Looking for a tool to estimate abundances of aerobes versus anaerobes directly from metagenomes? Here you go: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In reviewing grants and papers lately, as an exp., I have been using LLMs *after* my reviews to see how they stack up. And let me tell you - they're (all) *completely* off the mark. That makes sense if you understand the fundamentals of LLMs, but I'm worried many don't. But, please, don't do this.

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

We’ve discovered how the superbug E. faecalis prevents chronic wounds from healing. It’s not a toxin. It’s metabolism. The bacteria use extracellular electron transport (EET) to electrochemically generate ROS, effectively "freezing" skin cells in place. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeb5297

“the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results & routine scientific checks being overlooked” The demand for novelty & the rush to be the first is damaging to scientific research & its credibility www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I've been sitting on this for over a month...but given how cross I am with @royalsociety.org at their ongoing inaction over #Elon #Musk I thought I'd share this. They invited me to serve on their Public Engagement Committee; I could have been more eloquent, but I had to give a firm "no"...

Excited to share our new study out in Nature Communications. We mapped the composition of the human breast #milk #microbiome and showed that microbes present in breast milk directly contribute to the assembly of the #infant gut microbiome in the first months of life. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In this week’s @science.org cover article, we discover tree bark is a hidden habitat for abundant, diverse, and specialized microbial life that actively regulate our climate 🦠. Bark isn't just an inert armor of tree but an active interface for climate and biodiversity www.science.org/eprint/7H9PX...

🌏 Happy 🔭 New 🧪 Year 🦠 2026 ✨ If you feel like an easy read about subsurface microbiomes and astrobiology: Here is an opinion I wrote with @emvidal.bsky.social @geobiomaggie.bsky.social @drbradbrad.bsky.social and Melody Lindsay enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How shit at business do you have to be, to be personally worth 37,000 times the amount an average UK worker will earn in a LIFETIME, and still be incapable of withstanding a tiny tax increase?

Merry X-SMASH! My first first author paper is out on bioRxiv! 🖥 We present epsSMASH, a comprehensive and high-throughput tool for predicting exopolysaccharide (exoPS) biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in bacterial genomes 🦠🧬🧫 1/8

Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known" - Bertrand Russell, 1976. Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

💾 Prokka 1.15.6 is released! This is the last major release of Prokka. But don't be sad, because @oschwengers.bsky.social already has an excellent replacement called Bakta you can migrate to. #bioinformatics #microbiology #genomics github.com/tseemann/pro...

Hurrah! Should never have left though. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

📢 20 postdoctoral positions (full-time, 4 years) for outstanding female scientists 👩‍🔬 🔬 @univie.ac.at The E-STEEM programme call opens January 7th, 2026 and closes March 3rd, 2026. careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... I participate as a host...

Postdoc position open in NERC-funded project on peatland microbial Hg cycling: www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/research.... Deadline Jan 31. If you are still finishing your PhD in Hg geomicro/biogeochem and interested, please get in touch w/ me directly. Please repost as/where suitable - thanks!

The GTDB website now has an ANI calculator based on skani that supports uploading of user genomes. Try it at gtdb.ecogenomic.org/tools/skani. Find more information about @jimshaw.bsky.social fantastic tool at www.nature.com/articles/s41....

Sooooo excited to see #Diatoms appearing on postage stamps #algae www.falklandstamps.com/bat135-diato...

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script

New preprint! We explore how gutless marine worms and their bacterial symbionts use organosulfur compounds like DMSP and DMS - key molecules in marine sulfur cycling. Our results show that these compounds support carbon and energy metabolism in the Olavius algarvensis symbiosis.

Proliferation of a bloom-forming phytoplankton via uptake of polyphosphate-accumulating bacteria under phosphate-limiting conditions academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs 🌊

Fresh from our group, a new role for oxygen production in ammonia-oxidizing archaea: Oxygen production as an electron overflow pathway in ammonia-oxidizing archaea Congrats to Thomas Pribasnig for this great work! Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Respiratory endosymbionts, that allow their ciliate hosts to breathe nitrate instead of (or in addition to) oxygen are frequent members of the wastewater microbiome. 🦠 🖥️🧬 Great to see this work by @louison-nicolas.bsky.social published in ISME coummuncations! doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Not just in American classrooms. And it’s been in discussion and implementation for 2-plus years now in many universities. The sort that are quite keen for their degrees to retain value for their students while we all navigate new AI landscapes.

