Proud to announce SimPhyNI, a new tool for bacterial GWAS with higher precision and scalability than existing tools. Try it out and let us know what you think!!

All you want for christmas is.... transposon mutagenesis! Our new work at @cultivarium.bsky.social screening lots of transposon vectors in lots of bacteria, from @charliegilbert.bsky.social and team. Transposon and promoter modular parts available on Addgene (pooled library will be there soon too)

The #1 organism used to make biocement has never been engineered... until now! Excited to share our work on Sporosarcina pasteurii! Esp. since it's the first project I've contributed to here at Cultivarium :) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very happy to share our recent work @cultivarium.bsky.social on genetic tools for Ideonella sakaiensis, a (Betaproteo-)bacterium that degrades PET plastic. We identified a plasmid vector for the strain and generated a large RB-TnSeq library, screening for genes impacting plastic degradation.

New preprint! Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠 Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare! An epic effort by Rosanna Wright www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Such a delight to share our work on the evolution of a cheese rind fungus in @currentbiology.bsky.social. This is the fantastic PhD work of @nicolasleonlouw.bsky.social and resulted from amazing collaborations, a wedding proposal(!), an undergrad course, & more! 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Open postdoc position in in my lab in Berlin @mpiib-berlin.mpg.de. Join us to push the frontier in ancient microbial genomics. Please apply until Oct 17th. Reach out in case you have any questions. www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/2193291/job_...

#Newresearch This Bayesian statistical method uses timeseries microbiome data to infer interaction modules and is tested using a faecal transplant experiment in mice. #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are looking for a postdoc to study single-cell transcriptional heterogeneity in the human skin microbiome. We have a new protocol mostly developed, but need someone to see it through. Experience with protocol dev or RNAseq appreciated. Funded by a new grant from MIT-HEALS.

A new study by @mancusosci.bsky.social and @contaminatedsci.bsky.social shows that intraspecies microbial conflict can block new strains from settling in. If we want long-lasting probiotics, we must account for battles within species, not just between them. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to see our work out in Nature Micro today! Big thanks to everyone involved in seeing it over the finish line!

Our work on the facial skin microbiome of non-human primates is out in mSystems! We show there is no close relative of Cutibacterium on the faces of gorillas and chimps at the Lincoln Park Zoo, furthering the mysterious origin of the dominant human skin colonizer. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

#Bacteria use weapons to outcompete rivals, but what happens if they're transferred? @prokaryota.bsky.social @jdpal.bsky.social &co show that HGT of toxin #plasmids is rare but recipients can thrive under relaxed nutrient competition, reshaping bacterial warfare @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43vC3X7

Do people in the same household share strains when they have the same species? How many cells transmit when a strain is shared? Can strain composition be dynamic when species composition is stable? We answer these and related questions for the facial skin microbiome in our latest paper. 🧵[1/10]

Excited to share our latest, out today in @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social Bacteriocin production facilitates nosocomial emergence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium www.nature.com/articles/s41... @idpittstop.bsky.social

🧪 The NSF director is lying to you. Let’s fact check 7 claims from yesterday’s letter to the community, while pointing out 3 critical omissions. 🧵

Edited for brevity: I expect the professional society that I have supported with national & regional membership dues, conference fees for myself and mentees, journal publication fees, & my time as an editor and reviewer, to support widely held values & to advocate on behalf of ALL microbiologists, 🧵

My letter to ASM leaders that I sent is too long to be posted here, so I'm going to post highlights in case anyone else needs information for their letter. 🧵

The first review article from my lab, helmed by @celiasouque.bsky.social, "From Petri Dishes to Patients to Populations: Scales and Evolutionary Mechanisms Driving Antibiotic Resistance" is now online and open access at Annual Reviews Microbiology: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Out in Nature Microbiology, we predicted phage-bacteria interactions in E. coli species using only genomic information. Adsorption, not defense systems, is the main driver at this scale (relevant for a phage therapy context), leading to tailored cocktails! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

We used in-vitro laboratory evolution to "stress test" the next generation class of antibiotics based on antisense oligos ("asobiotics"). Head over to our new preprint to find out more! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Want to make beautiful scientific figures? Easy! The NIH released a library of 2000+ free scientific illustrations called *BioArt*. Check it out! bioart.niaid.nih.gov #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky 🧠🟦 🧪

Dear mail-in voters, If your state's return deadline is Election Day (Nov. 5), the U.S. Postal Service recommends that you mail your ballot by Tuesday (Oct. 29). Sincerely, The reporter who wrote this: www.npr.org/2024/09/20/n...

Given the recent X-odus, I'll reintroduce my postdoc research: Commensal skin bacteria not only attack pathogens, but also fight among themselves! This intraspecies (& interspecies) warfare not only limits which strains can coexist on each person, it also makes cool-looking petri dishes 😎

Being a postdoc is strange. One day you're writing a faculty applications highlighting your unique and valuable skillset, the next you're making 2L of 8x concentrated artificial sweat...

We are on the look out for postdocs to join the Lieberman Lab at MIT. Areas include: -Connecting bacterial warfare to strain dynamics in vivo -Evolution and transmission of microbes in humans -Revisiting role of microbes in acne vulgaris Take a look at our recent preprints and reach out!

Those of you at SMBE, check out Poster #86 on Tuesday by grad student Evan Qu: "Phylogeny-aware strain profiling limits false positive detections and quantifies divergence time of novel strains"

Lots of amazing EEB sessions at #ASMicrobe, but consider stopping by B312 at 315 to see how ecoevo dynamics and antagonism play out for S epi living on people!

Chris Mancuso @mancusosci.bsky.social will be sharing our story in bacterial antagonisms on Sunday at 3:15p in the session on Integrating in silico models in host-microbe biology. Check it out for more antagonism goodness ! #ASMicrobe

Why don’t people who live together have the same strains of microbes? Tami Lieberman (@contaminatedsci.bsky.social) and I put forward one underexplored reason in our new preprint: Intraspecies warfare restricts strain coexistence in human skin microbiomes

It was so great to see the MIT Microbiome Symposium come to life yesterday after months of planning. The rest of the symposium organizing team and I are so grateful to all the speakers, presenters, panelists, judges, support staff, and sponsors for making this event a success!

Ever wondered about the origin of the bacteria that call our faces home? 🤔 Our new preprint dives into the fascinating dynamics of the human facial skin microbiome (FSM) and explores the natural history of important microbiome species on people at high resolution. 🧫🧵

Pleased that grad student Jacob Baker's tour de force analysis of intraspecies dynamics in the skin microbiome -- including >4,000 isolates of 2 species from 8 families carefully clustered into lineages and analyzed is now up.

Excited to announce a new preprint from the Lieberman Lab @contaminatedsci.bsky.social . We use a mouse model to ask: can we use commensal skin bacteria as topical probiotics? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...  [1/3]

I'm excited to share our most theoretical work yet, led by 3rd year PhD student Paul Torrillo. We revisit the old observation that dN/dS depends on the distance between compared sequences. We arrive at a radically different conclusion than current prevailing theory. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I gave a short talk to MIT Physics of Living Systems today. Always fun to discuss your work with a new group of folks!