With Jeff Barrick's return to #MSU, the #LTEE was restarted today after a short pause (frozen) for the move. Today was daily transfer 12,301. With ~6.6 generations per day, they are now at ~82,007 generations. 100,000 generations is fast approaching! Are you ready, #Spartans? @msumgi.bsky.social

@pivotpod.bsky.social @karaswisher.bsky.social fun fact, the three groundbreaking technologies listed in a recent episode - CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, GLP1s - women scientists had a major role in their development.

Listen to my science origin story, 13 minutes and includes my recovery from being blind, paralyzed, and unable to breathe to running a lab, and a message about these perilous times for science. Some LGBTQIA+ and first gen uni representation too. www.buzzsprout.com/2513792/epis...

~1.5 years ago blood donation was opened up to gay men, and today I've reached the one gallon donation threshold! Still grateful for the change in the discriminatory rule. ***Consider donating if you're able to***

Evolution ( @aburmeister.bsky.social UWM, Tapan Goel, UMD, @justinmeyer.bsky.social) Ecology (Sarah Preheim JHU, @beckettstephen.bsky.social UMD, Daniel Muratore SFI, and Paul Fremont UMD) w/ @mariandm.bsky.social as our lead lab instructor.

A colleague and her brilliant daughter at the #nokings SD March. While these two march often, I’m encouraged by the number of new protestors in my network. Welcome!!

If randomly kidnapping people (including first grade kids) from places of work, education, worship, and immigration appointments and disappearing them without due process to foreign prisons does not meet your definition of fascism, then your definition of fascism is wrong.

Featuring stories by myself, @justinmeyer.bsky.social, two PhD students from @scrippsocean.bsky.social, and more!

Happy Pride from my home town!

What marker delineates when AI is sentient? When AI questions if humans - with their wetware - could actually be sentient.

I've started running routinely again, an activity I gave up 10 years ago when I started my faculty position. I am nowhere near as good as I used to be, so I am not setting any personal records. But, I am setting personal middle aged records for speed and distance. Is there a term for this?

ATTENTION: NSF GRANT RECIPIENTS We received a heads up from a trusted source that you should proactively download/print/screen shot any documentation on research.gov pertaining to your NSF awards, both those that are current and any that have closed in the last 5-6 years. 1/n

NSF Director stepping down. Email to staff on a Thursday. This doesn’t bode well for the typical Friday news dump.

Our latest paper, in which @brinda.eu (along with @zaminiqbal.bsky.social and others) introduces phylogenetic compression for storage and search of enormous microbial genome libraries, was published today in @naturemethods.bsky.social: rdcu.be/eg4OA 1/

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. Find out how your community may be impacted. Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org a 🧵

"I want parents who have children to know that opportunities for your kids, if they aspire to be scientists or engineers, are being stripped away right in front of you," the NSF employee told Axios. www.axios.com/2025/03/10/a...

It is finally out! Muntathar Al-Shimary, @doudna-lab.bsky.social , @cresslab.bsky.social and I present a gene knockdown tool that works in diverse bacteriophages: CRISPRi through antisense RNA Targeting (CRISPRi-ART)! Check it out @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy 37th birthday to @relenski.bsky.social long term evolution experiment. Here's a beautiful summary: the-ltee.org/history/

Join us this summer for a week of learning about the interdisciplinary study of bacteria-phage interactions.

A small moment of science in the world of the very small... announcing calls for applications from MS + PhD students + postdocs for a Summer School on Quantitative Phage-Bacteria Dynamics Across Scales U of Maryland, College Park, June 23-27, 2025 Apply by 3/21/25: bit.ly/phageschool2...

Educational opportunities for college students across the country are about to tank. A well written article for parents of college students by @joshuasweitz.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/joshuasw...

Looking forward to this! Important question, should I pack hot sauce? I know @luiszaman.bsky.social wouldn’t, but I’m thinking I may need my own supply in Germany! workshops.evolbio.mpg.de/event/119/

Clear and great writing on the value of the NSF! By @joshuasweitz.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/joshuasw...

Perfect timing for our new flag to be delivered!

When they go low, we bake, recover, and rally for 2026!!

