Me reading this thread on rebuilding lichen in vitro. I previously didn't question the claims of 'in lab lichen formation'.

#Lichens form their complex thalli through a partnership involving at least a fungus and an alga. But can these living structures be rebuilt in vitro? For more than a century, people have tried. With @spribille.bsky.social we revisited 150 years of #lichen #resynthesis to ask: has anyone succeeded?

Absolutely the way to fix peer review is for peer reviewers to do better reviews, not an AI to almost match the current poor level of human review. But maybe if you take away the oppotunity for humans to point out a axis label is missing, they'll find more interesting things to say?

📢 Postdoc position: Biochemistry & Bacterial cell biology in our group at Marburg University, Germany, funded by the ERC Advanced Grant "C-SWITCH" 🔗More information at shorturl.at/OlvlL 📅Deadline: Nov 30, 2025 Please repost. #Postdoc

We have two job openings for computational strain design in our group! Please retweet 🧪 PhD student and postdoc! Both positions are directly with our group leader, Steffen Klamt. The positions are to be filled in Magdeburg, Germany. I highly recommend applying!

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

📢 We’re hiring! The DSMZ is looking for a Scientific Lead for the SILVA Database — a unique opportunity to shape one of the world’s most important scientific resources for microbial taxonomy and ecology. Apply now and help us shape the future of microbial research. 👉 www.dsmz.de/dsmz/career/...

Rhodo-Box: a Synthetic Biology Toolbox to Facilitate Metabolic Engineering of Rhodobacter sphaeroides https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.31.685836v1

I am vacationing on Tenerife these days. First days off after being #PhDone. Walking to the lighthouse we passed some banana plantations. Great chance to talk with my partner about the Cavendish and Fusarium. Made me curious to look up more facts about banana cultivation. 🤓🍌🧪

Nature Communications will publish ~10K papers in 2025 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov?term=%22Natu... That's ~$70M in revenue, while many of the non-profit journals that used to occupy that slot in the journal hierarchy have seen a precipitous decline in submissions in the 15 years it's existed.

🧬 Share your science at Natural Products in the 21st Century (NP21C) — 9–11 Feb 2026, Leuven Join researchers exploring genomics, metabolomics & microbial natural products! www.conferencemanager.dk/naturalprodu... #NP21C #secmet @tilmweber.bsky.social @marnixmedema.bsky.social @kblin.bsky.social

Folks, it is the year 2025 and Word's grammar checker is suggesting that I should change "fewer" to "less few".

My fellow biologists we must do everything in our power to prevent this scenario

New paper with my (amazing) friend and mentor @jrpenades.bsky.social Really looking forward to see what plasmid aficionados think of this one!! With @asantoslopez.bsky.social @wfigueroac3.bsky.social Akshay Sabins and others www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Another fun #archaeasky paper to ponder about. HGT driven copy number expansion led to structural diversification, collection of which ended up being the eukaryotic replisome - seems to be the gist, as demonstrated by the author's very handy illustration. 🦠🧫

I’m excited to announce the launch of my lab at EPFL in Jan 2026 🎉. We’ll combine evolution & synthetic biology to study and (re)engineer bacterial communication. I’m recruiting PhD students to start in the first semester of 2026. Apply via EPFL PhD programs by Nov 1 drive.google.com/file/d/1cm-t...

#PhD Position: Interested in the evolutionary and ecological impacts of whole genome duplication? Join Dr. Tia-Lynn Ashman @drtialynn.bsky.social and I at the U. of Pittsburgh, to test what drives the competitive outcomes between diploids and #polyploids Details: shorturl.at/nQ8UW

Scientists often engineer microbes, like E. coli, to make drugs and other molecules. But what if, instead, we could isolate ALL the components of a cell into little vials and sell them? How much would, say, 1 liter of cells be worth? The answer, it turns out, is about $600,000.

⏳ Only 3 weeks left to submit your abstract for #VAAM2026 Annual Conference🎤👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 in Berlin ! ⏱️Abstract deadline: 7th November 🎓 Student members: Apply for travel grants until 7th November! 📌 t1p.de/7fgc4 Do not miss your chance and apply today!🏃🏃‍♀️ #VAAM2026 #microbiology #AnnualConference

What a joy to be in Wageningen 'City of Life Sciences'! 🧪 🦠 There should be more places like this. And such a beautiful campus. Dense high-rise complexes and then lush fields.

Hello everyone, take a look at my cool bugs from the Microbial Dark Matter phylum Saccharibacteria! These ultrasmall bacteria (in green) track down Actinobacteria hosts (not in green) and grow on the host cell envelope.

We're planning to scale up next year, with lots more articles and multimedia formats (and books). We'd love to hear from you before then. What articles do you like, what do you not like, and how can we do better? 1-minute survey: forms.gle/FSePEaW1rxD...

1/3 To those interested in microbial iron & metal transport: In 1992, the late JB Neilands (UCB), the pioneer in the study of Fe transport entrusted me with his collection of purified siderophores from a wide range of microbes—many of them unique chemical species that can no longer be reproduced

Two intensive sampling periods of oyster-associated vibrio and their phage, 4 years apart, and many surprises. Despite being washed by the Atlantic, wide tides, and vibrio (almost?) disappearing most of the year, we can find the exact same virulent phages 4 years later (down to 0 SNP)! preprint👇

PD fellowship opportunity! New project ideas on medicinal plant engineering, cell type specific response to elicitation of biosynthesis, and epigenome/cloning evolution of long term cultured plant cells in the context of chemical production. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons... Email me!

