A tribute to Stuart Kornfeld, pioneering #glycotime scientist whose work on mannose-6-phosphate receptor lysosomal trafficking (among many other contributions) was highly influential to our work 🫡 www.jci.org/articles/vie...

Deadline Jan. 9: Submit your abstract to give a short talk at our 2026 "Empowering Automated Laboratories" joint meeting with the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. 🖥️🧬 More info: usermeeting.jgi.doe.gov Registration: bit.ly/EMSLJGIusermeeting2026 @berkeleylab.lbl.gov @biosci.lbl.gov

#NewResearch While oral bacteria rarely colonize the healthy gut, they dominate the gut microbiome of patients with chronic liver disease. Here a bacterial gene encoded by microbial translocators is linked to gut barrier disruption and fibrosis #MicroSky 🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper! Host-specific phage diversity in Atlantic salmon gut microbiota shows distinct viral patterns. Phage pressure was minimal in host-dependent Mycoplasma-dominated guts but high with opportunistic Aliivibrio. Thanks to all co-authors! doi.org/10.1093/isme...

I know many of you know Joe James (of Binning Singletons) Joe and his family had a terrible tragedy occur on Christmas. If you can give, this is a good family to help out gofund.me/5cbfe22fe

From @jchowning.bsky.social & colleagues in @plos.org #Computational #Biology | Ten simple rules for running a virtual program to introduce computational biology at the high school level | #Education #Bioinformatics #PLOSCBTSR #OpenScience 🧬 🖥️ 🧪 🔓 ⬇️ journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

"The changing roles of Escherichia coli" -- a short essay by yours truly. rdcu.be/eVtXT

Think you need large volumes for microbial experiments? Our recent publication introduces HiMEx, a simple, scalable method for microbial ecology. academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... 🦠 it provides an easy, efficient approach to capturing viral diversity, opening new opportunities for virome analysis.

A four-year postdoc focusing on "plant growth-promoting bacteriophages" available in my group. Skills in metaviromics and metagenomics essential. Application deadline: 2.2.2026. For more info, see the link.

Hello Bluesky! We’re here to talk #microbes, #metabolism, #CRISPR, #metabolomics and more.

If you're a first-year biomedical Ph.D. student, I'd like to hear how your first few months of grad school have been going. I'm a science journalist at @statnews.com and got my Ph.D. in immunology before going into journalism. You can reach me at [email protected]. #journorequest

If you have been following the African swine fever "mystery" in Catalonia, you would have noticed that this had the early hallmarks of a "lab leak" from a nearby facility. Turns out it wasn't, however. h/t @acritschristoph.bsky.social @flodebarre.bsky.social www.infobae.com/espana/2025/...

[1/3] Is your favorite bacterial isolate hiding a surprise lytic virus with a VERY different lifestyle? Finally I can proudly say that our paper on persistent phages is out in Nature Microbiology. rdcu.be/eWJEp. Well done @peterdoug.bsky.social

Bacteriophages are normally classified as either virulent or temperate. Reality is, of course, more complicated! Here we show many bacterial isolates contain non-temperate phages that can persist through restreaking. Thanks to all co-authors for such a great collaboration!

Looking into industry bioinformatics / comp bio / data science careers. If you have any leads, message me! CV is in bio. Currently a postdoc data scientist at @mdanderson.bsky.social, have published work in both wet + dry lab multi-omics of non-model organisms & humans. 🧪🧬🖥️

I cannot tell you how many data science teams I've seen operate with people with their heads down constantly spending all their time thinking about some nuance of some technical tool, but completely unable to formulate a real articulate research question. Similar to many software teams in some ways

Opportunity to join my lab for a postdoc or PhD student from outside Canada. Very short term. Very competitive. Send me your CV and cover letter before Jan 5. This runs via nserc-crsng.canada.ca/en/news/laun...

Cat Clinging To Side Of Christmas Tree Admits That Was Extent Of Plan https://theonion.com/cat-clinging-to-side-of-christmas-tree-admits-that-was-1849899567/

All you want for christmas is.... transposon mutagenesis! Our new work at @cultivarium.bsky.social screening lots of transposon vectors in lots of bacteria, from @charliegilbert.bsky.social and team. Transposon and promoter modular parts available on Addgene (pooled library will be there soon too)

Today is Quartidi the 4th of Nivôse in the year 234. Nivôse is the month of snow. Today we celebrate sulphur.#JacobinDay More information on sulphur

Today in extremely Berkeley headlines

Pittsburgh Phage Program — 2025 Wrapped! To our patients, clinicians, researches, regulators, and partners— this work doesn’t happen without you. We screened, treated, delivered, learned—and even laid the groundwork for a 2026 trial! #pittsburghphageprogram #phagetherapy #P3

Don't miss Paul Jensen of @umich.edu at this year's Integrating Experimentation with Data Annual Meeting, during our session on AI in Action: Automating Experiments for Genomic Exploration. More info: http://usermeeting.jgi.doe.gov 🖥️🧬

🎄 Just published 🎉! Our ongoing genome sequencing of the basal dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina uncovered a new lineage of endogenized Polinton-like viruses, OmPLV. Notably, OmPLV encodes ... [cont] #VirEvol #MicroSky #Mevosky #SymbioSky #ProtistsOnSky

If I could say one sentence to cats and make them understand it, it would probably be "If you are going to puke, please do it on a hard surface."

