Annual killifish continue to surprise us: they make neutrophils before almost every other cell type, even before gastrulation. Neutrophils usually arise from the lateral plate mesoderm (forming in cyan), but in killifish they are already patrolling around the embryo in gold. tinyurl.com/killiphil

I wanted to like QED's new 1% preprint ranking. I really did. But the more I looked at the data, the more uncomfortable it made me. Here is my full peer review. open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...

New paper in collaboration with @proftracypalmer.bsky.social, @lislowe.bsky.social and many more. We show that mycobacteria produce Type VII secreted anti-bacterial protein toxins. Excited to explore this new area of mycobacterial biology. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you had to work (laptop) in a cafe for a morning in Edinburgh, where would you go (asking for me)

🏆 Congratulations to Bouke de Jong, winner of the Gardner Middlebrook Award at #ESM2026! One of the highest honours in our community, awarded for an outstanding career and lasting impact on mycobacteriology. A privilege to celebrate it in Verona. Huge congrats, Bouke 👏 #ESM26 #ESMyco

I'm incredibly proud to share our paper on the preclinical evaluation of the BNT164 mRNA tuberculosis vaccine candidates. Now online in the final version at Nature Immunology. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Beautiful work by @kkjimbsky.bsky.social in collaboration with @nvastenhouw.bsky.social @pengellab.bsky.social where we used CRISPRi-seq in a zebrafish meningitis model of pneumococcal infection coupled with metabolomics. #MicroSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hij hangt in de kerstboom tussen andere ballen. Schippers is een van die mensen die ons het leven serieus laat nemen, door de onbelangrijke ruis er omheen niet serieus te nemen.

I'm incredibly proud to share our paper on the preclinical evaluation of the BNT164 mRNA tuberculosis vaccine candidates. Now online in the final version at Nature Immunology. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Oh wow, amazing: "Discovery and identification of a handwritten laboratory notebook by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin describing experimental studies and development of the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis at the Institut Pasteur" doi.org/10.1016/j.tu...

After a long hiatus, happy #MicroscopyMonday! Here are some amoebae squeezing themselves into narrow channels (part of a video for our preprint pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41377514/). Sound effects by Dillon (my 4 month old who may have had a little to do with the bluesky hiatus!)

I was discouraged when my "fish on bicycles" project failed to achieve its aims, but I can finally announce that I have completed my "FISH ON STILTS" project successfully. Meet Bathypterois grallator, the tripod fish. They live in the deepest parts of the ocean, resting on three modified fins.

This is worth the click. I promise. Very well written indeed. ><

It is so great after 1+ year of tendonitis knee injury to be back on the ultimate frisbee pitch. Old dog still has some tricks up the sleeve. Footage from ulti.tv. #worklifebalance

I am skeptical that already approved Ebola virus vaccines and monoclonals will show promise during the ongoing outbreak of Bundibugyo virus for the simple reason that the two viruses are highly divergent (~35% AA divergence in GP). Focus should be on BDBV-specific or "pan-Ebola" countermeasures. 🧵

shocking statistics, but only limited public outcry.. We should be more vocal about this tb.impactcounter.com

Clycstictyrinty is my favorite antibody mediated function! Maybe with some extra AI we can leverage it?!

This is a very interesting video. After a brief intro, the first 3 minutes are a monologue starting in the English of 600AD and transitioning to modern American. Where do you start understanding it? youtu.be/842OX2_vCic?...

The Journées Sécrétion are back! 8th and 9th October in Marseille Keynote lecture by: @wilbertbitter.bsky.social Registration is open until June 15: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Organized by Romé Voulhoux @cascaleslab.bsky.social, @thicoz.bsky.social, Julien Giraud, Yaelle Aouizerate

WHO is aware of and supporting a public health event involving a cruise vessel sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.

Looking for a #postdoc outside the US, focusing on gut microbiome, AMR dynamics & phage-bacteria interactions. Bridging wet lab and computational approaches🦠👩‍💻. Hartmann Lab, Northwestern University, defending late 2026. Boosts appreciated 🙏🧫🧪 #microbiome #metagenomics #MicroSky

A finding that started to surface in mice 15 years ago. I think it was met with quite some scepticism, yet it doesn't seem to go away. Very interesting. Great consistent work over many years by @danbarberphd.bsky.social lab. I briefly worked on this topic for a while with Jeroen van Heijst.

