www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @soreklab.bsky.social Sorek lab does it again! Such a cool signal to specifically detect the event of genome degradation by a phage

Last run in Spain. #PMS2025

What a fun meeting in Malaga! #pms2025 Thanks for organizing Victor et al.!!!

@sheilaroitman.bsky.social from Detlef Weigel's lab @plantevolution.bsky.social presents a cool and innovative talk on the uncharacterized members of the plant microbiome: phages!! So many bacterial 16S studies but very few people study the plant phagome #PMS2025

Elisa Korenblum, The root microbiome of wild grass populations from arid to Mediterranean regions as a Reservoir for Drought-Adapted Bacteria #TreesOfInterest TOI #PMS2025

Thanks Akos. It would be great if other labs will follow up on this to decipher why plant microbiota are depleted from mobile genetic elements and defense aystem. Do plants protect the microbes from MGEs?

@finkel-lab.bsky.social and I went on a beautiful morning run in hilly Antequera (south Spain). Too much cerveza and jamon iberico made us heavy. #plantmicrobesymposium

Looking forward to the plant microbiome symposium starting close to beautiful Malaga

Zuckerman Postdoctoral Scholarships supports postdoctoral researchers from universities in the US and Canada who wish to conduct research at Israeli universities. Two years scholarships, $60,000 is provided by the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program+$3,000 annually by the Israeli supervisor.

Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody on this day, half a century ago.

R.I.P Hamilton Smith, 1978 Nobel Laureate for the discovery of type II restriction-modification systems (HindII).

Is there any biologist with 1M citations?

We are interested in proteins, we do some AI, and I still could not understand what this paper is about based on the abstract. I am starting the MARA movement: Make Abstracts Readable Again www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Some people tend to think that life nowadays is worse than in the past. Objectively (statistically) speaking this is just wrong. HDI measures education, life expectancy and purchasing power. In some countries (e.g. US) the improvement is mild, in others (e.g. China, India) it's dramatic.

If you're lucky you can reverse transcribe it with a polyT primer

כמה טוב שבאתם הביתה. בית זה אומר כבר הכל.

Today my wife and I sat on a beautiful day in Rashta, an excellent Arabic restaurant close to Jerusalem, and the Chef, Ganem, went out from the kitchen to raise a toast of Hibiscus juice (he's muslim) with the attendants to Kushner and Witkoff who promoted the cease fire agreement. To peace!

Very well deserved prize for Prof. Vorholt, one of my favorite productive and humble scientists! and what a great meating it was!

Paper is under revisions in Wikipedia

This is hilarious for Nobel week. The headstones of two late Yale chemists who shared the department at the same period. One has his CV written on the headstones The other: Nobel Laureate etc. And the funny story about Onsager's son adding "* ETC" after many years: freakonomics.com/2009/09/etc-...

Two years into this bloody war that caused so much pain and loss.

RFK Jr. should definitely get a Nobel in economics for reducing housing prices in the US

40 years ago Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn reported about a new enzyme in the protozoon Tetrahymena called "telomere terminal transferase" Known today as telomerase. They received the 2009 Nobel in physiology and medicine. The same organism also 'contributed' to science the 1st ribozyme.

A very cool work on plant carbon exudation into the root and rhizosphere by Claudia Knief www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Please repost -- The Univ. California Davis dept of Plant Pathology is hiring a Fungal biologist / Mycologist Applications due Dec 1 Application portal: recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07339 Screenshot shows part of the job posting (with alt-text of the same text)

Nobel prize week is approaching. In 1980 Paul Berg was awarded the Nobel prize on recombinat DNA development. Does anyone know why were Herbert Boyer (Genentech co-founder) and Stanley Cohen left out of this honor? Both of them are still alive to correct a mistake...

uniQure company reports gene therapy clinical trial results showing that miRNA-like silencing of the huntingtin gene slowed progression of the Huntington’s disease by 75% after three years. The miRNA is delivered by AAV via a neurosurgery. Amazing. I don't hold their stocks...

Quite insane if true

A recent cool preprint by John Whitney's lab on a new family of antibacterial proteins secreted by Gram-positive bacteria that enter and kill a broad spectrum of bacteria. Cell entry is receptor-independent and relies on cleavage by a co-secreted protease and the PMF. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

40 years ago Eyal Bartov took a picture of one of the last beautiful leopards in Israel, resting next to the dead sea. Unfortunately they have probably gone extinct in Israel. The last one was seen in 2007.

Shana Tova. Happy new Jewish year. Wishin for a scientifically productive and a peaceful year, with normal leadership around the world.

With the depressing reality of the ongoing horrible war (including a mssile alarm during the ceremony) there is a small moment of joy: Three students from the lab received MSc degrees today: Ofir Segev, summa cum laude Aleks Danov, magna cum laude Avital Akerman, magna cum laude #uberProudPI

Keyser Söze was introduced 30 years ago.

On this week, 40 years ago, my friend Ralph Isberg, then a postdoc with Stan Falkow, reported the discovery of the 1st invasin gene in @nature.com "We report here the identification of a single genetic locus from this organism (Y. pseudotuberculosis) that is sufficient to convert the innocuous

Lab's 7th birthday, farewell to summertime in Palmahim beach.

Are you interested in joining our lab as a molecular microbiologist postdoc fellow to study new antimicrobial proteins or new bacterial genes that facilitate adaptation to different hosts? Check out The Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program which offer generous funding. zuckermanstem.org

By Alex Taubin

We covered the highly elegant Gamma-Mobile-Trio paper in our lab's journal club. Highly recommended reading, by my colleagure @drdorsalomon.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting to see our protein binder design pipeline BindCraft published in its final form in @Nature ! This has been an amazing collaborative effort with Lennart, Christian, @sokrypton.org, Bruno and many other amazing lab members and collaborators. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tens of thousands in Tel Aviv are calling to stop the war and return of all hostages after nearly 700 days.

Without googling (or chatGPTing...): How many countries in Europe have total fertility rate above the replacement rate? (2.1 births per woman)

"IN SILICO DRUG DISCOVERY FOR NDM -1 METALLO β LACTAMASE INHIBITORS for KLEBSIELLA PUEUMONIAE" Add "GREAT" to the title and you'll have Trump's 1st manuscript

On our next microbiology journal club I will host Dr. Frederik Schulz @fmschu.bsky.social‬ from JGI and LBNL, California. Title: Frontiers in Discovery of New Lineages of Life huji.zoom.us/j/8502937529... Meeting ID: 850 2937 5290 Passcode: 337074 Monday, Aug 25th 9:00 Israel time

The crowd is growing. Reported 400K protesters in Tel Aviv Credit: Yair Palti

4 years ago I was honored to host the legendary Elio Schaechter in the microbiology journal club, when he was only 93 yo... Elio told us about very peculiar microbes that travel 1 mm/sec, reside inside mitochondria, ride a microbial bus...He named my kids who also joined "micro microbiologists" RIP

A nice experiment in mindsharing on X platform. Neriya Fisch uploaded two pics of a relatively light and heavy weight objects seen here. Dozens of people estimated their weights. The Ferari and helicopter's mean estimated weight were 10% and 17% below and above the real weights, respectively.

Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it? Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

A great study!