Happy for Fro on his closest-ever-finish #Indy500 win! Ripped Malukas' heart out at the end.

We need a microbial "culture announcement" journal, like we have genome announcements. ASMs MRA *could* work. But, they require deposition into a culture collection, which has many barriers from both sides (depositor and collection).

#AbSciCon #AbSciCon2026

Come See our Grad Student @astrobio-agb.bsky.social this week at #AbSciCon2026. She'll be presenting her research on how desert microbes can literally drink water vapor from the air! 🌵💧 #Microbiology #Extremophiles #Desiccation #Astrobiology

One of my favorite people in the world has a postdoc open! Go work for Rosa Leon Zayas! careers.msu.edu/jobs/postdoc...

Our updated preprint is live. Anergiobiosis: a testable framework for microbial life under extreme energy flux limitation with @environmicrobio.bsky.social and @jenbiddle.bsky.social ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Great commentary by Don Cowan about our recent mSystems paper: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Does anyone who has worked with low-oxygen/anoxic seawater have any advice for setting up microcosms from Niskin bottles? What methods do you use to prevent/minimize oxygen contamination?

Sad to hear about Craig Venter. He was a central figure as I was coming up through the ranks. He was a visionary and the data produced under him was and still is extraordinarily valuable to the community. I never had a chance to to meet him. Condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.

Having sat through my fair share of track meets, $1100 for a single seat for half day of non-final heats at the Olympics is simply crazy money. I'd rather (and will) support my local college teams.

Congratulations to Alexandra Z. Worden, a senior scientist in the Bay Paul Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory, for being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her groundbreaking research in ocean biogeochemistry! Read more here: go.mbl.edu/worden

I'm blogging over on substack - no subscription needed. open.substack.com/pub/profmcin...

This was excellent.

Very frustrated by the ever-growing list of rules and administrative burden for EVERYTHING in academia.

WOW! Soil is where it's at!

Is there a consensus for ANI differences associated with Order, Family, or Genus level divergence in bacteria? I'm looking at ~79% ANI between two genomes and am wondering where that falls.

And if you have not been accepted, understand that this is a VERY weird time for grad admissions. Lack of acceptance may not be due to YOU, but due to uncontrollable factors at the university. Keep trying in the future.

Our group enjoyed this workshop last year, Highly recommend!

How do you make methane from phosphite? Through interspecies H2 transfer! Our paper on lithosyntrophy is finally published - read about how we resolved the metabolic interactions in this phosphite oxidizing, methanogenic enrichment culture! #phosphorus #methanogenesis www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Pretty confident things like this (along with long hiring timelines, slower reimbursements, etc) will increase in frequency as universities continue reducing staff and "consolidating" due to budget cuts. Ask me how I know.

It's not even March and the A/C is kicking on... 😩🥵

Applications are open for PREP Bio at the University of Oregon! A great opportunity for postbacs looking for additional research experience while preparing for graduate school. More here: cas.uoregon.edu/UO-PREP-Bio

Anne is doing amazing work at Portland State. Can't wait to watch this one!

Happy Birthday! I first read about the LTEE in high school in a science magazine my Bio teacher had in the classroom. I don't think I thought "I want to be a microbiologist," but the article planted the seed. Amazing that it's nearly at "mid life" (by human standards)., excited for what's next!

Since everyone is posting pics of their weather... (not actually taken today, but it's comparable)

ICYMI, our work building on the recent "aeonophily" proposal. We define anergiobiosis (an-er-jee-oh-biosis) as "life without energy" to describe life persisting on maintenance energy inputs alone. So-called "aeonophiles" may be specialists under this umbrella. Feedback welcome!

Two roles for two postdocs: Evolution of defined methanogenic consortia Evolution of complex digester-derived microbiomes Application deadline: 4 March 2026 (23:59 DK time).

You are a strong fit if you have: - Hands-on experimental evolution experience (serial passaging/ continuous; replication; archiving of lines) - Time-series metagenomics (variant tracking), other omics (RNA/proteins) - 1–2 papers where exp. evol. + seq.-based trajectory tracking are central methods

Hiring: two 3-year Postdoc positions We’re looking for postdocs who can design and run directed laboratory evolution experiments in microbial communities under electrochemical stimulation, and link adaptations to performance using shotgun meta-omics.

"Imagine an elite sprinter, first among equals on a team... who is also expected to sell tickets, maintain the track, coach the junior team, and file the club tax returns. This would clearly be seen as a management flaw; in academia, it is seen as "the job"."

So chilly these last few days. Here in the 'dirty T' summer is the best 9 months of the year! We have summer (apparently now in Feb), super summer, and super-dee duper summer.

Interesting ideas. Also "Anergiobiosis" is a great death metal band name.

New preprint: "Anergiobiosis: a testable framework for microbial life under extreme power limitation", led by @uncultured.carinilab.com and coauthored by @jenbiddle.bsky.social and me. #microsky #testthyhypotheses #testablehypothesis 🦠🧪 ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

New preprint with @uncultured.carinilab.com and @environmicrobio.bsky.social : proposing a new view for subsurface life, one with a testable hypothesis and in line with current terms in physiology: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

New preprint! We propose "anergiobiosis" to describe microbial life at thermodynamic limits as a way of separating the physiological state from questions about aeonophilic extremophile specialization. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #Microbiology #Extremophiles #SubsurfaceMicrobiology #MicroSky

Trace gas oxidation supports sub-surface microbial communities across Namib Desert fog and aridity gradients https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.19.706496v1

We're looking to sponsor applications to the new NSF PRFB who are interested in using AI to tackle microbiology's "Great Plate Count Anomaly" Details below. Please share. #microsky #postdoc #AI #microbiology open.substack.com/pub/carinila...

Submit to our session "The art and science of microbial persuasion" focusing on microbial cultivation!

Avoid AirClean PCR workstations and save yourself some money on the predatory filter replacement scheme.

New UnCultured post is a "behind the paper" about our new editor's pick in the #mSystems Dormancy Special Collection. Started pre-pandemic—challenging times for studying persistence—fitting, right? uncultured.carinilab.com/p/when-bacte... journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

If you are interested in using AI to predict and test microbial (bacterial, archaeal) cultivation requirements, please reach out. We are ~waist deep in this already.

Chromid-like secondary replicons as key sites of biosynthetic gene clusters in Ktedonobacteria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703402v1

Worth noting Roger Penske (who owns Indycar) was a major Trump donor.

I was in graduate school at Stanford. I saw it happen on a television in our department. A very famous faculty member was unmoved and cracked wise about the tragedy. Me, I had to go home and just think. I guess I always dreamed of being out in the Black, not down here on the Flat. RIP, crew.

#microbiome friends, is there a database of cultured microbes that is readily searchable? Or a simple way to limit NCBI searches to cultured microbes?

You'd think after a gazillion years of doing this, MS Word would be able to easily handle large documents with pictures. But no.

Excited to see this published! A big part of why SAR11 is so tricky to grow like "normal" microbes.

Anyone's department actually having conversations about this yet?

Co-convening "The art and science of microbial persuasion" at #ISME20 with Fengping Wang. Cultivation advances: methods, media, uncultured lineages. Coaxing reluctant microbes? Submit your abstract & join us in NZ! isme.live.ws-django.co.uk/public/confe... isme.live.ws-django.co.uk/public/confe...