There are many types of urinary tract microbiomes, and UTIs can happen with most of them. Even more interesting is that healthy individuals have almost the same microbial communities! Check out David's new preprint to see the details 👇

1/4. Excited to share the first preprint from my PhD at @binfutrecht.bsky.social and @uti-revisited.bsky.social 🐥. In this work, we explored the urinary tract microbiome composition (urobiome) by combining data from multiple metagenomic sequencing studies 💛🦠. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thrilled that our paper "Eco-evolutionary dynamics of massive, parallel bacteriophage outbreaks in compost communities" is out! 🎉🦠🧬 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... w/ @paulbrainey.bsky.social, Petros Skiadas, Paulien Hogeweg, @bedutilh.bsky.social

Pleased to see this beautiful paper out. Kudos to @jeroenmeijer.bsky.social who took @stevenquistad.bsky.social data and dug deep, revealing a new phage that erupts to astonishing abundance. As theory predicts, the life of SGEs is fuelled by encounters with new hosts www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New in Science Advances: A bacteriophage stayed genetically stable for months, then evolved rapidly in a new microbial community. www.evolbio.mpg.de/3884217/viru... @jeroenmeijer.bsky.social @paulbrainey.bsky.social @uni-jena.de @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social @bedutilh.bsky.social

Application deadline coming up: June 7th 🔔 Interested in... 🧐 Fundamental biology? 🧩 Elucidating how evolution works? 🧬 Obtaining new insights from genome sequences? 🫥 Archaea, the least studied domain of life? Join us with an exciting PhD on archaeal genome evolution!

Some snaps from trails around the SFU and UBC campuses from the last 2 months. Vancouver is beautiful 😭

I'm looking for an enthusiastic student to join my team as a PhD candidate on archaeal genome evolution 🦠💻 Work in beautiful Utrecht, at @binfutrecht.bsky.social, an international group full of caring, amazing scientists, and with frequent cake breaks! www.uu.nl/en/organisat... Please share! 🙏

Proud of @ehauptfeld.bsky.social for receiving the Young Investigator Award by @biosb.bsky.social, in recognition to her PhD achievements in research and education! Very well deserved, and congratulations! @ubc-uu.bsky.social @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social

Our preprint on the 'Origins of Eukaryotic Metabolism' is out! Take a look at some of the new findings on the origin of eukaryotic membranes, metabolic integrations between archaeal and bacterial ancestors, and other fascinating prokaryotic interactions during eukaryogenesis. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Our research work on using #singlecell co-mapping to study early embryonic development is now published: doi.org/10.7554/eLif....

New preprint! Text by Bram van Eijnatten: Happy to share a collaboration between @binfutrecht.bsky.social and the Plant Stress Resilience Group from @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social and the Quint lab. We present the Arabidopsis thaliana 'EcoCore panel': www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The VEO Group has a position open for a PhD student to investigate Fungi-bacteria interactions in complex communities! Check out this position and many more at the JSMC website 👇👇 www.jsmc-phd.de/admission/va...

Phd Position alert 🚨 Join our project ASTRAfun (Adaptation and Starship Traffic in Root-Associated fungi), in which we will use computational models to unveil the hidden dynamics of fungal evolution. It’s not going to be just regular fun. It’s going to ASTRAfun. 🤓 www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Space is the place (for microbes 🦠)! Delighted to have contributed to this review on spatial structure in microbial communities by @marcelbaecker.bsky.social @simonvanvliet.bsky.social @bedutilh.bsky.social @bramvandijk.bsky.social and others.

Recently, a Hypothesis was posed in @jcellsci.bsky.social in which the root of eukaryotes was placed between kinetoplastids and all other eukaryotes. From this, it was implied that LECA did not have a kinetochore. We argue this is highly unlikely. A 🧵(1/12) Read our reply here: tinyurl.com/n87myhpr

Please check out our review on the impact of spatial structure in microbial ecosystems! In it, we discuss how spatial patterns impact microbial ecology and evolution, eventually impacting everything we see around us! See @marcelbaecker.bsky.social's amazing summary below :) 🦠 𝚂𝙿𝙰𝙲𝙴 𝙼𝙰𝚃𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚂 ! 🦠

Everyone knows that space and spatial structure is super important in shaping the Microverse 🌎🌍🌏 Check out this amazing review where @marcelbaecker.bsky.social and @bramvandijk.bsky.social et al bring together a huge body of knowledge @microverse.bsky.social @binfutrecht.bsky.social

We have an open position for a bioinformatics/theoretical microbial ecology PhD student to study viral strategies in the global Microverse! Join us at the @microverse.bsky.social at @uni-jena.de, please apply through this link: jobs.uni-jena.de/jobposting/9...

Wrapping up a productive week: very glad to have contributed to this review on how spatial structure shapes microbial ecology and evolution, led by @marcelbaecker.bsky.social, @bedutilh.bsky.social, @bramvandijk.bsky.social and many others. doi.org/10.1093/fems...

@bramvandijk.bsky.social (and many other)'s new paper covered insights in microbial ecology, evolution and theoretical biology.

Welcome to Bluesky, @pieterhart.bsky.social! Pieter just joined my group as a PhD student studying bacterial genome evolution—exciting years ahead! Here he is enjoying a chat about his MSc work (w/ @kassipan.bsky.social & @ettema.bsky.social) at Science4Life @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social 🧬🦠✨

Now officially published in Current Biology 🥳🥳 @mfseidl.bsky.social @binfutrecht.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

New preprint from our lab! Led by Emine Ali and @maxraas.bsky.social See the highlights below!

