It feels like living in an autoclave here, but I've fallen in love with Austin's sky

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

Imagine making AI bird slop when kingfishers already exist

While I am obviously incensed that ankylosaurus didn't make the leaderboard, I actually laughed out loud when reading the footnote "We know pterodactyls and plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs"

This may be lost in the noise--this is as impactful or more than the cuts to NIH and NSF 🧪

I've been working to visualize the biogeography of the aphid's intracellular symbiont within whole insects. The pink bacteria live in the host's specialized bacteriocytes and embryos. Really excited about where this work is going! #FluorescenceFriday

Our paper is now out in its final form in @natcomms.nature.com ! We show that ancient insect symbionts can undergo extreme, convergent genome reduction to as little as ~50 kb - driven by ecological shifts and symbiont replacement. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... More below 👇 1/

Happy to share Episode 126 of #MattersMicrobial, w Spencer Nyholm, discussing how maternal microbes protect squid eggs from fungal infection. Please spread the #GoodMicrobialWord? #MicrobialEvangelist #MicrobialCentricity @microbetv.bsky.social @spencernyholm.bsky.social youtu.be/aQKZNfx4nRQ?...

I'm hiring! I have 2 open positions: 🔬 Postdoc 🧪 Research associate We study how animal multicellularity evolved by exploring the molecular logic of cell adhesion using cell biology, 'omics, and tool-building in non-model organisms. Come join us! Details and application links 👇 Please repost

The Microbiome Centers Consortium (MCC) Early Career Working Group is looking for committee members! It's a great opportunity to explore career paths and connect with scientists across academia, industry and policy by assembling speaker panels for fellow early-career scientists! lnkd.in/em4hyq7E

A chemist, physicist, and biologist walk into a bar go.nature.com/3PfmrDS

Super stoked about the EMBL cellular mechanics of symbiosis conference. I loved the first time this conference was held 3 years ago, and this is going to be just as good. Let's see if I manage to stock to live skeeting this time! #EESSymbiosis @events.embl.org

How do scientists effectively communicate their work beyond the lab? Join us for Careers in Conversation: Communicating Science for Impact, a virtual panel featuring professionals who build careers around translating complex science for diverse audiences. Register Here: lnkd.in/gwxC-ujJ

The Microbiome Centers Consortium (MCC) Early Career Working Group is looking for committee members! It's a great opportunity to explore career paths and connect with scientists across academia, industry and policy by assembling speaker panels for fellow early-career scientists! lnkd.in/em4hyq7E

Hosting this panel this Friday! Come check it out

One of last week’s most-viewed PNAS articles is “Lead in archived hair documents a decline in lead exposure to humans since the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency.” Explore the research: https://ow.ly/SMKg50YetGP More trending articles: https://ow.ly/bQ8f50YetzE

New preprint from @pawley.bsky.social @scottnichols.bsky.social is a great testament to how intentional imaging helps untangle potential functions and mechanisms of host-microbe interactions The discovery of an external bacterial niche reconciles sequencing-based microbiomes in a freshwater sponge

Come join our network at prideinmicrobiology.github.io! 🏳️‍🌈 Sign up for our mailing list for information about our events! 🦠 #Pride #STEM #LGBTQ

The widespread targeting of Native Americans demonstrates its not about legal status, its about racial profiling. ictnews.org/news/fearing...

Interested in a career focused on microbiology or microbiome education? The Microbiome Centers Consortium is hosting a panel of educators representing different paths in secondary education. Come hear the advice and experience of some great teachers! Register here: rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

A z-stack image of aphid embryos and bacterial protein. The rainbow depth-coded projection grants the embryos a 3D effect, while the punctate white spots are bacterial protein. Feels very nebulous, in the most literal sense! #FluorescenceFriday

The cool part of microscopy is that even when you don't get good data, you can still get cool images. Aphid embryos labeled with DAPI, antibody and WGA. Imaged on an epifluorescence scope.

Interested in a career focused on microbiology or microbiome education? The Microbiome Centers Consortium is hosting a panel of educators representing different paths in secondary education. Come hear the advice and experience of some great teachers! Register here: rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Hawaiian bobtail squid maintain distinct microbiota in different organs, including bioluminescent bacteria in their light organs, by deploying immune factors with tailored expressions in each niche. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/QxLo50XPnyS

A super detailed protocol + video on Cryo-ExM - Cryo-Expansion Microscopy, led by the labs of our former postdocs @marinelap.bsky.social & @ebertiaux.bsky.social. Clear, practical, and very useful for anyone doing nanoscale imaging 🚀 app.jove.com/t/68595/expa...

