Do microbes get more food by swimming or staying still? Turns out both work, and cilia help them pull in nutrients no matter the strategy. buff.ly/vK3GmK5

🔬🚨New preprint alert! 🚨🔬 We developed quantitative expansion microscopy (qExM) - a method to accurately count proteins in situ by combining expansion microscopy's improved labeling with statistical estimators borrowed from ecology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #SuperResolution #CellBiology

everytime I thought: "such a nice and straightforward idea why no one had tried" and when I tried: "damn I cannot make the plasmid"

Now online @natmicrobiol.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fer’s tour de force in B. anthracis is out! Fer got Tn-seq running, built an ordered knockout library, defined all essential sporulation genes, and found a peptidoglycan deacetylase inhibitor critical for engulfment. Including our first one-by-all Alphafold screen! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

always artist Julius!

1/Now published! We identify a novel regulatory layer underlying SOS response dynamic. Find a short summary about our findings below. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... #MicroSky

‘Chromosomal Topological Domain Formation Modulates Transcription and the Coupling of Neighboring Genes in Escherichia coli‘ by Drs. Nico Yehya, Christopher Bohrer, and collaborators, is now available on bioRxiv. Check it out! doi: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Really cool paper from @vincentdebakker.bsky.social @jonbakerlab.bsky.social now published @natcomms.nature.com #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hmmm This work has so many implications on literature 😳😬 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/...

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!

Assembly, architecture and functional roles of microbial surface layers Review article published in @natrevmicro.nature.com with @bupbuse.bsky.social, Andriko von Kügelgen and @vikramalva.bsky.social. S-layers are everywhere! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Watermelon!" this is what my 2yo son calls 😂 --bacterial biofilm photograph at Harvard museum of nature history (guess it's congo red stained and hope never appears in watermelon)

Very happy to share that a large part of my thesis work is out today: B. subtilis uses the second messenger c-di-AMP to modulate its turgor pressure in response to the state of its cell envelope. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The mechanics of a continuous self-assembling surface-layer aids cell division in an archaeon out in @pnas.org Tight collaboration with Sherman Foo, Alice Cezanne and @buzzbaum.bsky.social, Sulfolobus cryo-ET from @idocaspy.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

time to admit as a REAL bacteriologist

Our latest preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1..., describes Willi Stepp’s project to make smart microscopy even gentler by doing event detection in phase contrast. We developed neural networks to detect mito-LD and mito-lysosome contacts, as well as mitochondrial pre-fission constrictions.

Happy to share Asha Joseph and Inchara Adhikashreni's latest work from the lab, describing replisome speed variation in Caulobacter! www.cell.com/current-biol...

It has been coming a long way... happy to share our latest work with you: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Here, we show the importance of septal fortification by the Class A Penicillin Binding Protein, PBP1b, in E. coli and provide a molecular mechanism for this function. (1/12).

Expansion microscopy of a tardigrade

Super glad to be one of the awardees!

We have 3 positions for students who want to start a PhD in the next 12 months. If you like advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques and S. aureus cell biology, check links and apply(April 4) euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/325394 euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/325395 euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/325396

schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... #MicroSky

In @molecularmicro.bsky.social: two special issues on Prokaryotic Chromosome Organization. Many excellent contributions, including a vision article: 'Future directions of the Prokaryotic Chromosome Field', outcome of BioPhyChrom 2023 @biophychrom.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Expansion microscopy (ExM) of the entire mouse body (pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...), developed by the labs of Profs. Jae-Byum Chang and Young-Gyu Yoon (former SynthNeuro postdocs running labs at KAIST), could empower studies of how multiple systems (nervous, immune, etc.) interact across scales.

I'm thrilled to share that our review article, "Molecular Level Super-Resolution Fluorescence Imaging," has now been published online (www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...)! We provide a comprehensive overview of fluorescence super-res methods that push the limits towards molecular-scale imaging.

ÅNGSTRÖM-RESOLUTION IMAGING OF CELL-SURFACE GLYCANS 🧬🎨🍬 The glycocalyx, our cells' sugar coat, holds secrets in immunology, cancer, viral infections, and more. Visualizing its molecular architecture was impossible… until now. #glycotime #microscopy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SAVE THE DATE ‼️ 📆 📢 BBM 2025 will be held on June 9-10th at the Harvard Science Center feat. the one and only Dr. Petra Levin as keynote! We can't wait to see you there. Registration and scholarship applications open next week.

Awesome data from the Moffit lab! #spatialbiology www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

STC is back schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... #MicroSky

Interested in a single molecule bacteriology PhD? Deadline 16th Jan. Location Warwick, UK Broad topic is the physical biology of the bacterial cell wall. Could suit almost any scientific background, eg biology, physics, biochemistry, chemistry, computer science. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Exciting new #synbio engineered living materials work from Chao Zhong, Peng Huang and Bolin An's team in Shenzhen has just come out on bioRxiv. Lovely demonstration of how engineered E.coli can sense and treat in vivo. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bacteria use exogenous peptidoglycan as a danger signal to trigger biofilm formation #Vibriocholerae @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social from @knutdrescher.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I had some help 🎶 Teamwork makes the dream work! Checkout our latest preprint spearheaded by Jessica Burnier in a great collaboration with the labs of Waldemar Vollmer, @nizet.bsky.social & Malcolm Winkler #MicroSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Many people talk about the "Golden Age of Antibiotics", but I hadn't seen it visualized properly. Just how many types of antibiotics were discovered during that time? So, I visualized it myself!

HARIBO bacter for happy holidays

PLOS to move away from APC model. PLOS moves designed to make publishing equitable. plos.org/redefining-p... #ScientificPublishing #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter

Excited to share our latest, "Biofilm dispersal patterns revealed using far-red fluorogenic probes." @plos.bsky.social We developed a cell-labeling strategy using far-red dyes to image dense microbial communities (where fluorescent proteins often do not work well) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...