Lauric acid: a promising antimicrobial for the selective inhibition of Staphylococcus epidermidis strains associated with infection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680683v1

Very cool preprint, on a 'defined' synthetic bacterial community consisting of several strict anaerobes in microaerophilic conditions. #anaerobes 🧪

Like...this is the biggest corruption scandal the NIH has experienced in its entire history and its not even close. Half of a BILLION dollars to a single project as a result of political spoils. That's the equivalent of several hundred R01s.

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

So excited our antibiotic potentiation story is out 🤩 Led by the extraordinary @manonlang.bsky.social with @fox-science.bsky.social & @amazeld.bsky.social +amazing collaborators @immunobladder.bsky.social @imaneelmeouche.bsky.social 🦠 We believe it can make a difference in #AMR infections!

A suspected Ebola outbreak is occurring in DRC. This is bad at any time! But it’s particularly worrisome now when US capacity to detect and respond to deadly biothreats has been purposefully dismantled. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

🧵How to write and manage your first research budgets The point of funding is to convert it into quality research. A well-spent research budget should fund the idea it was raised on, plus revision experiments, plus preliminary data for the next grant. So you need to spend, while avoiding waste.

Baby dies of whooping cough as childhood vaccinations continue to fall #TomorrowsPapersToday

Strep ❤️ Viridans streptococci DNA found in ~42% of coronary plaques, forming biofilms ignored by macrophages Once fragments escape, TLR2 senses them—potentially triggering an inflammatory response that disrupts plaque stability and increases heart attack risk www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/...

Veillonella promotes C. diff infection in Crohn’s disease Oral commensal Veillonella promotes C. difficile germination by disrupting bile acid recycling. Veillonella LPS activates signaling to suppress bile acid transporter, preventing bile acid reabsorption www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Couldn’t agree more guys, some of the conclusions drawn in papers off the back of a database match or a blast search is deeply worrying, without full understanding of what genes are required for resistance (like the glycopeptide operon example from Willem!

VERY INTERESTING AfuPmV-1M, a dsRNA mycovirus in 𝘼𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙪𝙨 𝙛𝙪𝙢𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙩𝙖𝙨, boosts fungal stress tolerance, melanin, virulence In vivo, antiviral (ribavirin) treatment cut viral load and improved mouse survival—mycoviruses are hidden “backseat drivers” of fungal disease www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lovely. #chocolate www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Job Alert: A stealth startup focused on non-cancer diagnostics is keen to hire a deep learning for genomics/bio engineer. I am an advisor for the startup & closely involved. Please see the job description below and get in touch if interested. Plz forward.

Just take my hand and I'll lead ya I promise life will be sweeter And it said so in my dreams

Woah, Candida! 👀 #yeast #fungi

Red 🔴, Blue 🔵 and….Green 🟢? Just in time for July 4, check out our latest publication on the design and evaluation of new fluorescent strains of oral streptococci to use in microscopy applications, such as mixed-species biofilms journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Fascinating new paper reveals a new gut microbiome connection to heart disease. Microbes produce imidazole propionate (ImP), which directly triggers atherosclerosis through immune activation - even without high cholesterol. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🟡 Heavy metal star Ozzy Osbourne has died, just weeks after reuniting with his Black Sabbath bandmates and performing a huge farewell concert for fans.⁠ ⁠ In a statement, his family said he died "surrounded by love".⁠ ⁠ news.sky.com/story/ozzy-o...

Ready, set, mango! 🥭 Celebrating National Mango Day with @compoundchem.com From beta-carotene, giving that golden glow, to over 300 volatile compounds crafting their irresistible aroma, mangoes are a masterclass in natural chemistry. #NationalMangoDay #FlavourAndFragrances #FoodScience

New BBC article on fungal infections in which we are quoted: www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Happy to see this out! We analysed the dental #microbiome of children with #primaryimmune deficiencies underwent non-surgical therapy. Prevalence of gum disease was higher in this group and the aim was to look at longitudinal data to see if therapy helped. 1/ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This is a legitimately incredible result that hints at something fundamental about plasmids that we don’t yet understand

Over 120 mRNA cancer trials are now at risk as the Trump admin cuts funding & tells researchers to scrub “mRNA” from grant proposals. What started as COVID fearmongering is now derailing life-saving cancer research. Hope remains - but scientists say time is running out. zurl.co/YBGNy

‘MMR vaccination uptake rate for children by the age of five in Liverpool is just 73% ... The World Health Organisation says a threshold of 95% is needed to achieve herd immunity’ Please protect child by allowing them to be vaccinated. If you are worried, talk to your doctor. Misinformation kills.

