"In particular, these models highlight a pernicious feedback loop: increasing submissions to top journals exhausts the pool of suitable peer reviewers, resulting in lower quality peer reviews that encourage yet more authors to take a chance on submitting their paper to a prestigious venue."

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology. We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

The imperiled peer review system @carlbergstrom.com @plosbiology.org journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... open-access

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

I did it, with Mendelian genetics as a special case of normal polygenic and pleiotropic inheritance - it works great. See 'Why do we have to learn this stuff"? (journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...) and 'Putting my money where my mouth is' (www.cell.com/trends/genet...

Terrific essay on unavoidable complexity by @philipcball.bsky.social "It is not yet clear what a curriculum—not to mention both a public and a professional narrative—that begins [w/pleiotropy + polygenicity] would look like. But it would surely look more like real biology. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

You know that annoying NSF form "List every coauthor/co-PI from the last 4y" ? At @cevianlabs.io we built a free tool that drafts the COI form from your PDF CV in minutes. Check it out 👇

Latest from @gibbological.bsky.social. "We [use] microbial community-scale metabolic models to predict probiotic engraftment and microbiota-mediated short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production in response to probiotic and prebiotic interventions...w/75-80% accuracy." journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Thank you to @joshuasweitz.bsky.social. The origin of the current assault on science and public health has a direct tie to COVID contrarianism. But Bhattacharya, Prasad and the rest couldn’t rise without help and patronage. 1/ joshuasweitz.substack.com/p/grievance-...

Keep cheering for our Olympic athletes, they deserve it more than ever www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

“We were stunned [about the prescience] for a while, but we’ve really gotten to the point where it’s really sad. It’s just sad how predictable and lame and obvious and wrong it all is. Fascism is just a total fail in the end.” www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-featur...

We have posted data providing real-time measurement of human neutralizing antibody landscape to seasonal influenza. Data explain spread of subclades K (H3N2) & D.3.1.1 (H1N1), identify subclade K subvariants w reduced neutralization, & can inform choice of strains for next vaccine.

😲 glad i didn't go riding on the Armstrong trail today! Ice Jam break --> flash flooding NE of Pittsburgh

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So thought-provoking. Seems too good to be true, w/ tradeoffs to be discovered. Incredible: *Intranasal liposome w/ TLR4+7/8 ligands + ovalbumin *protected vs SARS-CoV-2 & Staphylococcus aureus + other pathogens. *Tissue-resident T-cells imprint alveolar macrophages www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

How does treatment induced antibiotic resistance happen in real-world infections? We analysed 25k Pseudomonas isolates from 180 patients in a clinical trial to find out! TLDR: The ecological and evolutionary paths are surprisingly diverse & complex even in patients receiving identical treatment…

So thought-provoking. Seems too good to be true, w/ tradeoffs to be discovered. Incredible: *Intranasal liposome w/ TLR4+7/8 ligands + ovalbumin *protected vs SARS-CoV-2 & Staphylococcus aureus + other pathogens. *Tissue-resident T-cells imprint alveolar macrophages www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Special Collection focused on Biofilms in #JBacteriol 👇 connected to the 2025 ASM Conference on Biofilms @asm.org @asmbiofilms2025.bsky.social

Happy to announce that I have been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at VUMC. What a wild and fun ride it has been… I couldn’t have achieved this without my amazing trainees’ dedication, my family’s patience and the support from colleagues and mentors. Let’s keep swimming. Cheers 🥂!

Our latest is out today in @plosbiology.org: "Metabolic modeling reveals determinants of prebiotic and probiotic treatment efficacy across multiple human intervention trials" @isbscience.org @uwbioe.bsky.social @uwgenome.bsky.social doi.org/10.1371/jour...

She did it fam 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🥇

SweatScience FTW: I ❤️ Alex Hutchinson's scientific writing on athletic performance and health. This is A+, a proper post-publication peer review of a paper that questions its conclusions while recognizing its value. Read the blog, if only for its title👇🏻 open.substack.com/pub/sweatsci...

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

“This story does not have a happy ending, and I can assure you the villains do not get punished in the end. If that is your motivation, try again, start over. But you also need to understand — and this is equally important — that we’ve already won. The reward is right now, this minute, this moment”

One of the biggest questions in biology is how complex cells evolved about 2 billion years ago. Here's my new story on how scientists are solving the mystery of eukaryotes like us. Gift link: nyti.ms/4qMbo22

Join us tomorrow for an evolutionary medicine special of internal conflicts!

