardee @mixotrophe.bsky.social aims to uncover how mixotrophs (marine microbes that harness energy from the 🌞 & organic matter) strategize their metabolisms. Her project may be key to understanding our changing ocean. 🎉 Congrats Dr. Moeller! @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social 🙏 #HFScout Ginger Armbrust

2/ Awardee @megbehri.bsky.social will study how chaotic dynamics arise in microbial🦠 populations. Her research could transform how we predict microbiome dysbiosis across human health and beyond. 🥳 Congrats Dr. Behringer! @vuartsci.bsky.social 🙏 #HFScout @paulturnerlab.bsky.social

✨Announcing our newest awardees, who are taking scientific leaps to uncover new knowledge across microbial ecology, marine microbiology, and mammalian genetics. Learn about their projects: bit.ly/HFAwardees Meet our awardees and hear from their #HFScouts in our 🧵/1

I’m watching this! I could use the resources too.

"are you enjoying duo mobile" does a hamburger enjoy being made of quarks. does a fish enjoy linear time. does the mountain enjoy the first taste of a cup of hot chocolate when you get back to the ski lodge. your question means nothing to me. i couldn't enjoy duo mobile even if i tried

Amazing example of influenza cheat/cooperator cycles in this recent paper - the repeatability of the oscillatory cycles is so striking Congrats to @alnajifg.bsky.social , @christopherbrooke.bsky.social , @vignuzzilab.bsky.social & friends www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧪 #socialviruses

Does anyone have a favorite experimental evolution overview for undergraduates? Ideally one that goes into the details of fitness assays, marking strains, etc. Everything I’ve found doesn’t dig into the details sufficiently.

Treating emergent traits of the microbiome like quantitative genetic traits of the host reveals how environmentally acquired symbionts can contribute to hosts' adaptation

David became a freelance bioinformatician due to the situation he describes 👇. Freelance workers are typically looking for the next contract. That's how it is. Maybe we could boost this signal so that people who appreciate David's experience and principles can find him?

These are the beautiful spore-producing structures of plasmodial slime molds. Which is your favourite colour? Originally considered Fungi, they are now classed as Ameobozoans - single celled organisms with thousands of nuclei... not animals or fungi but something else entirely! #SoilBiodiversity 🧪

Here in the uk, the government has found that £1 of spending on R&D results in £8 of benefit: www.gov.uk/government/p...

Will I ever stop having that dream where I’ve forgotten that I signed up for a class, and today is the final? 😰

I appear to have spoken to a reporter who took seriously the gravity of NZ's science crisis does anybody have a newsroom pro subscription so that I can learn what other choice phrases I used on the record? newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/29/w...

Why can’t I have more content like this?

OMG

Do you know ~60% of human SVs fall in ~1% of GRCh38? See our new preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.23057 and the companion blog post on how we started this project and longdust: lh3.github.io/2025/09/29/o.... Work with Alvin Qin

☔💦 Sun, Sep 21 A sublime summery 8 days it's been w/J pod inland Puget Sound. Especially wild their South Sound foray, their first in decades. Orcas reported this morn in Admiralty Inlet. Is it Js leaving? 📸 J pod Double spyhop! Taken from atop Tacoma Narrows Bridge. By Jolena Tagg 9/20. #psws

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.

Thrilled to share our two latest papers with the @tcostalab.bsky.social lab! In the first, we uncover a new mechanism of satellite transfer: cf-PICIs hijack tails from diverse phages to spread across species. @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I love old Dicty papers. Look at this one (from 1987) depicting the morphological changes as Dicty slugs migrate. Apparently their heads (“tips”) bob up and down. Adorable

Are you looking for a lectureship in biochemistry, molecular genetics, or bioinformatics? Come and enjoy the greatest place for kayak fishing and a fun research+teaching career. *there are other fun things to do here too.

Kia ora Aotearoa, it’s so good to be back! ☕️

We organized this one: academic.oup.com/femsle/artic... in 2024. It is coming back in 2026 with 2 hubs in the US (Michigan and SoCal). It was a great experience

Groups of people self-organized in other locations. Some may have driven an hour to get to the other locations but it wasn't a cross-country plane ride. One person in each location was a point person to lead the activities in that locations. "Activities" were things like think-pair-shares, 🧵

So many important things are discussed at conferences. When international travel is dangerous & science is under threat & research funding is being slashed & we know how bad flying is for the climate & we have technology to make it happen, the fact that all conferences aren't hybrid is wild. 🧪

Apparently NZ’ers are just as obsessed with Costco’s NZ butter as the rest of us. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

And this population has definitely been overtaken by the so-called “wrinkly spreaders”. I don’t know about the more gnarled looking one, which I’ve seen more than once

First peek at our class evolution experiment this quarter — diverse Pseudomonas fluorescens colony morphologies in response to predation by amoebae.

A little joyful practice in Seattle (in common with New Zealand) is that riders shout out a thank you to the bus driver ☺️

The website for our EMBO workshop is live now. Don't miss this opportunity to join us in a meeting that aims gathering all experts working on multicellularity. We will welcome you in the nice Barcelona in October! @multicellgenome.bsky.social @prbb.org @embo.org meetings.embo.org/event/25-mul...

Wolf’s milk slime mold, Discovery Park, Seattle. Kid made me SO proud… (1/4)

So, how much is everyone being charged for IDT custom oligos these days? I got a fresh quote for 2X what I paid a few months ago in NZ, and 4X what I paid at the Univ of Houston. (At UH, we also got free shipping.)

Also wondering if people have maybe used flatbed scanners? I do need to ensure a consistent distance to the plate, as we need to compare sizes of plaques across different plates

#MicroSky can anyone recommend a *low-tech* method to take images of agar plates with good contrast and little glare? My undergrads need to measure the sizes of amoebae plaques in bacterial lawns.

In my experience, we have not explicitly valued these skills and competencies in the larger scientific community and we may want to think about and discuss what valuing them would look like, for example during training.

I'm delighted to share a useful FREE web-based app portal of powerful bioinformatics tools for microbial genomes and shotgun microbiome sequences! It's called Micromics and is built by Middle Author Bioinformatics, led by co-founder @ironark.bsky.social omix.midauthorbio.com

DOGE’s the place and then leaves 🙄. Entirely predictable. www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3606...

Oh wow! When we moved back to US, youngest mourned that US didn’t have Te Reo Māori and netball 🥲. Maybe she’ll want to go to Yale 🙂 www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu...

View from my run today. Admittedly, it’s heavily zoomed and cropped. But it is WILD how you can be someplace many times and have no idea there’s a giant volcano lurking in the background #MountRainier #Tahoma

Bare bones dashboard is up... (Including the first Advisory Council meeting posted in the Federal Register) jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

#SeattleLife - FB marketplace items I want to buy, only to realise seller is on some island I have no idea how to get to 🤨

Any recommendations for an ultralow freezer, #MicroSky? I seem to recall there was a brand to avoid at all costs. In the past, I had a Panasonic which was great, but not sure they are still being made. TIA!

NSF plans to reinstate all probationary employees who were fired on 18 Feb! NSF’s decision. 👏🏻👏🏻❤️

Excellent piece also highlights our EvolvingSTEM program that benefits thousands of grade 6-12 students annually in Pittsburgh. The NIH SEPA program that supports us has been archived. Stand up and speak out!

Kid is at it again: making unsolicited presentations #FutureProfessor

Apparently Seattlites also thank the bus driver ☺️