LLMs are rewriting the norms 😅

Excited to launch our AlphaGenome API goo.gle/3ZPUeFX along with the preprint goo.gle/45AkUyc describing and evaluating our latest DNA sequence model powering the API. Looking forward to seeing how scientists use it! @googledeepmind

Nature research paper: Functional amyloid proteins confer defence against predatory bacteria https://go.nature.com/44RUndV

New preprint! 🧪 This was a fantastic collaboration led by an expert team of skin biologists at the @blizardinstitute.bsky.social who developed 3D skin models to study host–microbiome interactions in dandruff. Our lab @qmul-coirm.bsky.social contributed to the microbiology! 1/

New preprint! 🧪 This was a fantastic collaboration led by an expert team of skin biologists at the @blizardinstitute.bsky.social who developed 3D skin models to study host–microbiome interactions in dandruff. Our lab @qmul-coirm.bsky.social contributed to the microbiology! 1/

Microbially-competent skin organotypics reveal dysregulated AhR signalling in microbial dysbiosis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.01.662505v1

Please read this @khoureld.bsky.social story about the consequences of USAID cuts. Children are dying from starvation on the streets of Sudan — and the food that could save them, already paid for by our government, is languishing in U.S. warehouses. (No paywall)

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages. ki.se/en/about-ki/...

They’ll have to do 4 Rod Stewart specials & a Clapton tribute documentary as penance…

When all you wanted to do was make profitable podcasts glorifying yourself and you actually stumbled into a vital, but boring and unglamorous job.

Measles PCR ready, mumps PCR ready..how long to hold out before bringing in a rubella PCR? #ReturnofthePreventableInfections #VaccinesWork

We estimate that ~10 novel archaeal and ~145 bacterial phyla are "hiding" among the unbinned contigs. This corresponds to an increase of ~50% and ~83% relative to ref dbs. For genera, we find that >3 novel genera are discoverable per each recognized genus in the reference.

This becomes even clearer in an "incremental" rarefaction analysis. Although human-assoc and gut samples account for >2/3 of samples in the survey, they only contribute 1/3 of total discovered diversity. Most unbinned species species lurk among soil, aquatic & wetland samples.

The team's first preprint is out! Led by ‪ ‪@vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social‬‬ & @omaistrenko.bsky.social , we asked a question (almost) as old as microbiology: how many prokaryotic species exist on Earth? More specifically, how much diversity is "hiding" in existing metagenomic data? A 🧵.

My grants: genetic complementation in cis or in trans; cis- and trans-SNARE protein complexes that drive membrane fusion in cells; the cis- and trans-Golgi organelle. Cis- and trans-fatty acids. All of this is so profoundly, deeply, catastrophically idiotic.

tagging #SymbioSky #ProtistsOnSky

Microbiome-Dependent Functional Responses to Structurally Distinct Oligosaccharides Revealed by Metaproteomics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661555v1

RFKJr’s handpicked ACIP may have approved a new RSV monoclonal for infants but they rejected hearing evidence on thiomersal by scientists and instead opted to hear from an anti-thiomersal lobbyist nurse practitioner before voting to only approve flu shots if they don’t contain thiomersal.

50,000 years of evolutionary history of India: Impact on health and disease variation: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

A room with lots of NMR magnets and LC/MS machines is also a good bet for strong air conditioning!

The United States reneged on its foreign aid commitments. Nepal’s malnourished children and their families are paying the price. Learn more in this week's issue of Science: scim.ag/46cnJFO

Wait. What?

Yes, but you really ought to give the 16S more of a chance by doing full length rather than a short region. #microsky

A new nitrogen allotrope is news, and a neutral one that can be studied spectroscopically is even more so. Does it blow up? Well, sure. But that’s not its whole personality;