Excellent talk today by @berondam.bsky.social at Towson Univ! I've always been inspired by her #lessonsfromplants and #lessonsfrommicrobes. Appreciate her message that environment matters for mentoring at all career stages.

Here's hoping that #MarylandDay goes well for the UMD Microbiome Center as they are giving out our silly stickers!

🧪 #measles #vaccination Thanks for posting this @jennifernuzzo.bsky.social 😢 This is a gift link, free to read, in case some people can’t read the whole thing www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

The misogyny of the Trump administration is palpable… #MedSky 🧪

How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism: merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...

New paper: Some things to consider when you want to use old samples of flowers from herbaria to make inferences about changes in flowering onset over time (or similar). Had a blast building some Bayesian models for this. Thx David and Daniel for letting me help doi.org/10.1111/nph.... 1/2

#OnThisDay in 1862, Louis Pasteur demonstrated that gently heating liquids could prevent spoilage! This experiment laid the foundation for pasteurization, a process that transformed food safety and continues to protect public health today. 🧪

Tonight's @asm.org MD Branch meeting - Rodney Rohde talking about reemerging pathogens

Little migrating songbirds are performing one of the most stunning behaviors on the planet-- some are flying from Brazil to Canada, overnight. When they stop to rest they are exhausted and vulnerable. Protect them by keeping cats inside! It helps cats too! abcbirds.org/solutions/ke...

An mRNA treatment for PANCREATIC CANCER was in trials, among many other uses. Choosing to end this research is choosing to sentence millions to an early, painful death

God bless Bruce

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Have you developed a new #bioinformatics tool to understand #phage or #virus? Make sure you add it to #awesome-virome github.com/shandley/awe...

On schedule now for #MattersMicrobial: podcast releases every other Tuesday. This week, Dr. Nahui Medina-Chavez (of the Michael Travisano lab) joins the #QualityQuorum to discuss halophilic archaea and evolution in the lab. Please spread the #GoodMicrobialWord?? youtu.be/oz04oGDiRY0?...

Why do we live in such a childish, stupid country? A country that wastes its money on useless billion dollar aircraft carriers, when it could be spending those tax dollars to actually help its citizens like sane countries.

"The greatest danger to our future is apathy." -- Jane Goodall, born #OTD 1934

Dr. Leila Denmark co-developed the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine in 1932. She was the world's oldest practicing pediatrician until she retired at age 103 (practicing for 73 years). She died a supercentenarian #OTD in 2012 at the age of 114 years and 60 days. #WomenInSTEM

To get my kids to brush their teeth I tell them about bacterial biofilms. Within biofilms, each bacterial species has a "job". Streptococcus oralis & friends hold on to the tooth. S. mutans (top left) makes acid that causes cavities. Brushing removes S. oralis, so S. mutans can't grow! 🧪🪥🦷🦠🍎

In Gen Micro we "swab something". I encourage students to swab 👟b/c the diversity is fabulous! Here's a sticker dedicated to all the diversity we find on our plates. 🍎🦠🧪As a mom-scientist it's the diversity of things that is sometimes a bit much! At my RedBubble site: mostlymicrobes.redbubble.com

New Book Review up! Breaking Through: My Life In Science by Katalin Kariko. An inspirational story of an unconventional scientist who created the COVID19 mRNA vaccine. For anyone who doesn't fit into the status quo. @asm.org 🦠🧪🍎https://www.mostlymicrobes.com/brbreaking_through/

I always tell my students that bacteria are bad at math - they multiply to divide. *groan*. This and other silly stickers about serious science are up on my RedBubble site. mostlymicrobes.redbubble.com. Need bulk orders for #scicomm? LMK. #stickers 🧪🦠🍎

@markowenmartin.bsky.social thanks so much for the dung beetle and brood ball kits!! You are too kind. The girls and I will have a ton of fun.

How Bacteria Die in the Microbial Marine Forest Dr. Anne Thompson explores her research on salps, some of the most abundant animals in the ocean, and how their feeding mechanisms shape marine microbial food webs and carbon cycles. @markowenmartin.bsky.social

5/6 For anyone worried about synthetic vs "natural" compounds, synthetics are often purer, more stable, & engineered to be more effective and SAFER than "natural" compounds. So do what's right for your baby, get them the vitamin K they need, prevent VKDB, and avoid risk of fatal brain bleeds. 🍎⚛️🧪🧬👩‍🔬🥽

6/6 here's a helpful resource: Oh and talk to your doctor about the hepatitis B vaccine for your baby as well. The fact I had to sign a waiver in order to get the vaccine for my baby because of the current misinformation is sad. 🥽👩‍🔬🧬🧪⚛️🍎 health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultiva...