Delighted to share news that our collaborative study with @justinmeyer.bsky.social 'Inferring strain-level mutational drivers of phage-bacteria interaction phenotypes arising during coevolutionary dynamics' is now officially out in Virus Evolution: academic.oup.com/ve/article/1...

Happy 45 x 45! The only perfect square most of us will see! 🤓https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FdPhDB/

Bioart, courtesy of the NIH. All images are in the public domain and available for download as high-quality SVGs. bioart.niaid.nih.gov

Grateful for the thoughtful and positive review of Asymptomatic by @cbo.bsky.social in Virus Evolution: "It is both an exemplar of accessible science communication and is the rigorous COVID-19 synthesis that we all deserved." academic.oup.com/ve/advance-a...

I love this study, it started as a way to identify mutations involved in coevolution - a fundamental evolutionary question - and is now contributing to growing interest for predicting phage-bacteria interactions to improve phage therapy. Congrats to the team!

‘many scientists have recently moved from Twitter to Blue Sky. I’ve tried switching to Mastodon, Post, and Threads and none seemed to take off, but Blue Sky seems different. I’d keep a look out for whether this platform becomes the primary social media site for scientists.’ to Biosci Comms Aug ‘23

This framing misses the bigger point. As I describe in my book (bit.ly/asymptomatic...) Bhattacharya co-led a flawed April 2020 study that wrongly concluded (wrong at the time) that COVID-19 was far less a threat given a misestimation of evidence of prior infections. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Hello new phage phollowers! I am shamelessly self-promoting mine and Angus Buckling's relatively new review "Critically evaluating the relative importance of phage in shaping microbial community composition" www.cell.com/trends/micro...

Post election door placard, it’s going to be important to support our LGTBQ students, especially our trans trainees.

y’all, this is a historic week, what an amazing candidate, let’s focus on what we have and not what we may lose in a week. But also, let’s win, vote! @kamalahqrepeater.bsky.social

Flat to negative federal funding for research implicitly cedes leadership in research, development, and IP to China. It’s a national security issue. Tell your representatives and don’t let them off the hook.

It's official. Thanks to the MIRA grant, my lab gets to live to fight another day (or, more accurately, five years :). We are now actively recruiting. Please spread the word and reach out if you are interested doing a postdoc with me. One position is available jointly with Terry Hwa's lab. Exciting!

New #LTEE paper out in #Science today. I wrote about it here, with an emphasis on "how civility, cooperation, and collaboration can succeed even in the highly competitive world of science." the-ltee.org/an-update-to... And here's a link to the paper itself: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our newest paper was published today, a capstone to our work on gain-of-function evolution, phage-bacterial interaction network formation, and microbial diversification.

One arm, two symbols of LGTBQ+ progress. 9 years ago and I could not have had that wedding ring, and until 9 days ago I could not donate blood. Let’s keep moving forward!!!

This is a great place to research! To live? That depends.

Interested in a PhD in Evolutionary Biology but unsure how to apply? Join an informal Q&A session that will cover the basics of applying to grad school in Evolutionary Biology. When: October 19, 2023, 7-8:30pm Register: umich.zoom.us/meeting/regi... Who: Regina Baucom, Kelly Dyer, Richard Kliman

I’m really excited to share our new pre-print “Genome-wide Characterization of Diverse Bacteriophages Enabled by RNA-Binding CRISPRi”, with co-first author Muntathar Al-Shimary  from the Doudna and the newly-minted Cress labs! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hosts need microbes to perform essential functions, but why? The default explanation is that microbes are beneficial but the field has neglected evolutionary addiction, where dependencies evolve without benefits. I like this work as it brings some healthy skepticism to the field. #MicrobiomeSky 🦠

Congrats to all the new Hannah Gray Scholars hhmi.news/3EK0RP6

Pandemic sourdough still going strong. Yeast were isolated from a native prickly pear fruit. DM your address and I can mail you starter.

What a difference a year makes, CA drought maps from a year and a day ago.

For my 1st post I'm highlighting this recent preprint. Its by Mike Doud, a very talented MD/PhD in our lab. And it combines two of my favorite subjects, speciation and coevolution. To the best of my knowledge, it shows many firsts, but please do point out if I've missed something. 🧵