Fred Ramsdell was parked at a campground in Montana on Monday when his wife suddenly started shouting. He first thought that maybe she had seen a grizzly bear. Instead, she had regained cell service and had seen a flood of text messages with the same news. “You just won the Nobel Prize!” she yelled.

🔬🦠🧫🧪 #MicroSky This is the most fantatic video I've ever seen: a Tardigrade strolling on a Volvox by Penny Fenton #NikonSmallWorld #DarkField www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

Writing in 2016 (when I started #SciComm): I have writer's block but all words and punctuation are fair game so the world's my oyster. Writing in 2025: OMG people will think AI wrote this. Reminds self not to use em dashes and to not to use the words unlock, elevate, leverage, landscape, embark...

🍎 We just finished snacking on giant bag of apples from the apple orchard and every time I eat an apple, I'm reminded of this blog post I wrote a few years ago. microbialmenagerie.com/apple-microb... #TheMicrobialMenagerie #Microbiome #Microbiology

Focus session powered by fall weather and google docs offline mode. Trying to switching it up instead of the usual WFH.

Happy #InternationalMicroorganismDay! I'm also celebrating by eating lots of microbial foods - started my day off with some homemade yogurt (my yogurt protocol is here: microbialmenagerie.com/a-microbiolo... ), had chocolate in my granola bar, some cheese in my snack, and who knows what else.

The landscape of microbial associations in human cancer www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... TLDR -- most cancers do not have microbiomes...but a few do have consistent microbe associations (i.e., colorectal and oral cancers). Make sense!

As a freelancer, it gets hard to track when my writing get published. So I set up Google Alerts for my name. Yesterday & today, I got alerts for a version of me in the Great Canadian Baking Show. Can I please be this other me for a while? Though not sure how I feel about being a data science student

Today during breakfast, my 2.5 year old randomly said, "Bad germs make me sick. Good germs make me healthy." 😍 #FutureMicrobiologist #MicroSky

Happy #InternationalDogDay! Here's my best colleague and pup Song who helps me with my writing, snack breaks, and play times. She'll stand awkwardly behind me until I notice her, but sometimes she'll bring a ball. Work from home would not be nearly as enjoyable without her company each day.

One of my favourite papers of 2025 so far and its on chocolate! 🍫 A defined microbial community reproduces attributes of fine flavour chocolate fermentation 🧪 Read the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🔎 The associated news & views here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“When I talk about fish on Bluesky, people ask me questions about fish. When I talk about fish on Twitter, people threaten to murder my family because we’re Jewish.”

📣 Calling all early career #neuroscientists! @thetransmitter.bsky.social & Neuromatch are teaming up to better understand how to support #EarlyCareer Researchers. Whether you're a student, postdoc, or launching your career, we want to hear from you. ➡️ www.thetransmitter.org/early-career...

If you ever find yourself needing evidence for ‘Plasmids are just as common in microbes without resistance genes,’ we’ve got you covered! Check our new paper, out today: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

HFM is the weirdest illness ever. Today is day 8 since I started getting spots and I'm still getting new ones. Everything I read says it's 7-10 to recover, that it's mild especially in adults, but everything I am experiencing is NOT that. 😱 At least I can somewhat eat, talk, and walk again.

The University of Michigan’s Department of Epidemiology, one of the best IMO, will not be admitting any PhD students for 2026 due to funding concerns brought about by the Trump Administration.

Antibiotics that make their way into other places beyond infection sites can drive #AntimicrobialResistance. In my new article for #TheMicrobialMenagerie, I dive into how eliminating these "off target" antibiotics can help reduce #AntimicrobialResistance. microbialmenagerie.com/curbing-anti...

To test the safety of our drug supply, drug companies use horseshoe crab blood. While synthetic alternatives are available, they haven't been widely used in the industry. Recent changes may steer the field away from harvesting crabs. My latest: www.the-scientist.com/horseshoe-cr...

NEW: Their NIH grants are back, but nothing is back to normal. In June, a judge ordered the restoration of 900+ terminated grants. So how's that going? Scientists say they're happy, but also it's been a bumpy road—and they're afraid their funds will get cut again. www.chronicle.com/article/thei...

Delighted to have this review out with @jpjhall.bsky.social! We discuss the risk of transmission of antimicrobial resistance in the hospital sink drain microbiome, highlight studies providing evidence of transfer, and consider strategies to mitigate these risks 🪠🦠 doi.org/10.1038/s442...

This is a fascinating study that found that when we encounter possible infection, we trigger early immune responses. My immune system must be super prepared all the time as it encounters daily toddler snots and warnings from daycare about spreading illnesses. www.the-scientist.com/anticipation...

Wild side note on medical research: 1 million people is a lot of people to have in a study. Denmark can do it because, more than a country, it's a continuous natural experiment of every healthcare issue. The public healthcare system keeps unusually easy to cross reference databases of its users.