This is an astonishing story. Journal 'Science of the Total Environment' published *10,000 articles a year* Many were bogus. Great summary of why our publication culture needs to be changed.

Hope is here. Help us beat Reform in May. Donate today ⤵️

If Sci Rep, MDPI, etc... cannot guarantee a meaningful peer review process, can we please just delist them already @clarivate.com ? Why is academic publishing treated as "the highest rigour" when indexing of scientific journals is done by saying "website seems legit, they even say they peer review."

Next time someone asks what's the matter with Musk's Twitter, show them this: An account in India, amplifying a billionaire from South Africa being cheered by an Irish passport holder (using an alias) to encourage civil unrest in the UK.

PhD Opportunity: Advance UTI treatment with on-chip tech! 🔬🧫 Work at the microbiology-bioengineering interface with Hywel Morgan, @fnobrega.bsky.social and me. Program EPSRC/MOD CISDnS CDT cisdns-cdt.ac.uk Co-funded by IfLS Southampton tinyurl.com/infoUTI tinyurl.com/applyUTI Deadline: 8 Dec 2025

70 teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute & observed weekly over 5 months. 80% of spoons disappeared; spoon halflife~81 days. Communal room halflife lower than in specific labs. 250 spoons annually required to maintain 70 spoon population. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.24.690213v1

They grow bacteria on those hairy arms and then lick the bacteria off for a delightful snack, isn't that gross and cool?

Our paper describing the GlobDB is now published in @bioinfoadv.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/bioa... The GlobDB is the largest species dereplicated genome database currently available, containing 306,260 species representatives. More information on globdb.org 1/5 🖥️🧬🦠

Reading from AI summaries (via LLMs) rather than doing your own minimal reading impairs learning and produces shallower knowledge. "...learning from LLM syntheses (vs. web links) can, at times, limit the development of deeper, more original knowledge." 🧪 academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

🧵 1/ New preprint alert! From the FUTURE OAK project, led by the super talented @alejandra1909.bsky.social Large-scale culturing of the tree microbiome enables targeted disease suppression Here's what we found... 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Multiheme selenoenzyme essential for elemental sulfur respiration www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Update: the university is now allegedly offering compensation to faculty who move their exams because of a football game we're not even guaranteed to play in yet.

📢 Extra, extra: our collaborative study on trace gas oxidizers in a warmer soil is out as a preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Big thanks to @thanh0109.bsky.social @bobpmleung.bsky.social @wutkowska.bsky.social @andreasrichter.bsky.social @mathildebio.bsky.social @greening.bsky.social ...

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work. Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

Despite the tidy maps found in textbooks, metabolism is still full of unresolved mysteries. Few people are better at uncovering these overlooked but essential puzzles than Antoine Danchin. Here here an analysis of the intriguing guanidine enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Every single thing I read in UK news is about some new form of cruelty and suffering to be meted out against asylum seekers/immigrants/trans people but everytime I'm actually in the UK I'm reminded of what a warm, welcoming, culturally vibrant place it actually is.

'The HeatHub was developed by Thermify and is part of UK Power Networks' SHIELD project, external, which aims to come up with innovative ways for low-income households to transition to net zero.' 1/2

Very cool print demonstrating how variation in at TonB-dependent transporter repertoires shapes the ability of Bacteroides and Phocaeicola species to utilize fructooligosaccharides (FOS) of different chain lengths

So Denmark already does that? Eesh...

Regretfully (for the sake of the authors and journal staff), I have this morning declined an invitation to review for a @royalsociety.org journal because of the Society’s continued refusal to stand up for its values in dealing with Elon Musk FRS.

Dundee Uni won ‘Entrepreneurial University of the Year’ in 2024… then its principal resigned amid a £30m deficit that exposed serious financial mismanagement THE awards are spin, branding & optics They don't align with what's happening behind the scenes

Submit your abstract to our ASLO–SIL 2026 session! If your waters bubble, breathe, or burp, join SS002 – “Gassy Waters” to explore gas fluxes across the aquatic continuum. See you in Montreal, 12–16 May 2026! www.aslo.org/aslo-sil-2026 #ASLOSIL26 @aslo.org @szndohrn.bsky.social

Very excited to share our latest work in Science on metagenomic editing (MetaEdit) of the gut microbiome in vivo & directly modifying unculturable immune-modulatory SFB bug in the small intestine. 🦠🧬🛠️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#Archaea, #DPANN, #phylogenetic_reconciliation New preprint online! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...