More than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, this passage from Camus’ “The Plague”, written decades ago, still resonates

New lab preprint! We set out to explore interstrain differences in P. aeruginosa cooperation and discovered an interesting variant of the quorum sensing receptor LasR. — by Kiki Bellamoroso, Maxim Kostylev, and Nicole Smalley www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Somehow I missed this tentative but important news -- extension of the NIGMS MIRA (R35) mechanism simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/...

I wish that I had a way to thank all of the program officials, grants specialists, scientific review officers, et al. at NIH — this is amazing and important work in the face of politically manufactured, ongoing adversity

Ive been thinking about this scene from Twin Peaks all day youtu.be/3bT-pzuo0tc

When there are guns everywhere, nobody is safe anywhere

settings > content & media > autoplay video & gifs = off

Andrew Frando, @jrchandler.bsky.social, and I wrote a primer about excellent work done in Sam Brown's group @brownlab.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Excited to announce this is now published! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

U.S. Soccer announces that Cristian Roldan has been added to the #usmnt roster. He’s been outstanding for Seattle this season.

NIH progress on new R01s in FY 2025 drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/18/n...

Postdoc

The invisible hand of the free market

Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo Can Both See Zohran Mamdani Is Dangerous. Why Can’t New Yorkers? We Asked JD Vance. Tomorrow in the @nytimes.com

I visited Paris for a week

Looking to engage in interesting science that bridges microbiology, evolution, ecology, and plant biology? If so, join Phoebe’s new lab in Taipei!

Exciting news! I am launching the Lab of Polymicrobial Interaction & Evolution at IPMB at Academia Sinica (ipmb.sinica.edu.tw/en)! 🎉Our brand-new website is live: (www.labofpie.org). Check the lab of PIE out!!🥧🎈

New poster for my office

An advertisement at the UW light rail station. Things are going great.

Almost every campaign claims they are going to change the electorate like this … and then they don’t. Amazing from Mamdani

One possible - very American and very dumb - outcome, from a healthcare delivery perspective, would be for hospitals to charge a $5000 "litigation" fee with deliveries to ensure babies are citizens. This expense would get wrapped into the cost of insurance, pending an eventual SCOTUS decision.

New in JB: Tchadi, Taylor et al. use a heterologous expression system to show that binding of PqsE to RhlR fine-tunes RhlR activity and does so in a promoter-specific fashion. journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... @asm.org #JBacteriology

I encountered this beautiful Lepidopteran on a walk today

Simply accounting for supply and demand, prices of popcorn should be skyrocketing today

commemorating pride from the clinical microbiology lab

Our new big review on Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Hope you enjoy reading it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rainier vista, UW Seattle

It’s nearly miraculous for the police to make an arrest in a University district crime

Two of my lab neighbors received NIH notices of award this week (both renewals, one competing, one noncompeting). Given the times, it's cause for celebration and, even more so, relief.

I, a lung doctor, have two postdocs in my lab who have pet birds. 😳

If you subscribe to (suddenly) state-media CBS / Paramount, this is a simple thing to do.

There's a good reason he's called The Boss www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/a...

The sun is setting and the fountain is a bit less powerful, but still a fantastic show. They've recently zoomed in. Live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG5z...

Hey y'all! My department is conducting a search for an assistant or associate professor in bacteriology. It's pretty broadly defined. If you know anyone who's looking for a great department that does awesome science - please send them our way! You can DM me with any questions you have 😀

There’s plenty to worry about right now (looks at everything) but the situation between India and Pakistan is alarming and, unfortunately, appears to be rapidly escalating

New preprint alert 🚨: We found that Steno maltophila senses a quorum sensing molecule from the co-infecting pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and switches to multicellular aggregates as a protective mechanism. #MicroSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Conference on ‘Cell-Cell Communication in Bacteria: New Insights and Future Trends’, taking place from 28–30 October 2025 in Trieste, Italy. Registration and abstract submission now open www.icgeb.org/cell-cell-co...

Totally whacking the Doomer (and even non-Doomer) hornets nest here. But I have to give an honest read. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump...

Please watch tonight’s important episode of “60 minutes” focused on the impacts of reductions to the NIH budget and workforce featuring a UW Immunology graduate student. www.youtube.com/watch?v=noyS...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

it is crazy to me that we have pundits, pollsters and democratic strategists staring directly at trump diving head first in a quagmire of a scandal and insisting that it is bad politics to make hay of it

Au total, les professeurs Eric Déziel et Étienne Yergeau reçoivent un soutien financier de 2,8 M$ du Programme des chaires de recherche du Canada qui appuie des chercheuses et chercheurs parmi les plus prometteurs et les plus accomplis au monde. inrs.ca/actualites/d...

Today’s view from the pulmonary division offices at UW

My plan to invest in a bunch of mango and banana trees for my backyard is now a waste of money, but maybe only for 90 days? What a way to run an economy.

I will say, the funniest (and sad, but also schaudenfraudingly funny) outcome will be if all the “resurrected” extinct animals end up having a genetic drive to accidentally drown in bogs

Trump is so enamored of his fictitious version of the 1950s that he’s trying to restore the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to 360 (not 36,000)

Musk Signals Willingness To Bid More Than $97 Billion To Acquire Respect theonion.com/musk-signals...

I hosted our division’s journal club yesterday evening — and today thanked a faculty member for cleaning up after our cat, who barfed (she is anxious) as people were arriving.

💐 To NIH and NSF program officers, and anyone else trying to keep those institutions alive: Thank you for trying to do an impossible job in an impossible time. I’m sorry for all of us that this is the world we’re living in. 1/n