Ok this is hilarious 😂 Be the C diff Watch out Cavs! It’s not gonna be pretty!

We have a PhD studentship open! (UK only sadly) but if you are or know a student keen to work on some *really* weird mycobacterial enzymes then get in touch! #glycotime Advert below www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

JOHAN in Paradiso was great! Great to get the chance to see them live in the best venue there is.

Excellent review of a very puzzling question in the TB field. The role of IL-17. The others do a terrific job of describing different vantage points.

We're hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow! How does Mycobacterium tuberculosis survive drug treatment? You'll use molecular genetics and single-cell approaches to investigate how gene expression variability drives drug-tolerant subpopulations. Full details and application instructions below.

This morning's breakfast had a belated Easter surprise.

With immortal bass lines like California Girls and Good Vibrations 🙏

Truly humbled and deeply honored to have been elected a Fellow of the European Academy of #Microbiology, @femsmicro.org Profoundly grateful to my mentors, collaborators, colleagues, and students, past and present, whose guidance, creativity, and dedication have shaped this journey 🙏 ♥️

⌛Only few days left! 👉 Save your spot on time! 🔗 Register now: tinyurl.com/yefis2026-ic1

You could say that Rock n Roll was born 111 years ago today in Arkansas, but probably not where you'd think. Before there was a Chuck Berry or Little Richard, there was those who wanted to be like her. Rosetta Nubin better known as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of Rock was born on this day

Please help spread the word about this 3-year postdoc position in my team. If your expertise & interest lie in studying how organisms from different domains of life (Bacteria and Archaea) communicate, come join us this summer in cozy Odense, Denmark. Job post: www.nature.com/naturecareer...

I'll be speaking at the @yefis-immunology.bsky.social webinar next week. Tune in for some mRNA #tuberculosis vaccine updates.

Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23 @cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun). Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects bit.ly/DrsHGT 1/🧵

Stuff of nightmares 😅

OPINIE - De nieuwe strategie van RU is een gedurfde visie die de bescheidenheid van zich afschudt, schrijft Mike Jetten : 'we kunnen het ons niet veroorloven een generatie briljante talenten te verliezen omdat ze te uitgeput zijn door bureaucratie & gebrek aan budgetten www.voxweb.nl/opinie/meer-...

The best immunologists on Earth don't have PhDs. They're parasites. Today's spotlight 🧵(and big inspo for @ dittobio): ticks! And if you like this, stay tuned because we will be sharing cool parasite facts each week #TickTalk

"AMR doesn't just mean different drugs; it means longer treatment, more side effects, and a much harder journey back to health." A patient's experience of living with antimicrobial-resistant TB: ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2025/12/04/l...

Very excited and TBH some old-fashioned (good) nerves to speak on #mRNA #tuberculosis vaccines at the Utrecht 3I conference today! If you're there, do say hi. www.uu.nl/en/research/...

Lovely weekend of seeing friends and family compete at the indoor Euro ultimate Frisbee championships.

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

It's always the same hallucination across time and space and in whatever country the mushroom grows in. Extremely weird. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Many of you in the mycobacterial community attended the awesome inaugural 2025 Biology of Mycobacteria GRC, organized by @heran.bsky.social and myself: www.grc.org/biology-of-m.... I am writing with an update about this conference as the new chair.

This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden. (After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)

The Barber lab is looking to hire post-docs to work on #tuberculosis #immunology using murine and NHP models. BSL3 experience not required. Check out our lab in the NIH intramural program in Bethesda MD!

Congratulations @baym.lol, @brinda.eu and colleagues on the nice work, looks like a great way to identify deletions and deletion-induced fusion genes. In MTBC, genomic deletions called "regions of difference" have long been used for phylogenetic investigation. Yet I found no citations thereof.

A back-to-work cartoon for @newscientist.com

Exciting postdoc in the Boston area!