I went down the rabbit hole of finding more and found these peckers to be a fascinating species. The most mind-blowing part being:

Delighted to see over 17 million new protein structure predictions from novel proteins in AllTheBacteria are now integrated into the AlphaFold Database at @ebi.embl.org ! Huge work from @gbouras13.bsky.social @oschwengers.bsky.social and friends to generate these. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/u...

Me trying to reach "expansion" from "increase" via inflation, growth, enlargement and swelling. Could i just have asked Gemini or GPT - yes, but, where is the gaudiloquence in that?

#NatMicroPicks Baby-to-baby strain transmission shapes the developing gut microbiome - out now in Nature! 👶🦠👶 #microsky #microbiome @nature.com @cibiocm.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nature research paper: Construction of complex and diverse DNA sequences using DNA three-way junctions go.nature.com/4qu2ExZ

Hello world! I am excited to announce my lab is open at the University of Utah in the Department of Biochemistry. We are looking for scientists at all levels interested in studying host-virus interactions in both bacteria and animals. Come join us in beautiful Utah! (photo is 10 steps from lab)

We’ve discovered how the superbug E. faecalis prevents chronic wounds from healing. It’s not a toxin. It’s metabolism. The bacteria use extracellular electron transport (EET) to electrochemically generate ROS, effectively "freezing" skin cells in place. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeb5297

I've spent all day struggling to write a single page of a popular science article. I bang away at a word processor; give up; start diagramming on paper. Take some notes; draft a few sentences in pen; return to the computer...and very slowly I figure out what I was trying to say in the first place.

A 16h day in the lab comes to an end. An ambitious experiment, now in incubation, with about 700 ‘spots’ on those plates holding on to the answer of a curious question. With the finals over, the campus is as empty as devoid the air is of winter-y cold. It is somewhat of a good night, I guess.

A brand-new Gordon Conference on Microbiomes!🦠 The opening session (Jan 2026) dives into microbiome editing - how fundamental research and new technologies can advance human health and environmental sustainability. Super looking forward!🧪 #microsky #microbiomesky #grc www.grc.org/microbiome-e...

Reviewing an exciting manuscript. This is going to be a long night!

This morning, @isbscience.org's Dr. Mary Brunkow was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! Dr. Brunkow shares the award with Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi. Read the press release here: www.nobelprize.org/.../medicine.... What a tremendous honor! Congratulations!

Friday Papers Club! 🍿In light of Pubmed going down, the collapse of social media, and my recent success at getting recommendations for interesting papers from those still around, I am starting a new tradition! - Recommend a good scientific manuscript! 👇

Amazing work by @hueihsuantsai.bsky.social and colleagues from @nikogeldner.bsky.social, Feng Zhou @tonnigrubeandersen.bsky.social labs in Science Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #chemotaxis #MicroSky

Discovery of a new type of immune cell in fat tissue that promotes infllammaging (chronic inflammation with aging) www.nature.com/articles/d41... www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Join us in Arizona! The Fourth Annual Symposium on Mechanisms of Cellular Evolution will again be held at ASU. November 5-8, 2025, in Tempe, AZ. Theme: Unicellular Diversification of Cell Types and Division Systems. na.eventscloud.com/cmesymposium2025

Out now! 🍫🦠A defined microbial community reproduces attributes of fine flavour #chocolate fermentation By Gabriel Castrillo, David Salt & co #microsky #microbiomesky 🧪 Read it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#phagesky I am looking for phages infecting Streptococcus pneumoniae to test a phenotype - does anyone have some and willing to share ? Repost appreciated :)

On my 14th hour of troubleshooting the code while ChatGPT tells me we are close for the 280th time.

Site-specific DNA insertion into the human genome with engineered recombinases www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... in other words... genome engineering to precisely insert large multi-kilobase sequences into specific sites without introducing double-strand breaks #synbio

Internet Roadtrip is my favorite thing on the internet right now—it’s basically Twitch Plays Google Street View. They started in Boston, spent several weeks on a quest to cross the Canadian border, and are now exploring New Brunswick. neal.fun/internet-roa...