Glad to share the work of @yli18smc.bsky.social and co on Lamassu, a bacterial defense system related to Rad50/Mre11 (RM). While RM carefully trims DNA ends for repair, Lamassu chops up the host chromosome. Our study reveals how it is regulated to minimize damage, activating only during infection.

Omw, to the last conference this year. Quick stop in Aachen and then onwards to Wageningen. Really looking forward to this first conference after defending my thesis. 🚝

Global constraint principle for microbial growth laws doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We recently discovered that our engineered lactobacilli are far more obedient when confined in a gel - doi.org/10.1016/j.jc... If you want the highlights of the story, check out the LinkedIN post image. @marcblanch.bsky.social @varunsays.bsky.social @leibnizinm.bsky.social

Excited to share our preprint led by Carlos Voogdt et al We developed new genetic tools & genome-wide libraries for species of the Bacteroidales order; constructed saturated barcoded transposon libraries in key representatives of three genera. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🌿 Postdoc in Algae Biochemistry – University of Copenhagen Join the Algae Biochemistry Group to explore molecular biology, synthetic biology & metabolomics in eukaryotic microalgae. 📅 Apply by 1 Nov 2025 🔗 employment.ku.dk/faculty/?show=164971 #Postdoc #Algae #Biochemistry #SyntheticBiology

Professorship in plant genetics. The Botanical Institute at Kiel University is advertising a W2 professorship. Great opportunity to do plant research in the north of Germany. See: www.berufungen.uni-kiel.de/de/dateien/o...

Everything worked out well!! @lsi.bsky.social as we say in Germany: Legally I am for the moment not required to deny the title Dr. rer. nat. if someone is calling me so. #PhDone I also got these great shots with my PI:

In 2021 I found my postdoc job via Twitter. Got to connect with a lot of scientists via Twitter and now BlueSky.

I am defending my thesis today. Barely slept. When I don't concentrate for a moment my thoughts immediately go back to my presentation. I will be very happy once this is over. 😂 Wish me luck! 🌈

It’s time to let your creativity grow! Submit your entry for this year’s Agar Art Contest: Microbes Make the World Go Round. From food and health to climate and beyond, microbes shape our lives—now show us your story in agar! Submit by Oct. 26: asm.social/2Dt

Happy to introduce SegMantX. Analyzing #plasmid we find that most duplications are MGE-driven. Additional use cases include detection of DNA transfer between replicons and examination of plasmid sequence similarity. Try it out! doi.org/10.1093/molb...

when the predicted protein model is a total disaster

Will Ferrell as multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogen threats #AMR #MicroSky #IDSky

SHARK: a specialized host for assembling R6K plasmids doi.org/10.1101/2025...

8 PhD projects announced in a joint programme of BOKU University @bokuvienna.bsky.social TU Vienna @tuwien.at University Vienna @univie.ac.at on Green Chemistry! Check details via the link ⬇️ The first 2 projects will be realised in my lab at BOKU. www.tuwien.at/greenchem/en...

⚠️New paper ➡️ isolating >600 freshwater microbes using dilution-to-extinction and low-nutrient, lake-mimicking media. 🤯Expands cultured diversity to ~70 % of detected genera and enables physiological studies of streamlined oligotrophs. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #protistsonsky

Muyuan Chen has turned structural biology into an immersive experience with his new video game Meowtabolism, now available on Steam. Try the demo here: store.steampowered.com/app/4045010/... Give Muyuan feedback: steamcommunity.com/app/4045010 #ScienceGaming #StructuralBiology #CryoEM #STEMOutreach

President Macron: “We were very naive to leave our public space to social media networks controlled by US or Chinese companies that don’t share our interests and not interested in survival of our democracies.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=MggN...

@synbio1.bsky.social I guess one can biologize biological processes and go even more archaic/futuristic.

Scientists revive old Bulgarian recipe to make yogurt with ants. Ants carry lactic and acetic acid bacteria that help coagulate milk, as well as formic acid to acidify it. They even partnered with Danish chefs to create three recipes using ant yogurt. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Friday Papers Club! 🍿In light of Pubmed going down, the collapse of social media, and my recent success at getting recommendations for interesting papers from those still around, I am starting a new tradition! - Recommend a good scientific manuscript! 👇

'hey mela' is the first vegan pregnancy test in the world. Now available in Germany. What could be vegan about it? These tests are based on antibodies that are usually farmed from small rodents kept in cages, infected with hybridoma cells. This test is based on AB expressed from algae!! 🧪

Engineered geminivirus replicons enable rapid in planta directed evolution www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm hiring for a PhD position at Malmö University, Sweden! The project will focus on molecular modelling of proteins, lipids, and biomolecular condensates at cell membranes. More details and application form: tinyurl.com/4zm92365 Please feel free to share! @vetenskapsradet.bsky.social | @mau.se