This is the sort of strategic planning that should go into #vaccine design 💉 They analysed 1,930 #Klebsiella pneumoniae 🦠🧫🧬 neonate blood isolates from 13 countries and estimate that 20 antigens 🧪 could cover 72.9% of all infections for 5–10 years #IDSky #EpiSky journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

A rescue puppy is to become one of only a handful of dogs in the world able to detect a multi-drug resistant lung infection. Chilli is being trained to identify the scent of pseudomonas aeruginosa, a major cause of lung damage in cystic fibrosis. 🧪🐕🦠 @medsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Street art memorializing Alex Pretti in Seattle. Per r/Seattle, it was painted on a building facing Swedish Hospital in the First Hill neighborhood www.reddit.com/r/nursing/co...

Join #MVIF 46 cassyni.com/s/mvif-46 and #MeetTheSpeakers @jeremyjbarr.bsky.social will discuss isolation, engineering and ecology of temperate phages from the human gut!

Let's start a virus snowflake blizzard! Snip out some viral snowflakes this weekend - using the great templates by @socialinfluenza.bsky.social See new blog post here: wp.me/p5dMJb-Rg

Breast milk isn't just nutrition – it delivers live bacterial strains that colonize the infant gut and persist for months. Happy to share our new paper, where we used metagenomics to track bacterial strains between 195 mother-infant pairs over the first 6 months of life: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Book review of Microbes:The Unseen Agents of Climate Change is up on the blog - rb.gy/wchw8f. Really love this book and will use for Environmental Microbiology!

🧵 1/7 #AltComms MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) this week on a Zika outbreak in Bangladesh in 2024 This is classic, boots-on-the-ground epidemiology—and exactly why it still matters. Let’s dig in.

As you partake of bread and beer - give thanks for Saccharomyces cerevisiae! Yeast ferments sugar into alcohol. The CO2 given off is what helps bread rise. Each semester we do a Fermentation Feast in class to "taste the diversity of cultures". Microbiology - the field full of sensory delights :)

This student for "Thank a Microbe" really loved Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus. Predatory bacteria are easy to love! It bores its way into another bacterium, digests the bacterium, then reproduces, with its babies breaking out of the empty shell of the bacterial prey.

Today's student Thank a Microbe post features Pseudomonas putida! Need to clean up oil spills and other toxic hydrocarbons? Call in P. putida.

For the Thank a Microbe project, Lactobacillus sp. were a favorite genera of bacteria to thank. Lactobacillus acidophilus is what digests milk sugars into acetic acid, which gives yogurt its tangy taste!

It's the season for being thankful - THANK A MICROBE returns! Here's the first of several student flyers appreciating the wonders of our microbial world!

that time of year when as soon as you finish writing 2 letters of recommendation, 2 more requests come in....

#WomenInScience inspired Halloween costume this year is Fanny Hess! In Koch's lab in the hot German summers, the gelatin used for bacterial cultures would melt. Fanny learned of agar - used to stiffen gelatin desserts - and brought that into the lab. Her ingenuity changed #microbiology forever! 🧪🔬🦠

Just a heads up. I was able to schedule my COVID vaccine appointment. Online it will ask “do you have a condition that puts you at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19 virus.” Click yes and it will allow you to schedule an appointment. No questions asked. No proof required. Pass it on.

BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)

I just supported Toni Harmon's/Alto Films latest documentary about #microbiome of #birth and first foods. Please join me in supporting this important film. 🤱🤰👶🧪 #microbiome igg.me/at/themicrob...

Using this resource on AI vs human capable Bloom's Taxonomy from @oregonstate.edu as I write learning objectives! #STEMEdu 🍎🧪 ecampus.oregonstate.edu/faculty/arti...

How to write a Symbiosis class syllabus. 😆 Loving working at Ovenbird coffee shop these last few weeks while our youngest is at a synthetic biology camp. #Baltimore

A new study shows that vaccinating pregnant women against RSV led to a 72% drop in hospitalizations for babies with the virus in the UK, highlighting the real-world effectiveness of the vaccine in protecting infants. www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/resp...

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@[email protected], Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

Whooping cough (pertussis) is also known as “100 day cough” bc it can cause 100 days of coughing so severe that rib fractures are common. It also makes small children stop breathing without warning, often fatally. Vaccination can prevent up to 89% of infections but requires boosting every few years

Excited to give a virtual seminar in the NASA LIFE RCN series next Tuesday June 10th, at 8am PST/11am EST. I'll be talking about the Chitin Raft Hypothesis and the rise of planktonic marine cyanobacteria. 🧪🦠⚒️🌐 #Paleobio #MEvoSky #MicroSky www.lifercn.org/events/2025-...

The Truth Of The Matter And They Are Not Bringing Jobs Back….