Started in Abhishek’s lab as a new postdoc without any coding skills, and now I've contributed to a bacterial-tracking library and debugged critical issues while at that - super happy with this. Thanks to all my more-hardworking-coauthors on this one! Cheers and here is to many more 🥂.

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Me: I was waiting for the Argon laser to warm up

TaxonKit v0.20.0 is adapted to recent rank changes in NCBI Taxonomy. github.com/shenwei356/t... Also updated - taxid-changelog to May, 2025 github.com/shenwei356/t... - gtdb-taxdump to GTDB r226 github.com/shenwei356/g... - ictv-taxdump to VMR_MSL40 github.com/shenwei356/i...

New 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦 🦠 Personalized Nebulized Bacteriophage Therapy for MDR 𝘗𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘴 Infections in Cystic Fibrosis In 9 patients, 10²–10⁴ CFU/mL drop in sputum bacteria, 6% median gain in FEV1 Post-treatment isolates showed trade-offs—reduced virulence, increased antibiotic susceptibility

Do people in the same household share strains when they have the same species? How many cells transmit when a strain is shared? Can strain composition be dynamic when species composition is stable? We answer these and related questions for the facial skin microbiome in our latest paper. 🧵[1/10]

Some insect larvae have been incorporating microplastics into the casings they build to protect themselves against predators since at least the early 1970s, researchers report. scim.ag/3GD5SNx

A trial has drawn links between fibromyalgia and alterations of the gut microbiome https://go.nature.com/3EDZxkv

Fascinating innate immune evasion strategy in SCIENCE #glycotime 𝘗𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘺𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘢𝘦 makes GLYCOSIRIN, a novel iminosugar that blocks plant glycosidases from degrading bacterial flagellin—hiding pathogens from plant immune sensors. New cryo-EM insights reveal exactly how this stealthy trick works

Mapping genetic diversity with the GenomeIndia project Nature Genetics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Delighted to share that @asm.org has met its goal for all of its 'legacy' journals (ie favorites like J. Bact, I&I, AEM) so ALL 2025 articles will be published open access. Thanks to all institutional subscribers, this is the S2O way. Please submit to these great journals! asm.org/Press-Releas...

A paper in Nature presents a temporary pacemaker smaller than a grain of rice capable of mediating effective cardiac pacing in animal models and human heart tissues. https://go.nature.com/3E4Trt6 #medsky 🧪

"... the space researcher was selected at random for a search... ...There, his personal mobile phone and work computer were confiscated and searched by authorities, with messages discussing Trump's treatment of scientists found on his device." www.lbc.co.uk/world-news/d...

Lungfish xkcd.com/3064

As I sipped my coffee among the vast open farmlands and surrounding wilderness, I quickly realized the abundant company I had. Here is a beautiful and melodious slice of an ecosystem. #TenMinMerlin #Merlin

If pubmed is inaccessible at the moment, try @europepmc.org

My annual Valentine’s post of this image that happens to land on #FluorescenceFriday this year! An axon approaching a kidney glomerulus doing its best to look like a rose.

🦠 GUT-BRAIN AXIS 🧠 Microbes help keep your brain calm Germ-free mice show more anxiety, hyperactive amygdala neurons Restoring microbes—or key indole metabolites—reverses this More evidence the microbiota fine-tunes brain circuits, specifically linking them to ancient anxiety-defense mechanisms

Evolution of Wolbachia male-killing mechanism within a host species "In vitro and in vivo data demonstrated that wBol1Y (Wolbachia) feminized splicing and expression of lepidopteran sex determination pathway genes." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If I had a penny for every time a published web-tool now leads to 404 or 503, I would whine less over postdoc salaries.

Motile bacterial zorbs demonstrate one of the most fascinating collective migration strategies I have ever encountered. Our lab's postdoc, Jitendra Gosai, gave an excellent talk on the sensory control of zorbs at the BLAST conference.

Tis the season; Abandoned ponceau bottle to mark!

No Coitus Required: AI Unlocks Secrets of Fertilization Using AlphaFold, scientists have uncovered the structure of a vital protein complex involved in vertebrate fertilization - all without any actual "experiments"! #latinskySTEM www.nature.com/articles/d41...