Download our large database of postdoc fellowships in all fields of research. Database freely available to all; 281 fellowships. Download here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

Excellent story from @aniloza.bsky.social and colleague at STAT on the MOSAIC program. www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t... 1/4

Brand new preprint from my lab, showing that TnpB, the ancestor of Cas12, acts as a gene drive in plasmids! And it turns out in conjugative plasmids that it acts as a primitive anti-self defense system, providing a potential link between its transposon effect and becoming CRISPR!

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/...

No words strong enough to express how insane this is.

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hi everyone, a few years ago, we started a list of labs studying bacterial immunty for students, editors, conference organizers... (currently n=79). Update time ! Send me a message to 1) add your lab or others 2) Correct info docs.google.com/spreadsheets... #Phagesky #Microsky

New Scientist is looking for a new features editor, ideally with a specialism in evolution, ecology, human sciences and biology - if there's you, take a look! www.dmgmedia.co.uk/careers/jobs...

PhD students conduct most of the actual work in generating knowledge on college campuses. Cutting the number of students cuts the amount of research by that amount. A huge divestment from future growth.

This is what happens when governments attack science and academia... we lose the next generation of scholars www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Director Bhattacharya has repeatedly spoken about his commitment to early career scientists. This commitment is not evidence in these data. 10/12

Folks whose jobs, postdocs or grad school fellowships or applications were cut short--drop them a line

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports... This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

The #NSF Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) will host a Virtual Office Hour for the #GRFP (Graduate Research Fellowship Program) on Thursday, October 16 at 1 pm ET: nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/regi... The deadline for Life Sciences is November 10.

Here's my comment--join me. This would effectively remove foreign PhD students and postdocs from our labs. please share

Heading back from a great visit to Madison! Thank you so much for hosting me, it was wonderful to meet with everyone

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

trait-space maps are cool.

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro 2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute 3) Center for Vaccine Research 🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

🚨🎉 The Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine (CEBaM) at Pitt is delighted to announce the winners of this year's Catalyst Award program. This year, Catalysts were designated for science communication projects that engage wider audiences in the field of evolutionary biology and medicine. 🧵🥁

Open tenure track assistant- or associate-level faculty position in the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Vaccine Research. Great science, great facilities, great colleagues - come work with us! jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/674888/f...

Preprint: De-novo design of proteins that inhibit bacterial defenses Our approach allows silencing defense systems of choice. We show how this approach enables programming of “untransformable” bacteria, and how it can enhance phage therapy applications Congrats Jeremy Garb! tinyurl.com/Syttt 🧵

I gave a symposium talk at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology 2025 (#eseb2025) meeting last week and this was my title slide showcasing how I was speaking as an independent scientist because @dalhousieu.bsky.social @dalhousie.bsky.social has locked us out.

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said." It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy. I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

5. It has been centuries since any one human could know everything that is known; understand everything that is understood. This is a remarkable power of science. We delegate trust and authority to experts as internally established in ways that are remarkably resilient to mistakes and malfeasance.

At the same time, we made thousands of synonymous mutations in endogenous yeast genes and measured their growth. We used careful statistics and controls. Only 3%, 204 of 6874, had a fitness effect! This goes against a controversial recent result that most synonymous mutations had fitness effects.

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A red algal polysaccharide influences the multicellular development of the choanoflagellate Salpingoeca rosetta CurrentBiology

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Great thread, worth a read.

A senior leader at one NIH institute said: “At my level we are legitimately trying to figure out how to keep funding high-impact science given what we expect will happen.” The senior leader added: “Our grants people are barely holding it together because they are at the center of this chaos.”

NEW The White House is blocking the NIH from awarding new research grants for the rest of the fiscal year Chokes off billions in research funding Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol... with @nidhisubs.bsky.social

few outcomes, except for 99% of FDA-approved drugs, 174 recipients of 104 Nobel Prizes, training ~30K MDs and ~10K PhDs per year to enter the workforce, and a 34% reduction in age-adjusted cancer deaths since 1990 -- the largest decrease in history

Exactly, so sad, and so important to get the word out

We just launched an updated version of DiversifyMicrobiology! Please update your entry at docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

📢 New preprint alert! We used comparative genomics on 72,000+ bacterial genomes to uncover the genetic basis of microbial adaptation to multicellular hosts—plants and animals alike. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

DO NOT GIVE UP! Our advocacy is working. A key Senate committee has indicated that it will reject Trump’s proposed cuts to science agencies including NASA and the NSF. Keep speaking up and calling your electeds 🗣️🗣️🗣️

The “Big Beautiful Bill” is Not the Budget. There is still time to a defend science funding. 1/2

The full ruling explaining why NIH grant cuts are illegal came out today. It's just as blistering as the judge's oral remarks. And it uncovers fresh details in DOGE's role orchestrating the cuts — and on the cuts at Columbia. Here are my top highlights from the 103-page ruling. 🧵

So important! Please contact your Republican senators, especially Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), and Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA). 🙏 amplify!

Yesterday, when I signed they were aiming for 6000 signatures. Today there are almost 15,000 and they are aiming for 25,000! If you haven't signed and want to support the scientists at the NIH that are trying to prevent its dismantling, please sign. You can do it anonymously!

🚨Another HUGE bit of news tonight; in collaboration with the Trump admin, Texas just kicked 20,000 undocumented college students — people who grew up in Texas and graduated from high school there — out of eligibility for in-state tuition. This may force thousands to drop out.

🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨 Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham. It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda. We’ve launched an open letter. SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

Planned U.S. visa restrictions are causing students around the world to consider going to the United Kingdom instead.

Terrifying stuff. Sharp decline in insect numbers tied to global heating. They are at the base of ecosystems and their decline will reverberate upwards. The fact that this is probably going to happen in my life time. We really need to stop burning fossil fuels today!

Did the Tr*mp administration cancel your NIH or NCI grant proposal? Know someone who was affected? The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the House wants to hear from you. Please fill out this link and share. forms.office.com/pages/respon... #CancerResearch #OncoSky #CanSky

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

"We might lose a generation of talent—and that’s not going to get fixed four years from now” Read this by @jtemple.bsky.social: www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/02/1...

If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow. The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.

Signed! Join me in this quick and easy action to #StandUpForScience Sign now and amplify!