Interesting... Since I was an undergrad, I've wondered what those MttB superfamily members were doing in marine a-proteobacteria... www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... via @iandealidbury.bsky.social et al.

What's happening with Jimmy Kimmel is about politics and power.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

David Frum on Jimmy Kimmel: "This is not cancel culture because it's not culture. It's state repression. It's an order from the government. Here is the script, you must read, if you do not read it, you will be taken off the air."

As I get ready to move out of the country, I sometimes get the intrusive thought that I’m abandoning my country in a time of socio-political crisis. Like a bad friend. Ultimately, I know this wasn’t my motivation for moving, but the misplaced guilt is hard to banish completely

Could be chance, but I ran out of different words for glasses before I ran out of American synonyms for “fool”

Others people will have to settle for “idiot aviators”, a “moron monocle”, or (if they are really unfortunate) the ninny’s pince nez

There are a quite a few books about the influence of microbial diseases on history. But I can’t think of any books about the influence of microbes (both infectious and non infectious) on human history

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

Packing books again. This time microbiology texts.

Was texting someone “tbh” and autocorrect suggested “heterodisulfide”. Fair because I probably use the latter more frequently

In other news, I’m moving to Germany. I’ve been inventorying, sorting, cataloging, and packing my books, most of which will probably have to be stored in the US. Makes a mess but is actually pretty therapeutic

That awkward scenario in which your paper is like 3-5 pages long and your supplemental file is more like 50 pages.

The Radical S-Adenosyl-l-methionine Enzyme HydE Forms an Fe(I)Fe(I) Dimer En Route to the [FeFe] Hydrogenase H-Cluster | Journal of the American Chemical Society pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Our story about microbial methane is out! We found that reducing the expression of a key gene of methanogenesis modulates the isotopic composition of the methane: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Check out also the coverage at the UC Berkeley News website: news.berkeley.edu/2025/08/14/s...

Pluses: good hiking trails and friendly locals. Minuses: danger of space battle

Planning a magnetic resonance conference. Location tbd but I’m currently leaning toward something exotic like the forest moon of ENDOR

My mom took this picture of my cat and it looks like a painting

The redox landscape of pyruvate:ferredoxin oxidoreductases reveals often conserved Fe–S cluster potentials #microbiology #biochemistry @asbmbjournals.bsky.social www.jbc.org/article/S002...

"we predict that the ocean surface layer could be a hot spot of conjugation between planktonic cells because the turbulence there is strong enough to increase cell encounters but still weak enough not to impair conjugation" www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

If you are a postdoc working on any topic related to environmental microbiology and are looking for exposure, the Thermal Biology Institute (tbi.montana.edu) has slots open for virtual talks via zoom this fall. Email me if you are interested! Seminars are most Mondays, 3-4 pm Mountain Time.

💥Personalized C. difficile colonization risk prediction and probiotic therapy assessment in the human gut💥 I'm very excited about this work, driven by Alex Carr & co-supervised by @cdiener.com @cp-cellsystems.bsky.social @isbscience.org @nitinbaliga.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell-systems... 🧵...

Austria is a gorgeous place and the University of Vienna’s CeMMS one of the top places in the world to do microbial ecology.

apnews.com/article/texa... researcher faces deportation after being held for week at San Francisco airport

Assembly and maturation of methyl-coenzyme M reductase in methanogenic archaea www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This paper is now accepted at JPC Letters! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... @unisyscat.bsky.social @tuberlin.bsky.social #compchem

All your favourite metalloenzymes in one place: Magnetic interactions between metal sites in complex enzymes (Maiti & Moura, via JBIC) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An electron-bifurcating “plug” to a protein nanowire in tungsten-dependent aldehyde detoxification www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Discovery of a Widespread Polyamine–Low-Molecular-Weight Thiol Hybrid Pathway in Clostridioides difficile pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Our article showing energy production from air alone is in PNAS today. This paper provides an ultimate biochemical proof that microbes can survive simply by 'making' energy from air (making two ATP per molecule atmospheric H2 consumed) and has biotech applications. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I’ll be looking for another postdoc position in anaerobic microbial biochemistry (or something adjacent). Preferably in the US

Back home which means back to reading (or at least as much reading as my anxiety permits right now)

Here’s a take for which I am genuinely am curious to hear people’s reactions: the deep kind of mentor-mentee relationship has a lot of characteristics of friendship (mutual toleration/respect, affability, shared values, etc).

The aem grc brought this photo of me on a rumen fluid collection trip back to the surface from 10 years ago. Taken by one of Kelly Wrighton’s grad students, it had a funny backstory that I won’t tell here (but did tell a few times at the grc)

First AEM grc ~ first Volta experiment

Volta experiment at the GRC AEM with @jjmarlow.bsky.social and @dkountz.bsky.social (video by Zackary Jay)

Maybe this is obvious, but if the Trump administration is currently screening visa applicants’s social mediate for “anti-Americanism” or whatever, they are probably going to do the same for other applications to the government/agencies (like grants)

Happy July 4th! A day when we remember what was in the Declaration of Independence. The King, Jefferson wrote, 1. "has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures (what would he make of the billions that now to be spent on armed ICE officers?)

Under Ni-limiting conditions, [NiFe]-hydrogenases Frh and Mvh are substituted by [Fe]-only hydrogenase Hmd and the "electron-donating protein" Elp, respectively. Writing in @nature.com Murphy & Shima now report the structure of the Elp-Hdr complex. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just saved a baby rabbit from crow. Uncertain of what to do next

I developed a habit of reading textbooks cover-to-cover late in high school (yes, humblebrag). Two bad sub-habits that I developed were: 1) shying away from the things that took the most effort to read, and 2) always reading increasingly advanced books, shunning introductory texts as beneath me.

Does anyone in the US have a culture of Clostridium pasterianum?

The "in brief" summary that comes with this paper @cellpress.bsky.social certainly tells a story: "Xiao et al. have finally solved the structure of the Pyrococcus furiosus [NiFe]-hydrogenase SHI that was first purified in 1989." *exhale with relief* doi.org/10.1016/j.st...

Cultivation of Methanonezhaarchaeia, the third class of methanogens within the phylum Thermoproteota www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Manuscript/resource alert #microsky 🦠 My lab offers the community a collection of 30 E. coli (CloneFISH) cultures, each carrying a plasmid for the heterologous expression of a (near) full-length 16S rRNA gene from one of 30 lineages of archaea, including 19 yet uncultured ones.

Looking forward to seeing some of you at the App. Environ. Micro. GRS/GRC. As a biochemist, I expect to be a little bit of a fish out of water

The Study of Microbial Physiology Under Microoxic Conditions Is Critical but Neglected enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs

My view (that I acknowledge no one asked for) is that scientists and conference organizers shouldn’t be making these decisions. If organizers need to comply with *government sanctions* (even if they effect ostensibly innocent people), then that may be a necessary evil. But organizers making…

I might go back to posting some of my older books. Here are H.A. Barker’s lectures on “bacterial” fermentations. The schematic of methanogenesis is really interesting—it highlights the inference at the time that methanogenesis must not have “free” C1 metabolites like formate or methanol.