It comes with both great excitement and regret that I have attained a PhD in Microbiology. I'm excited for what comes next, but sad that I can no longer use the phrase "Dear Dr. Sieler" to filter out 90% of the spam emails I receive. 🪦 RIP my inbox

This candid photo taken of me on my last slide of my PhD defense really sums it all up, doesn't it? 😆 Thank you to all who attended in person, virtually, or wished me well wishes. I'm officially a PhD! Still processing that, but happy to moving on to the next chapter of my life 🚀 #Phd

I designed a limited run of zebrafish gut microbiome-themed stickers for anyone attending my defense next Monday. Love the holographic effect on them! #Zebrafish #Gutmicrobiome #stickers

A host has never been just a host. A host has always lived as a multiscale holobiont made from context-sensitive cells of host and microorganisms. It is ultimately this dynamic composition that determines forms, functions, and their endless variations. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My entire PhD dissertation. 5 years. 45k words. Countless laughs and tears :) What a journey

Does anyone have any tips or advice for how to include supplementary tables and figures into your dissertation when you have 100's of them? For example, my first two research chapters I have all of mysupplementary tab/fig in supplementary docs, but how do people incorporate these? #PhD #Gradschool

~25 days until I defend my PhD! “Defining the context dependence of how the zebrafish gut microbiome responds to environmental stressors” Aug 25, 10am PST Please message me if you’d like to attend virtually! #zebrafish #microbiome #microsky

We are on the lookout for postdocs for two different projects at the intersection of ecology, evolution, and the human microbiome. See thread for more information and reach out!

This week's #substack is a recent podcast conversation, where we chat about the human microbiome, health, and some new work from the lab that involves predicting diet from poop DNA. gibbological.substack.com/p/a-conversa...

It’s finally published! Yay 🎉 Check the thread to get the gist or check the article in the link 👇👇

This 4:30am post brought to you by our sponsors at Anxiety and Looming Deadlines. Now back to our regular programming of tossing and turning.

I’m really enjoying the critical discussions happening already at the @microsocequity.bsky.social Microbiome Stewardship Summit! It’s not too late to join the Summit and workshops this week! microbesandsocialequity.com/events/mse-s... #MicrobiomeSky #MicroSky #Microbiomes #Microbiology 🧪🧫

July will have some very cool opportunities for folks interested in #STEM! Check out some of them on my #Substack newsletter. For more updates and regular opportunities in your inbox, subscribe for free ☺️❤️ microbephd.substack.com/p/july-oppor... #scicomm #academicsky #academia #research

Woke up today with a dozen new grey hairs in my beard. Also, definitely unrelated, I have 58 more days until I defend 😳

The virtual Summit on Microbiome Stewardship is just two weeks away!!! Program details and free registration can be found here.  Please note, the webinars and the workshop each require registration to help us manage attendance. Who should attend? Students, and professionals from any discipline,…

Left a couple stickers at the Piedmont Station food cart pod in Portland, Or this weekend.

Did I finish the last book I posted about on here? No. Am I starting a new book and posting about here? Yes.

SciCom folks! Where do y’all buy stickers now? I remember there were suggestions when all the bad stuff about sticker 🫏 came out but I can’t remember any of them! 🧪

T-minus 90 days to PhD defense and all I gotta do is: - Revise peer review edits to manuscript - Complete dissertation 4th chp analysis and write - Write intro and conclusion for diss - Prepare defense presentation - Assist a microbiome analysis workshop - Try not to lose my mind I think that's all

Using museum specimens for microbiome analyses? We tested it out - and it seems these samples could be an untapped resource for understanding host-microbe interactions! ⬇️

Very excited to present the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database (GBR-MGD), a comprehensive DB of 1000s of high-quality prokaryote, virus, plasmid, and chromosome-level eukaryote MAGs using Nanopore long reads. Subthreads incoming. Please share widely. 🙂 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I’m trademarking “Shit Eating Grin Toothpaste”, a probiotic toothpaste that improves your dental hygiene and mental health. Stay tuned for our next product “FMT: Fecal Microbiota Toothpaste”

Microbiome folks: one of my former students is a Gilliam fellow & is looking for an HHMI lab for a postdoc in the next year-ish. She has a lot of bioinformatics (16S for sure, I am not sure what else) experience. Have any leads?