Our story on the kinetochore composition of the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila is out now on bioRxiv! We find surprisingly many orthologs of conventional kinetochore components, but also components that have very different evolutionary origins. A 🧵 (1/11) Check it out here: tinyurl.com/4ectm9x4

Now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Screening over a thousand fungal genomes, @jromeijn.bsky.social, Iñigo Bañales Belaunde and @mfseidl.bsky.social find that horizontal transfer shapes the fungal mobilome 🍄🔄✈️🧬 @ubc-uu.bsky.social Don't miss Josje's thread for a summary of the findings! 👇

Fighting virus with…virus? In a new paper, Griffin Kutler Dodd and Rob de Boer investigated whether defective virus particles could be used to treat HIV-1 infection. @ubc-uu.bsky.social @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social Now out at Journal of Theoretical Biology www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

MetaPointFinder: A new approach for detecting mutation-driven antimicrobial resistance directly from metagenomic reads. Fills a major gap in current resistome profiling by capturing chromosomal AMR mutations that metagenome tools miss. github.com/aldertzomer/...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes @currentbiology.bsky.social by @jromeijn.bsky.social et al from @mfseidl.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

The mystery deepens: how did all complex life on Earth originate? In this intriguing VPRO Tegenlicht episode (in Dutch), PhD student Max Raas from the @kopslab.bsky.social talks about his collaboration with Berend Snel. They study the evolution of cell division machinery in single-celled organisms.

Wonderful news for our team! Congratulations to Daniel on receiving this award, and looking forward to more archaeal research in our unit! 🦠 💻 📊 🧑‍🔬 @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social @ubc-uu.bsky.social

New review, result of a collaboration between researchers at @binfutrecht.bsky.social and Uni Groningen. How do plant development and morphology mediate resource acquisition and costs? 🌿🌳🌺 💰💵📈 academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

Featuring Paulien Hogeweg (2nd from the right), founder and lifelong colleague at @binfutrecht.bsky.social @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social Very well deserved, Paulien!

Bram van Dijk @bramvandijk.bsky.social (@utrechtuniversity.bsky.social): How mobile genes reshape the microbial arms race #NIME2025

Yesterday the @biosb.bsky.social and Netherlands Integrative Microbial Ecology initiative organised a symposium on #MicrobialEcology. We hosted 80+ researchers, with 10 talks and 10 posters at @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social. A beautiful chance to hear more about exciting research across the country!

Very nice documentary about the origins of complex life with my PhD advisor Berend Snel @binfutrecht.bsky.social!

Check out the latest paper by the Snoek lab in @theplantjournal.bsky.social, a genetics study involving a large field trial with 200 lettuce genotypes phenotyped by a drone. Great work by Rens Dijkhuizen, Bram van Eijnatten, Sarah Mehrem, @guidopmi.bsky.social & others! doi.org/10.1111/tpj....

The first paper of my PhD is now available as a preprint! 🎉 Transposable elements (TEs) don't just jump within fungal genomes, they also move extensively between species. In this study, we screened over 1,300 fungal genomes and found a conservative estimate of 5,500+ horizontal transfer events.

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social rdcu.be/exBSp

It's alive!! 🌱 Check out our combination of experimental approaches and computational modeling, showing how growth conflicts among neighboring cell files underlie the orientation of cell divisions in root regeneration. Such a rewarding experience to be part of this collaboration!

1. 🧵 New preprint out! WitChi: a fast, open-source Python tool to detect, quantify & prune compositional bias in MSAs. Lightweight, tree-free, scalable to 5k+ taxa... so we applied it to the GTDB archaea MSA. #ArchaeaSky #MEvoSky #MicroSky 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 💻 github.com/stephkoest/w...

Late due to vacation, but 📢 New preprint out, presenting a new approach to reduce compositional heterogeneity in alignments. A passion project led by the amazing @stephkoe.bsky.social 👀 Check out this great explanation thread below 👇

🚨 Join us at TBB Utrecht by applying for this evo-devo PhD position! 🚨 www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

Paulien Hogeweg was Rob's supervisor during his MSc and PhD. She kicks off the meeting by reminiscing about Rob's beginnings: "First students are special, especially those who become a lifelong colleague, successor, and now, fellow emeritus"

Today we celebrate over 40 years of research of Rob de Boer, chair Professor of Theoretical Biology. Rob complemented his tremendous scientific career with a deep impact in multiple roles, as a dedicated teacher, an inspiring mentor, and a kind and generous colleague. Thank you, Rob!

PhD Position in Modelling Regulation of Plant Stress Responses across Species!! 🌱🌽🌾🥬🌡️🌡️ Apply before June 16 to join this exciting project with Kirsten ten Tusscher in the context of CropXR!! www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

Faster && more accurate virus sequence clustering with Vclust! Thanks to Andrzej, Sebastian, et al. for the great collaboration. The author list also includes @prozwalak.bsky.social from the VEO Group.

Researchers led by @bedutilh.bsky.social at the Cluster of Excellence @microverse.bsky.social investigate #phages, showing how viruses not only cause harm but also create the basis for diversity & balance. Read more in the #UniJena research magazine. ➡️ www.lichtgedanken.uni-jena.de/en/3157/smal...