I love to see my friends killin' it. Alie Ward's @ologies.bsky.social was listed by Time Magazine in the 100 best podcasts of all time! This rocks. Ologies rocks. Funny compassionate science communication rocks. time.com/collections/...

Hmm... am I overthinking this 24 hour plus downtime?

Wild cell structures in a new Asgard, Nerearchaeum marumarumayae. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Everyone: I hope this email finds you well Me: I'm just hoping this email ends up in your inbox 🤞

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

🤦

One of my favourite serendipitous results from the lab came about because we were long-read sequencing bacterial: Vibrio cholerae, which is "supposed to" have TWO circular chromosomes (3 + 1 million base pairs) often has just ONE fused chromosome (4 Mbp). www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

It's #WorldMicrobiomeDay today so I'd thought I share this old (but good) story about how how we humans are just about equally bacteria as human, if you're looking at total number of cells. What makes us more human vs. bacteria depends when you last pooped. microbialmenagerie.com/microbiome_b...

The new open access policy of NIH will take effect next week (July 1st). All NIH funded research 🔬🧪🧬accepted after July 1st must be open access upon publication. Worried about fees? 💸 Check out how IAI stacks up against other journals—you might be surprised. #OpenAccess #SciComm #Microbiology

Researchers collected 14,000 baboon poop samples over 14 years from 479 baboons and as a result, created a biological clock to predict age based on the microbiome... what a study! My latest for The Scientist: www.the-scientist.com/microbes-in-...

TIL I could get prescriptions for my dog at the human pharmacy.

“Medicine doesn’t treat the root cause, it just treats the symptoms.” —Every wellness grifter 🦠 I have cellulitis from phytodermatitis (rash from plants) The root cause? A bacterial infection. The cure? Antibiotics. Not your local influencer’s smoothie or herbal remedy. 1/

The more I read and write about proteoforms, the more I'm convinced of their importance. Measuring "protein" levels is critical, but can obscure what's happening at the functional, proteoform level as is clear in the work discussed here. #Proteomics #Proteoforms #Cancer

DYK YouTube is 20 years old?? www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025...

Germany is stepping up to create an alternative to PubMed that could be used globally. PubMed is a database that includes all of the critical scientific journal articles that researchers use. They are doing this because of serious concerns that PubMed will be pulled offline by The Regime.

This week in my graduate-level Science Communication class, we're discussing scientific conferences, including how to find a conference that's helpful for you, how to make the most of attending a conference, networking, and effective presentation skills. Anyone have any advice to share? 🧪🦑🌎

Do not listen to RFK Jr. on covid vaccines for pregnant people. Listen to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which STRONGLY recommends a covid vaccine during pregnancy, for the health of the pregnant person and the fetus. 🧪 www.acog.org/covid-19/cov...

The only reason you love chocolate is because of FUNGUS. Cacao seeds contain high amounts of polyphenols, making them intensely bitter & unpleasant. There are two natural fungi that do the heavy lifting in turning them into chocolate. Let's do a quick tour of the process of chocolate making.

Many of us who read Project 2025 have been saying from the start that The Regime has a unifying goal of destroying US scientific infrastructure and causing the collapse of Universities. We were called “hysterical”. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is absolutely terrible news. With the shifting regulatory climate (i.e., antivax ratfuckery), Moderna has withdrawn their application for their eagerly anticipated COVID-flu combo vaccine. This vaccine offered better protection than getting each shot separately. h/t @merz.bsky.social

#Bacteria use weapons to outcompete rivals, but what happens if they're transferred? @prokaryota.bsky.social @jdpal.bsky.social &co show that HGT of toxin #plasmids is rare but recipients can thrive under relaxed nutrient competition, reshaping bacterial warfare @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43vC3X7

Everyone 6 months and older is eligible to get a flu vaccine. It makes no sense to restrict Covid vaccines to only people who have specific medical conditions. The FDA is basing its decisions on politics, not science.

It's not just Northwestern and Harvard, I have gotten credible (confidential) reports from several other schools (including state schools) that the NIH is defaulting on federal commitments there too. Seems like there may be a big story here for an investigative reporter willing to take it on

Whoa. This does not bode well for rising scientists. I am so sorry.

The podcast Science Vs started a new series called "viral papers" where they dive beyond the news headlines and look at what exactly is going on in the paper and digs deep into whether the claims in the headlines are true. Loved listening to their first episode! open.spotify.com/episode/2ZwZ...

A cool paper in Nature Biotechnology describing using phage to encode genes for therapeutic proteins so that they can be produced directly in the gut - and by passing the harsh conditions of the stomach. www.drugdiscoverynews.com/engineering-...

Now We’re 🦠 🦠 🦠 Talkin’ ‼️ NPR Science Friday Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler has been studying these questions for more than 30 years. She talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the wild world of bacterial communication, and how understanding microbes could help us understand ourselves.

So NIH is indeed planning to pause any research that falls under the government‘s definition of „gain of function“: „Until this new policy is in place, research meeting the definition of dangerous gain-of-function research is to be paused“ #IDsky 🧪 grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...