Just heard two people sneeze at the same time and then say “cheers”

Wow! Very cool. But, I guess this means I need to rerun my transcriptomics data I analyzed a couple weeks ago 🫠

Some exciting news! NCBI has finished the annotation pipeline for our new #zebrafish reference sequence GRCz12tu: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/refseq/annot... This is a big step up in data depth and quality and should be super helpful going forward.

When I was in middle school I used to use thesauruses to find sumptuously decorated words. I need the opposite now, a word squeezer? How can I fit the most words into the fewest characters possible for this dang proposal?

Some samples were clustering very tightly in my transcriptomics data, and I couldn’t figure out why. Nothing about the sample’s metadata, treatment assignment, or microbiome characteristics seemed to line up. Then I looked at what the gene functions were identified as: 🤭

900 People Are Collectively Driving an 'Internet Roadtrip' on Google Street View 🔗 www.404media.co/900-people-a...

A PhD position is available in my lab at the University of Geneva to explore the interaction between gut microbes and behavior in social bees. Please share with potential candidates. Application deadline: May 25th. More info and how to apply: tinyurl.com/PhDmgbee

Since science is on its way out, I’m putting together a portfolio for my stock photo modeling career 📸 Rion Mooneyham

I really dislike how often the bloodborne pathogen trainer is saying the phrase "Portals of Entry"

Woke up today and realized it’s May, and I have 3.5 months until I defend my PhD 😳 Where did the last 3 months go?

Happening this Thursday! RSVP at: tinyurl.com/BoldPhD #academicsky #microsky #blackinmicro #phd #gradschool #stem #brownu

This month's sticker drop from @gutmichaelbio.me are frickin amazing, as always!!

“Home is where the bidet is” embroidered patches just arrived! I think they turned out great 🤎

Are there examples of anaerobic marine eukaryotes (micro or macro) that raise the pH of their surroundings to modulate microbial activity or communities? pH 9-ish.

This AI gen poster design for the Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center (HCMPH) symposium looks tacky as hell 👎👎 I would not want my research associated with this image. What’s going on with the puff balls? Is it DNA or a ladder made of Cheetos? Are those pickles or giant balloons? 🤦🏻‍♂️

It’s 2025, and this mystery still hasn’t been solved… …that ends TODAY! www.instagram.com/p/DJKb8vzBtHw/

Physical therapy is very efficient. The tiniest movements for maximal exertion 😩

In bioinformatics, it's a often a struggle between "Do I correct the problems with my 8 hr long pipeline and rerun it?" vs "Do I potentially spend 8 hrs making a dozen scripts to fix the problems created by the original 8 hr long pipeline?" It often takes 8 hours to figure out the answer.

Update to the researchers who secretly ran a massive unauthorized AI persuasion experiment on Reddit users by pushing AI bots into a debate subreddit: Reddit is issuing "formal legal demands" against the researchers. University tells us researchers not publishing now www.404media.co/reddit-issui...

I'm excited to participate in this great initiative! #scicomm belongs to everyone!! ✊🏾🔥💕 #microsky #blackinmicro #academicsky

We have a starter pack! Follow along and DM if you are part of the OHMC and would like to be added: go.bsky.app/7X9RRT2

I’m getting targeted ads on instagram to emigrate to Australia, a quote “safe and secure societies”, and the place that is home to the deadliest creatures on the planet 😂

Maybe the underpaid humans working behind the scenes appreciate a little politeness when you ask them to do your homework assignment

Incidentally, is anyone interested in buying my overpriced probiotic that contains a bajillion bacteria that will boost your health, make you super attractive, and make you live forever?? /jk

Co-opting this same checklist for microscopy images.

I am thrilled to share the first manuscript from the Wiles lab! We present "Phollow", an in vivo phage-tagging approach that enables direct observation of phage outbreaks with single-virion resolution by live imaging. Here some highlights 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Some people have asked me about my process for creating portraits like my #SilencedScienceStories one! Well, this week's #Substack is about that 🎨🧪✍️ Read here: open.substack.com/pub/microbep... #scicomm #sciart #microbephd