A hill on which I will die: Calvin and Hobbes is one of the great pieces of 20th-century American literature in no small part because it was never turned into anything aside from a comic strip. Leave it be.

I've started imaging the symbionts inside the bacteriocytes of aphids. You can see the aphid body in white and the bacteria are depth-coded different colors to show the dimensionality. Some of the embryos are getting loaded up with symbionts! #FluorescenceFriday

“‘In evidence-based policy, you gather data and then make a decision,’ [Jake] Scott said. ‘This is the reverse. CDC made the policy decision and then funded research to back it up. When you commission research after making a decision, you're not looking for answers—you're looking for validation.’”

This 🧵 is important & I want to highlight: They are going to give kids in an Guinea-Bissau a placebo for Hep B even though it's already proven to be safe. These white supremacists are putting African children at risk to support a thesis we know is wrong. They do not value Black lives.

IRW — a Pulitzer-winning nonprofit newsroom at American — and @thebarbedwire.com traced the history of anti-trans legislation. Houston conservatives realized homophobia didn’t fly anymore, weaponized girls’ safety, and parroted segregationist language. It worked. thebarbedwire.com/2025/12/04/a...

New preprint characterizing a protein likely required for vertical transmission. Some really stellar undergrads contributing to this work too! A secreted endosymbiont protein essential for colonizing host cells

Love this cover

Really fascinating and important work

Once again, Spotify refuses to release the .csv of supplemental data behind Spotify Wrapped, thus fueling the reproducibility crisis.

Induced endosymbiosis between a fungus and bacterium reveals a shift from antagonism to commensalism @natcomms.nature.com by Thomas Gassler et al from Julia Vorholt www.nature.com/articles/s41... Ralstonia pickettii in the fungus Rhizopus microsporus #Endofungal

The Lariviere lab at UMiami is recruiting PhD students! Incoming students will join us in studying host-microbe interactions in the honey bee gut, using molecular and genetic approaches. Please see the attached flyer for more details. #Symbiosis #SymbioSky #MicroSky #PhDOpportunity #AcademicJobs

Our study, just published in #ScienceAdvances and funded by @hfspo.bsky.social, explores the post metamorphic cell composition of the sea urchin juvenile, revealing that its body is head-like. Long considered brainless creatures, they’re all brain instead! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is definitive "Hell yeah" science

Looking to learn about career paths in microbiome research? Come join a panel discussion hosted by the Microbiome Centers Consortium. We're talking to some great folks in diverse positions about how they explored their proffesional paths. lnkd.in/e6WVziXY

US Government accounts have arrived on Bluesky. Block on sight. Protect your digital space. Be aware that the DHS account in particular is known to quote dunk on regular people to encourage their followers to harass them. The detach quote function will come in very handy here…

🚨Publication alert🚨 My first, first-author paper is now out in @natphoton.nature.com! Our paper describes an iterative spectral unmixing algorithm and eight-channel camera-based hardware we developed enabling unmixing of low SNR live-cell data at video rates. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Somebody ask these guys where the name "Ohio" comes from

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

With many postdoc grants like the NSF PRFB, Ford Fellowship, and Hanna H. Gray fellowships disappearing, I am currently looking for grants that could fund incoming postdoctoral scholars. Here is a thread of some of them 🧵

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

Started using Fiji to estimate apartment sizes from Zillow images. Being a tall fella, you gotta prep for these things. I am told this is "On Brand"

I'm back home with my dad and have thoughts about being an Indigenous scientist and academic. I'm writing this in real time so it might get disrupted and will have typos. I am fairly successful by academic standards. I have a tenure track job, wrote papers, have grant funding, mentor students.

Just kidding I'm exclusively motivated by Little Debbie Swiss Rolls now

New paper comparing the light organ symbiosis in the hummingbird bobtail squid to the infamous Hawaiian bobtail squid. Congrats to @markjmandel.bsky.social and crew, and thanks for letting me take some light organ images for the pub!