Abigail Lind

The core-pivotal index: a geometry-first approach to academic impact The defining goal of the academic endeavor is to establish a single perfect value that completely summarizes entire careers’ achievements. Such an index wo

This is an amazing piece of scientific satire by @russcd.bsky.social. The first sentence alone is a banger:

"The defining goal of the academic endeavor is to establish a single perfect value that completely summarizes entire careers’ achievements."

academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Discovery of additional ancient genome duplications in yeasts Whole-genome duplication (WGD) has had profound macroevolutionary impacts on diverse lineages,1,2 preceding adaptive radiations in vertebrates,3,4,5 t…

With the @rokaslab.bsky.social, three novel whole genome duplication (WGD) events were discovered in the Saccharomycotina yeast species in the Dipodascales
clade. Before now, only four WGD events were known in fungi. This work suggests WGD may be underreported.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

electron microscopy picture of a microbial cell with multiple flagella

How a parasite gave up sex to find more hosts—and why its victory won't last phys.org/news/2026-01...

Host range expansion of asexual parasite can be explained by loss of adaptions in Muller’s Ratchet www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Protists #Microbes #Parasites #Giardia #Evolution

Congrats! Lovely to see this published.

Recombination between strains fuels pervasive adaptive evolution among human gut commensal bacteria, and strongly implicate host diet and lifestyle as critical selection pressures @nature.com @nanditagarud.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Introducing ** Incendiamoeba **, a eukaryote that can live at temperatures well beyond what we thought possible. 63C!!

Read @hbrappap.bsky.social thread to see what we’ve already started to learn from this amazing organism!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#MicroSky #protistsonsky 🧪 #evobio

Now out in @asm.org #mSystems! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Congratulations to Robert and thanks to all collaborators. See thread below for a summary of the work, exploring the use of cross-species coexpression analyses to predict primary and secondary metabolic interactions in microbiomes.

Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...

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/...

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

What a hook. Also, cool work!

Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems - Nature Microbiology Proximity-ligation-based sequencing from 111 samples and 5 environments reveals that a substantial proportion of phages infect multiple species.

You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range.
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Assistant Professor (Quantitative Microbe-Plant-Environment Interactions), Dept of Microbiology, Fall 2026 apply.interfolio.com/173345 at University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Position is part of a faculty cluster hire in Bioinformatics, Genomics and Quantitative-based Solutions for Food Security.

Long-term monitoring of a North American cheese cave reveals mechanisms and consequences of fungal adaptation Using a unique longitudinal sampling approach, Louw et al. demonstrate how a cheese-associated Penicillium population has adapted in an artisan cheese production facility in Vermont, USA. Adaptation i...

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...

Assistant Professor in Microbiology APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS: CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, a...

🎙️ Job Announcement: Penn State is seeking an ASSISTANT PROFESSOR in MICROBIOLOGY (any subdiscipline) in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Learn more and Join the Microbiome Jubilee: psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

Assistant Professor Plant-Microbe Interactions We seek a creative, collaborative, and visionary plant biologist to establish an internationally recognized research program at the forefront of plant-microbe interactions aimed at understanding how t...

The Department of Biology at Colorado State University is hiring an Assistant Professor in the area of plant-microbe interactions! Please spread the word!

jobs.colostate.edu/postings/165...

Cool paper - pathogen bullies Candida into releasing arginine, increasing pathogen virulence

Towards a trait-based framework for protist ecology and evolution Protists comprise the vast majority of eukaryotic genetic and functional diversity. While they have traditionally been difficult to study due to their small size and varied phenotypes, environmental s...

Towards a trait-based framework for protist ecology and evolution www.cell.com/trends/micro... #jcampubs

Twelve species of human parasites make up half of the literature on microbial eukaryotes Although microbial eukaryotes comprise the majority of eukaryotic phylogenetic diversity and inhabit nearly all ecosystems globally, most research focuses on only a few species of human parasites. Her...

New lab pre-print up! "Twelve species of human parasites make up half the literature on microbial eukaryotes"
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We (led by UG Joanna Lepper and with @hbrappap.bsky.social) quantified all mentions of protist species in the scientific literature 🧵

#protistsonsky #microsky

🍄 UGA Plant Pathology is hiring TT faculty in Mycology/Fungal Biology/Fungal Ecology at the Asst/Assc level! Please pass along this opportunity to anyone you know who may be interested. I'm on the search committee and happy to answer questions. 🍄 www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/445...

Early germline sequestration in a basidiomycete fungus In sexual organisms, inheritance of new mutations is highly dependent on the timing of germline definition. Here, we used the fairy ring–forming fungus Marasmius oreades to challenge the general assum...

Early germline sequestration in a basidiomycete fungus | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to see my review on gut protist ecology and evolution out in Current Opinions! This is part of a special issue on evolutionary genetics which has a lot of great work. Check it out here -
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

How may theoretical ecology & evolutionary theory push microbiology forward?
At Environmental Microbiology, I am commissioning a series of Perspectives exploring that question. Excited to share them in the 🧵 below
The series is open, so do get in touch if you'd like to propose a new contribution!

Was it the one in Tucker? I've had my eye on that one but haven't made it out

Rachel Thomas, PhD - Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

A great blog post by @math-rachel.bsky.social on this preprint describing failures of an ML approach for gene annotation:
rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"how challenging (or even impossible) it can be to evaluate AI claims in work outside our own area of expertise"

Global Metagenomics Reveals Hidden Protist Diversity Protists, defined as unicellular eukaryotes distinct from animals, plants, and fungi, are a polyphyletic group that predominates the eukaryotic tree of life, exhibiting significant phylogenetic divers...

Global Metagenomics Reveals Hidden Protist Diversity. #ProtistsonSky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Supplemental Feeding as a Driver of Population Expansion and Morphological Change in Anna's Hummingbirds Bird beaks are highly adaptable, with the potential to undergo rapid morphological shifts in response to environmental change such as climatic variation or food availability. Anna's Hummingbirds (Cal...

🚨New paper alert!🚨
We show that hummingbird beaks have changed in shape & size since around WWII, driven by the rise of commercialized feeders! 🧵
📄 Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb....
#ornithology #evolution #GlobalChangeBiology

I'm reviewing applicants later this week and will continue to accept new applications until the position is filled

The counterpoint to this is the bullshit asymmetry principle, where the energy needed to counter bullshit outweighs the energy required to generate it. You can burn out on this quickly

📢Excited to share our new paper in Nature Physics
@naturephysics.bsky.social: Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular Stentor!

How do single-celled organisms benefit from teamwork? Let’s dive in! #Multicellularity nature.com/articles/s41...?