Cathy is one of the most brilliant, supportive, and thoughtful scientists and mentors I’ve had the privilege of working with. I would recommend working with Cathy to any student interested in bacteria-phage interactions. Congrats, Cathy!! We will miss you dearly.

I gave a talk last year at TEDxNewEngland aimed at introducing the idea of viral sociality to a general audience, including implications for evolution & virology. Video now available online below. #socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪

📢 We're seeking a postdoc to work on a project funded by HFSP @hfspo.bsky.social at the intersection of bacterial physiology, ecology and evolution. You can find more details about the project, the position, and how to apply here www.dalbellolab.com/hfsp-project! #bacteria #ecosky #MevoSky #microSky

Published in Nature today! Here, we sought to systematically ask how natural community's metabolism changes with the environment. A simple consumer-resource model can predict N-cycle metabolism (nitrate use) and, more importantly, the mechanism behind its change. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to get to work on GRS 2027 with @duhitasant.bsky.social!! Hit me up here or via email if you have any feedback or ideas for the next Micro Pop Biol GRS!

Thanks especially to fearless leaders @reeskassen.bsky.social and Christina Burch, and to @drhhnz.bsky.social and @wcratcliff.bsky.social. It was a great to see the process that led up to an amazing 40th anniversary conference 🎉🍰

Super stoked and honored to be elected as co-chair along with @ksbakes.bsky.social for the Microbial Population Biology 2029 GRC! And looking forward to a great 2027 meeting in Andover chaired by @drhhnz.bsky.social and @wcratcliff.bsky.social !

#ASMicrobe day 3 vibes

For #ASMicrobe folks - looking forward to a busy phage day on Sunday!

Come check out my poster tomorrow at #ASMicrobe in the E&EB section! We found that repressor mutations in Pf prophages sparked a coevolutionary dynamic that resulted in loss of twitch motility and susceptibility to virulent pilus-targeting phage. Would love to chat about all things phage :).

Yo folks, it is time to apply to *hands down the best conference in microbial evolution and ecology*: www.grc.org/microbial-po... We begin reviewing apps in 10 days! We strongly encourage everyone to give a poster. DM w/ questions.

Former @paulturnerlab.bsky.social postdoc @norapyenson.bsky.social featured Yale News today! Check out this overview on Nora's work or the full paper out in @science.org news.yale.edu/2024/12/16/n... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Is it “winner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The UCSB KITP QBio course on mobile elements was amazing 🩵 With excellent projects led by @paulturnerlab.bsky.social, Roberto Kolter, Joanne Emerson, Richard Neher, @erikvannimwegen.bsky.social, Ben Good (+ me). Course began with a wetlab bootcamp, Dallas Mould demonstrating the first experiments..

Check out the latest edition of Rees’ book, which provides an exhaustive synthesis of how microbial experimental evolution studies have been applied to answer some of the big questions in ecology and evolution! A must read for researchers starting out in MEE!

I still need them. I still feed them. Now they’re 64 (days old).

Check out this amazing new paper led by PhD student Helen Stone where she shows that pseudoviruses studded with spike proteins from three different SARS-CoV-2 strains can enter cells expressing dolphin and beluga whale ace2! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Not an in person workshop, but ASM has recordings of their genomics webinars here: asm.org/Webinars/tra... I've also been working on a list of commonly used bacterial population genomics software if that's at all useful: mortimerlab.com/microbial_ge...

Dear microbial peeps, Looking for a workshop that will give me a solid foundation in analyzing bacterial WGS and population sequencing data. I have no prior experience doing this. Are y'all aware of any good workshops (esp. in North America) for gaining these skills? Thanks!

As populations diversify, what kind of interactions evolve? In this paper, Houpt & Kassen investigate how the evolution of interactions in microbial communities depends on environmental complexity. Read now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

gcplyr v1.7 is out now! gcplyr is an R package that makes it easy to wrangle and do model-free analysis of #microbial growth curve data This ver includes: more merges, better docs including how to do multiple plates of data, and other improvements 🦠 🧫 #MicroSky 🧪 github.com/mikeblazanin...

As I read this amazing new pre-print by @olimeacock.bsky.social, I was thinking about the implications for micro experimental evol. Much of what we know about how microbes evolve is via experiments that passage microbes in batch culture with ~1:100 daily transfers.. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Not one but two Yale EEB-led papers in this month's edition of Evolution! Something about that shared office space is leading to good science... Looking forward to checking these out! academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

An honour to be highlighted by my undergrad in their post about the McMaster Faculty of Science's new Office of Undergraduate Research! Undergrads, if you're interested in getting involved in research check out my tips at the bottom of the article! dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/und...

Nathalie is SUPERSTAR in our department who studies whether non-adaptive radiations are really so non-adaptive. Join me at her talk on Monday at noon eastern!

@reeskassen.bsky.social now on bluesky! Give him a follow!

This is a great opportunity👇 If you want to be stateside, I’m also searching for a similar role 🧪🧬

So excited to share that my paper with Rees Kassen in American Naturalist is officially typeset and available on the AmNat website! Please check out our exploration of how ecological interactions emerge de novo as populations diversify. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Let's goooooooooooooooooooooooooo