I'm really excited to join ISTA's scientific community! I feel really welcome 🤗 Looking forward to doing awesome science together!

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

With @eliamascolo.bsky.social we'll be presenting this project at the #EvoKE2025 conference in Athens🇬🇷 this November! Check out what the initiative is doing to promote the education and outreach of (biological) evolution in Europe! ➡️ @evokeproject.bsky.social

Happy to announce that our study on the latent cis-regulatory potential of mobile DNA is officially published! TLDR: mobile DNA in bacteria (Insertion Sequences) have a proclivity for evolving new promoters. At least 25% of them probably already encode functional promoters as well.

Very happy to share that this work that I took part in via @forrt.bsky.social is receiving the 2025 Commendation of @improvingpsych.org !

🚨 #Internship alert in #MachineLearning I am recruiting a BSc (or MSc) student in #ComputerScience #DataScience for an internship this Spring On-site @univie.ac.at or remotely Possibility to develop a BSc/MSc thesis project Please share around & reach out if you have any questions! More details 🔽

The best part was seeing students who were never exposed to #evolution concepts using evolutionary thinking to interpret the results of the card game. Only after they figured out what was going on, we introduced the scientific jargon (like "selection" and "drift") used to refer to those phenomena.

A really lovely perspective on our paper led by @grantkinsler.bsky.social and Yuping Li in Plos Biology! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

With neural style transfer we can paint an image with the style of van Gogh. But can we also use it to study the evolution of visual signals and preferences? YES!!! Cool experiments on Darters 🐟😍 👇

Why are 🦠 genes organized into operons? Gene copy number fluctuates depending on distance from ori due to DNA replication. Operons keep gene clusters balanced in terms of copy number, reducing unbalance in expression level. Evo explanation for metabolic operons 👇 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Reading through a thread on latest conda TOS issue Conda TOS changed last year, and they're blocking IPs from larger nonprofit organizations (such as universities) with more than 200 connections/downloads. Connections will remain blocked until targeted organizations pay up. 💻🧬🧪

Two years ago we published about what we named "lytic deferment" in bacteriophages (doi.org/10.3389/fmic...). The concept is re-discussed in this recent review by Casters et al. "Phage transmission strategies: are phages framing their host?" doi.org/10.1016/j.mi... Food for thought. 🧬🦠🔬

Hey flagellum, shift into reverse gear! by Christoph — In a classical manual gearbox, a gearwheel is inserted between the countershaft and the drive shaft. This reverses the direction of rotation of the drive shaft. Flagella have found a smart... Read more > tinyurl.com/mrpeyfe8 #MicroSky #CryoEM

Tagging 🦠🖥️🧬

Can AlphaFold3 predict bacterial transcription factor binding sites on DNA? I tried to devise a fair test. The results are quite impressive. My test: I chose LexA (favorite TF at the @ErillLab) from E. coli K-12, and I generated "randomized" binding sites from the PWM. First 1/

My PI, joined us on Bluesky! 😊 👇 #Microsky #phagesky

#Microsky #Phagesky Interesting "primer for evolutionary biologists interested in studying social evolution in viruses" 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Human voices (just chatting, whatever the language) is the scariest sound for wild animals in the savanna. More scary than the roar of a lion. 👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My first thread post on Bluesky 👇