My PhD work with the inimitable Joy Bergelson looking at local adaptation in a super-cool generalist pathogen that nucleates ice and decimates your favorite crop plant 🌱 👾 🧬 Thrilled to see this out (& reminded by @vscooper.micropopbio.org to celebrate each win)! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excellent line-up of speakers

I love this paper, and want to add a little nugget from our work on conjugative pilus-dependent phages, in which we found a repeated evolutionary relationship between phages targeting the T4P and T4SS: (two paragraphs, search for T4P, also one of them in FigS3) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dear friends and fans of evolutionary biology & medicine (#EvMed), deadlines for the 2026 meeting in Kiel Germany are coming up. Looks to be excellent! March 1, 2026: Abstract submission deadline and travel award decisions April 1, 2026: Abstract decisions open.substack.com/pub/evmedrev...

🤯 *PhiPseq of 108 health/envt variables + human genetic variation maps antibody repertoire in 1,212 adults. *Age, sex, birth continent affect specific viral epitopes *Abs vs variable flu epitopes decrease w/age *Viral Abs & host genetics affect autoimmune disease risk www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 New preprint! Our 4-lab team evolved Streptococcus pneumoniae in antibiotic-treated mice of varying immune states and discovered something surprising: bacteria rarely evolved resistance. Instead, they found a different way to survive — by rewiring RNA turnover. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) has long supported translational research benefiting military service members. cdmrp.health.mil/prmrp/default Like all US science funding, CDMRP has also dwindled. Insane funding rate of only 2% for the PRMRP program in 2025:

A new systematic analysis of intermittent fasting from 22 randomized trials shows no advantage for weight loss or other outcomes compared with regular diet advice www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10....

Researchers of the evolution of plasticity, tolerance, and resistance, take note. Many common themes for precision targeting of AMR, for instance.

Writing a thing, I recall this counterfactual piece (open access) which I wrote a little over nine years ago, with the kind encouragement of @roliroberts.bsky.social

Huge congratulations to all of the amazing new AAM fellows! Sincere appreciation for the many other outstanding microbiologists who were nominated.

The American Academy of Microbiology proudly announces the election of 63 fellows to the Class of 2026. Over the past 50 years, the Academy has elected +2,700 distinguished scientists. This year, the new fellows hail from 14 countries. Read press release: asm.social/2OC

Lack of coevolution should be default assumption, but it’s not, because it’s easy to imagine coevolutionary scenarios But most microbial populations live very complicated lives Multi level selection is hard when generation times orders of magnitude different and microbial environments are complex

Sometimes I miss Twitter Where is #FedValentines?

High energy pulsed electromagnetic devices may indeed injure, given a Norwegian test. Advice from scientific panel chaired by David Relman also ignored. Gift 🔗 wapo.st/4kwZhEg

Thankful to be part of this study looking at how the marine sponge and its microbes change gene activity across day and night in the natural ocean environment: Diel transcriptional dynamics of a marine sponge and its microbiome in a natural environment link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Honored to be elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology! I look forward to working alongside my colleagues to advance microbial science for the benefit of society. Learn more about the 2026 Fellowship Class: press release link

Congratulations to Santiago F. Elena on being elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology! This prestigious honor recognizes their outstanding contributions to advancing microbiology. Learn more about the 2026 Fellowship Class: asm.org/press-releas...

I am seeking a postdoc to join my group at UCLA -- ideally the candidate would have some experience in either population genetics or microbes/microbiome (computational background needed). We have a range of projects and are happy to tailer to your interests. Please dm/email me if interested.

The moment you’ve all been waiting for… 🦠 SAVE THE DATE! 🦠 BBM2026 will be held from June 22nd - 23rd at Boston University’s George Sherman Union. Our featured speaker this year is Dr. Eric Skaar from Vanderbilt University! Registration opens soon! More info at: bostonbacterial.org #BBM2026

NIH, CDC, HHS, and all of US cancer research and public health needed and still needs protection from Russell Vought and the P2025 White House. The defining feature of 2025 at NIH was not merely grant changes. It was unprecedented levels of presidential interference with NIH decision-making. 1/

Cross reactive antibodies produced by people with rare genetic variants explain the very rare clotting disorders in people receiving adenovirus-based COVID vaccines Gift🔗 www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...

Powerful portrait of the community of Clairton southeast of Pittsburgh. It's the home of Clairton coke works, the largest facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, which endured a deadly explosion in August 2025. Part 1 of a 2 part series. www.publicsource.org/clairton-pa-...