📢 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
🚨 Publication alert! We are stoked to report the structural basis for activity of a novel class of antimicrobials targeting Gram positive priority pathogens in @natcomms.nature.com. There is something for everyone on this paper, and I will highlight a few things below 👇 1/9 doi.org/10.1038/s414...
Any conversation with @markowenmartin.bsky.social is a fun conversation. Really enjoyed sharing our science and my messy whiteboard! Come for a discussion of the environment and antibiotic resistance, stay for a (somewhat tortured) comparison of biology education to learning a foreign language. 💜
💜 Now that I am a PI I do none of those things too 🙃 (Except for streaking colonies—sometimes just for fun!).
Finally out, such an awesome piece of work, very proud of this one: www.cell.com/cell-systems... #MicroSky
The Peters lab is looking for a new team member! The role transposons play in evolution, basic mechanisms regulating transposition, and applying transposons as tools for genome modification with a special focus on guide RNA-directed transposition. cornell.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/CornellCaree...
Amazing work by @hueihsuantsai.bsky.social and colleagues from @nikogeldner.bsky.social, Feng Zhou @tonnigrubeandersen.bsky.social labs in Science
Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#chemotaxis #MicroSky
Despite These Times...my department is hiring! I really like my department, we have a good mix of disciplines and organisms and we're really low-drama. We also get pizza at faculty meeting. So if you're a computational and structural biologist, join us! 🧪 jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/260...
#MicroSky
This is a truly remarkable finding: 17 years after introduction of the HPV vaccine, there was a decreased prevalence of HPV infection (and therefore decreased cancer risk) in both vaccinated AND unvaccinated individuals. Cancer prevention through herd immunity!!!
Rain >>>>> super hot. Fact.
Let me add one of my favorites: the simple test for toxoplasmosis that's saved so many babies
I knew about the test b/c of my pregnancy & then I happened to rent the house across the street from the man who discovered it & created the modern treatment protocol
med.stanford.edu/news/all-new...
Tenure-track Position in Biophysics at Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Physics Location: Pittsburgh, PA Open Date: Sep 19, 2025 Description The Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics. The appointment is intended to be at the Assistant Professor level, but exceptional candidates at a higher level may also be considered. We seek outstanding candidates with a strong record in cellular and subcellular biophysics. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, uncovering how key characteristics of living systems arise from the interplay between supramolecular cellular structures, how the emergent cellular circuitry defines goals and enables robust decision making, and how metabolic resources are allocated. This encompasses understanding of how information is learned, stored, transduced, and processed across subcellular structures. Applicants with theoretical, data science, or experimental backgrounds within biological physics are encouraged to apply. The ideal candidate will strengthen and extend research programs of current biophysics faculty in the Department of Physics and collaborate with broader life science activities across many departments at CMU and the wider Pittsburgh area. More details on Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/174360
I am super excited to announce that we have a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics open in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon! 🧪
Interfolio link: apply.interfolio.com/174360
PLEASE, share widely across the blue skies!
Let me briefly explain what we're looking for:
1/10
Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n
New in JB: Ma, Wang & Li review the role of DNA methylation in regulating pathogenesis, drug resistance, biofilm formation, adhesion, and motility and more!
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
@asm.org #JBacteriology
A very large brown bear walking in a field of grass.
It is Fat Bear Week in Alaska. The popular competition lets anyone vote on which of the animals is most prepared for winter. nyti.ms/3IBbucx
Longstanding collaboration with Scott Manalis where we have developed technology to measure single cell growth rates of bacteria in native seawater with some very surprising results.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Very nice writeup on someone I've admired and learned from for many years. I didn't know he had passed until catching up on This Week in Microbiology driving to campus this morning. His 1958 paper on Salmonella growth rates basically founded the formal study of microbial physiology, which...
For those interested in further reading, the studies establishing the triplet nature of the genetic code were also reviewed by both Benzer and Crick in two 1962 Scientific American articles -- both worth a read!
www.jstor.org/stable/24937...
www.jstor.org/stable/24936...
Agar art: Microbes make the world go ground.
The 2025 agar art contest is open and accepting submissions until Oct. 26! The theme is “Microbes Make the World Go Round.” Submit your artwork and showcase the vital role microbes play in our daily lives. All are welcome to apply! See contest details: asm.org/events/asm-a...
Article about the article from his longtime home, @harvardmcb.bsky.social
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n...
The last publication (he says!) from Rich Losick, my PhD advisor.
Historical in nature it focuses on a seminal paper in molecular biology, the study revealing the genetic code to be triplet in nature. Come for the science, appreciate the clear prose!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Immunization with peptides can elicit antigen-specific T cell responses, but they're not widely used because they are poorly immunogenic and are rapidly cleared. Domenico D'Atri solves this by using our "SSHEL" platform (synthetic bacterial spores) .
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
We are hiring! Please share the news.
Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Bacterial Pathogenesis
See link below for details.
We are a vibrantly growing department with friendly colleagues and supportive environment. Bonus: year-round sunshine in Tampa, FL 🌤🌴
Job Ad: tinyurl.com/USF-Microbio...
Should have noted we called her “Mama Shapiro” in Rich’s lab…
I also enjoy their tribute to a hero of bacteriology, Francois Jacob.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I, of course, am also very fond of the many retrospective reviews she wrote with Rich. This one on the advent of bacterial cell biology and its impact is great.
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
This is a lovely article she wrote describing the arc of her career if people want to appreciate not only her work but also her beautiful prose. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Along with Rich Losick, my PhD advisor, Lucy pioneered the use of bacteria for the study of development and it was work in her lab and Rich’s that changed our view of bacteria from “bags of enzymes” to that of highly organized cells as intricately constructed as those from an eukaryote.