Announcing our next #NSFfunded workshop on "Telling Stories Through Data", co-lead by myself + @vgwschutte.bsky.social! It’s half bioinformatics data viz & half #SciComm - this year’s focus is host-associated microbiome datasets. Apply here to join us (form closes 1/10) bit.ly/TSTD2026 #symbiosky

My article on aeonophiles (ultra-long lived organisms) came out in Aeon Magazine today!

Abstract portal is open for ASM Microbe 2026. New meeting format, same great science. Hope to see you in DC!

Microbial rhodopsins are everywhere in the surface ocean, but were assumed to play a role mainly when nutrients are scarce. Our new study reveals unexpected rhodopsin dynamics tightly linked to phytoplankton blooms.

News article from @uwmadison.bsky.social describing our recent study on viruses in peatland soils! news.wisc.edu/viruses-foun...

Back in the day, I spent a lot of effort pointing out that many claims of lateral gene transfer between taxa were better explained by other phenomena, like gene loss, duplicaiton and deletion, convergence, bad informatics, etc 1/n

The final form of my 2nd postdoc paper with the Bassler Lab! Turns out our favorite quorum-sensing phage isn’t a one-off, but rather a member of a globally dispersed family of phages that sense a universal autoinducer. #phagesky #microsky journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

@peterfineran.bsky.social and colleagues develop Tn-seq for phages by leveraging anti-CRISPR (Acr) as a positive selectable marker in the presence of CRISPR-Cas counter-selection, and identify essential genes in phage from non model orgs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New study shows older siblings and urban/rural residence strongly shape the infant gut virome at one year, with most exposure-linked vOTUs being phages. 🔬👶🌍 #Virome #InfantHealth 📄 https://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2025.2501194 👤 EVBC members: Marie-Agnès Petit

Accelign: a GPU-based Library for Accelerating Pairwise Sequence Alignment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.17.694868v1

📣Excited to share our (first) VirJenDB publication! 🎁Check it out to see how your #virus database supports #metadata #biocuration and #bioinformatics integration. 🎶Stay tuned for collaboration opportunities in 2026, including a hackathon at #ViBioM2026! 📃 doi.org/10.1093/nar/... 💻 www.virjendb.org

Sharing this here at the request of Dr. Florian Krammer: semmelweisinstitute.ac.at/training-car...

📣 #Job alert! Looking to establish your own independent research in cell biology, development or evo-devo? The @cnrs.fr is recruiting 7 scientists in that area of research. Here are updated unofficial guidelines. Reach out to members of the committee if you have questions c3n-cn.fr/section-24-w...

Born #OnThisDay in 1922, Esther Lederberg was the first to isolate the lambda phage in 1951. She characterised the lysogenic phase, whereby the phage are able to integrate into the bacterial genome, staying dormant. This discovery made them a model tool of study, leading to many more breakthroughs.

As my time as a researcher at FSU Jena and @microverse.bsky.social in the group of Rosalind Allen comes to an end, I warmly thank all collaborators and colleagues for the excellent science and discussions! 🚨I am (yes, again...) on the job market, looking for higher positions -->

Nature research paper: Gene-specific selective sweeps are pervasive across human gut microbiomes go.nature.com/48XAQL3

I am still actively looking for postdoc positions — please lmk if you (or your friends and colleagues) need a hardworking postdoc with field, lab, and bioinformatic skills! I am broadly interested in evolution in the ocean, conservation and population genetics, and rapid evolution.

Wow this is a seriously serious supplementary figure from @cellpress.bsky.social today. Panels A through UU. I get that Cell likes to minimize the number of supplementary figures. But is this really what is happening here? www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH. And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you. A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

We are recruiting for a number of PhDs in the HPRU in Public Health Genomics, based at @unibirmingham.bsky.social, in collaboration with UKHSA. 🦠🧬 Apply below to work on cutting-edge science and public health priorities! (NB deadline of 9th January / UK only due to funding restrictions) (1/7)

We're building a data lakehouse (data lake + data warehouse) to improve access to data — and want to hear about your experiences with our systems: https://jointgeno.me/PortalStoriesForm 🖥️ 🧬 🌱 🦠 🧪 🍄‍🟫 🍄 @berkeleylab.lbl.gov @danudwary.secondarymetabolism.com @axelvisel.bsky.social @biosci.lbl.gov

🦇 Two PhD positions available on our new ARC Discovery Grant: "From Diversity to Disease: Viral Ecology, Evolution and Persistence in Bats" The project will investigate how viral diversity evolves and persists, with a particular focus on recently discovered henipaviruses in Australian flying foxes.

Bacterial genomes encode a rich repertoire of antiphage systems, but we still know surprisingly little about when these systems are actually expressed. In this preprint, Lucas Paoli et al, ask what shapes antiphage systems expression in native contexts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

DOE's Office of Science is making a big push into AI, and that includes our work at the @jgi.doe.gov . We want to hear your thoughts (+ and -) on AI-enabled biological data. Consider joining one of our interviews or focus groups by filling out this form! 🧪🧬🦠🖥️ #secmet jointgeno.me/PortalStorie...

My first lead author paper is out with Ben Kerr and @alisonfeder.bsky.social! We found that making an antiviral too strong can sometimes make resistance easier to evolve. This has implications for how we design drugs, choose doses, and think about viral evolution in the face of treatment. (1/n)