I’ve hit the stage in running a lab where undergrads ask “do you know this person who is doing cool stuff at a university I’d like to go to for grad school?” And my answer is that “yes, they were a postdoc in the lab using your exact same lab bench 14 years ago”

I love me these type of published stories

In #mBio, dive into story behind the 1989 discovery of Helicobacter pylori CagA, the first tumorigenic bacterial protein. This article recounts the early steps in the investigative process and relates some of the unexpected discoveries that ensued. asm.social/2C1

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro 2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute 3) Center for Vaccine Research 🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

Yes, yes, yes! This is the promise of many *history* podcasts. They are weaving stories. (Not a bad thing!) But, unless they're created by trained, or at least rigorous, historians, how often do they get across the flimsiness of what we think we know?

Podcasts and "deep dive" media will try to convince you that you *now* know things, thanks to them. A PhD, especially one with archival, observational, or observational components, will definitely convince you that you know next to nothing, thanks to the available resources & one's predecessors.

New argument against AI regulation just dropped. Checkmate, atheists. www.wsj.com/tech/peter-t...

It's literally a transcript of the press conference. 10/10. No notes.

It feels like the statement "I want to get this in before the gov shutdown" should be more rare than it has been in my life. #NewPI #AcademicSky

If you have to ask you've been left behind.

Now think about what it’s doing to our children that some teachers are relying on it to develop lesson plans that no one is fact- or bias-checking.

The 2026 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List has 170 tenure-track positions and 19 teaching positions: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... #facultychemjobs #chemjobs #chemsky 🧪⚗️

My department at UC Davis is hiring a mycologist, broadly interpreted. Please repost, share, and consider applying. recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07339

Temple Grandin (first famous autistic person who came to mind) is 78. bsky.app/profile/atru...

🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

as someone with a public health degree working in pharma/biotech, it fucking sucks to exist in this timeline

So trump claims the Amish don't have autism. Really? Here is a study that identified an ASD-linked mutation in Cntnap2 in a cohort of children from Amish families. Subsequent studies have shown this mutation is also associated with ASD in non-Amish populations pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16571880/

Feels like we’re a few months from Trump declaring that plants crave electrolytes

This........this is not what happens when vaccines are given. What the fuck is he talking about?!?

don't miss this SOUPER bowl!

Giving a webinar on #BlueSoup this Friday, in case anyone wants to pop in during their lunch!

Put another way… If you get sneezed on, infection doesn’t really care whether you are large or small…if you got hit with an infectious dose

Lost in the presidents insane vaccine-autism discussion is that size of shot doesn’t matter. Single vaccines aren’t really given in proportion to mass. For a single vaccine, it’s like the same relative amount of antigen for horse or human and veterinarians don’t give horses giant vaccine shots

Of the 10 defense systems originally discovered in Doron et al 2018, Kiwa was one of the last to be studied - until now Kiwa is a membrane-embedded complex activated in phage attachments sites to degrade phage DNA A nice study by the Nobrega lab

How to avoid politics on Bluesky 🦋 [THREAD] When scientists left X, many hoped for a quieter space. But politics will take over your feeds unless you actively do something about it. This guide will help you if you just want to follow your scientific interest! mikeyoungacademy.dk/researchers-...

Just remember kids, proximity ligation can tell you when DNA is in the same cell but not necessarily that a phage successfully replicates on a host

A bit like spiralling publication costs we need to start having a proper discussion around lab equipment servicing costs. These are often completely disproportionate to the cost of instrument and the service that is provided and seem to serve as a cash cow for vendors.

This is an amazing paper led by the Grinter lab on bacterial protein antibiotics called pyocins and the mechanism by which they inhibit the BAM outer membrane complex. @rhyswg.bsky.social, @knottrna.bsky.social, @debnathghosal.bsky.social, @doylemt1.bsky.social, @fabianmunder.bsky.social

With all the talk about freedom of speech and what is allowed speech and not allowed speech, I thought I would share my general guidelines as to what is not allowed as a professor, as we're people who are traditionally allowed a lot of latitude in what we can talk about. Three main things:

Get in losers, we’re grieving

don't release preprints without a Methods section don't release preprints with a Supplementary Materials section don't release preprints without data don't release preprints without code use preprint servers to share your science, not advertisements

I beg of you please, please please stop using PAML, it ignores synonymous rate variation across sites and multi-nucleotide mutations. The results of your selection tests will be uninterpretable; use HyPhy instead… 🧬 💻 🧪 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

One thing I always try to do as a reviewer/editor when recommending a change is to think about whether or not the resulting improvement to the paper/software justifies the amount of time I think it will take the author to address it. The bigger the ask, the greater the need in order to justify it.

We officially have an inverted Urban Meyer

Replacing “duration of status”, eg while enrolled in graduate studies no matter how long it takes, with a fixed term. Note that most US biomed grad programs run average time to PHD of 5-6 years, not four.

Universities. Rural hospitals. Tech companies. Several sectors are going to be profoundly hurt by this. Not to mention the chaos of the moment as current H1-B owners scramble to get back to the U.S., cancel travel, etc. due to the uncertainty. An absolute mess. As intended.

Everyone celebrates promotions in different ways…we built a backyard batting cage

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion. Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

“Judgement night” (1993)

Exclusion systems, far from slowing down plasmid spread, are in fact essential to preserve host cell viability and thereby ensure the successful dissemination of conjugative plasmids and antibiotic resistance genes. @nfrk92.bsky.social @narjournal.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

In the field of vaccinology this is one of the most basic concepts. Like, first week intro course stuff. Yet it appears the guy who thinks he got robbed of a Nobel prize for inventing mRNA vaccines doesn’t understand it.

You don’t adjuvant live vaccines. Dr. Malone, by asking about adjuvants in MMR v. MMRV, just reminded us he doesn’t actually understand this issue.

From Dr. John Su: If 10,000 kids are vaccinated MMRV, there are 4 more febrile seizures than if kids are given the vaccines separately. This is for the first dose and only in the first 7-10 days after vaccination. This data is why CDC says parents should have choice over which vaccine to get.

Transient microbial architects: tracing the legacy effects of ephemeral taxa during plant microbiome assembly Current Opinion in Microbiology by @logansuteau.bsky.social et al from @microbialmarie.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Trans rights are not the rights of a tiny minority, trans rights are everyone’s rights to self-determination, control of our bodies, and a society where opportunity and aesthetics are not restricted by sex assigned at birth You should support and defend trans people because trans people are people

The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.

Again, very strange to have US leaders bragging about war crimes on TV — especially since Vance’s unfunny joke is basically “we base our air strikes on such sketchy intel that we can’t figure out who is a fisherman and who is a drug smuggler,” which does appear to be true, BTW.

Sorry I was late to your wedding, my flight was canceled because my pilot posted a Charlie Kirk quote verbatim in the comments of an Instagram Reel.