Glen Dsouza

Estropausal gut microbiota transplant improves measures of ovarian function in adult mice - Nature Aging To investigate the link between the gut microbiome and ovarian health, here the authors transplant gut microbiota from estropausal female mice to young adult female mice. Microbial transplantation imp...

Very cool paper www.nature.com/articles/s43...

The authors found that FMTs from *older* mice into adult females improved ovarian function and lowered inflammation.

FMTs from younger mice into adult mice led to higher inflammation and *reduced* ovarian function in older mice.

How does treatment induced antibiotic resistance happen in real-world infections? We analysed 25k Pseudomonas isolates from 180 patients in a clinical trial to find out! TLDR: The ecological and evolutionary paths are surprisingly diverse & complex even in patients receiving identical treatment…

Excited to see @cdiener.com's community-scale metabolic models tools getting a shout-out in this @natbiotech.nature.com editorial.

Specifically, mentioning Nick Quinn-Bohmann's recent paper on predicting personalized SCFA production (for precision nutrition): www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lack of coevolution should be default assumption, but it’s not, because it’s easy to imagine coevolutionary scenarios

But most microbial populations live very complicated lives

Multi level selection is hard when generation times orders of magnitude different and microbial environments are complex

Very nice to see this out Simon!

Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities Spatial structure naturally emerges in microbial communities, shaping growth, interactions, and evolution, and revealing how microscale processes scale up

Wrapping up a productive week: very glad to have contributed to this review on how spatial structure shapes microbial ecology and evolution, led by @marcelbaecker.bsky.social, @bedutilh.bsky.social, @bramvandijk.bsky.social and many others. doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Cool work from the van Vliet group!

Excited to share first preprint from our lab! @giubotti.bsky.social found that antibiotic tolerance in multispecies biofilms follows a surprising spatial pattern: cells survive only at intermediate distances from a partner species. 🦠 Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Heading home after an enlightening couple of days at the Cells to Ecosystems Meeting at the rather scenic Bellairs Research Institute in Barbados! Thanks to @vdumeaux.bsky.social and @hallettmiket.bsky.social for the invite and bringing together people from diametrically opposite research fields!

How do diatom cells maintain a constant supply of carbon for photosynthesis? Our microelectrode measurements of the phycosphere around individual diatom cells show that diatoms can rapidly switch between distinct carbon acquisition pathways. @thembauk.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The hidden energy cost of cellular dormancy Many organisms survive harsh environments by switching into special survival modes. Some bacteria do this by forming spores—dormant, highly resilient cells that can persist for years or even centuries...

www.growkudos.com/publications...

New work with @ckarakoc.bsky.social and @shoestrapped.bsky.social in @pnas.org

Co-occurrence is associated with horizontal gene transfer across marine bacteria independent of phylogeny Abstract. Understanding the drivers and consequences of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a key goal of microbial evolution research. Although co-occurring

Now out & nicely formatted in @isme-microbes.bsky.social

A big analysis of ocean genomes & metagenomes co-led by former postdocs, now PIs, @gmdouglas.bsky.social & @cyanophage.bsky.social along with co-PIs @lbobay.bsky.social & Samuel Chaffron.

A few highlights... 🧵 (1/n)

doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Diagram illustrating early genome erosion during the transition from a free-living Sodalis bacterium to two host-associated endosymbionts inside the long-tailed mealybug. Circular genomes show intact genes in blue and pseudogenes in red, highlighting increased pseudogene accumulation in symbiotic forms. Caption asks: “What are the downstream molecular consequences of early genome erosion?”

Happy to share a preprint—the last chapter of my dissertation with @mcsymbiont.bsky.social and Co—on what happens when bacterial endosymbionts accumulate huge numbers of pseudogenes during early genome reduction.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very cool read!

What If We Could Choose What We Hear? Shyam Gollakota on AI-Enhanced Hearing — The Experimentalist Mohit Nikalje 

We love science stories that are shaping the technology of tomorrow.

Our latest spotlights Prof. ShyamGollakota and his work on headphones that intelligently tune out the chaos and lock onto the sounds that actually matter.
theexperimentalist.org/behindthedis...
#AI #behindthediscovery

Independent, ongoing clade-specific expansions of IS5 elements in Pseudomonas syringae Insertion sequence (IS) elements are transposable regions of DNA present in a majority of bacterial genomes. It is hypothesized that differences in distributions of IS elements across bacterial strain...

Hey y’all,

New paper out from the lab in Microbial Genomics, starting down the rabbit hole of IS elements in Paeudomonas syringae

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Happy to share my solo-authored Perspective "An Interpretation, Survey, and Outlook of Microbial Macroecology"! Making time these last few months to take stock of the patterns us microbial ecologists examine + models we invoke has been invaluable. Feedback welcome!

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

New paper out in @pnas.org, and it made the cover! 👁️

We represent plasmids as circles and mutations as dots, resembling an eye, because in this paper we literally 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ plasmids evolve.

‼️Check Paula’s 🧵 and the paper👇

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

congrats!

So cool! A neat twist on cross-feeding: Externalization may evolve to relieve toxicity, with interactions emerging as a by-product.

Another product from Dr. Ying-Chih 'Ella' Chuang's time in my lab - bacteria that excrete purines are better equipped to tolerate inhibitory effects of purines, suggesting a physiological basis behind some cross-feeding interactions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to see this published! A big part of why SAR11 is so tricky to grow like "normal" microbes.

Co-convening "The art and science of microbial persuasion" at #ISME20 with Fengping Wang. Cultivation advances: methods, media, uncultured lineages. Coaxing reluctant microbes? Submit your abstract & join us in NZ!

isme.live.ws-django.co.uk/public/confe...
isme.live.ws-django.co.uk/public/confe...

🚨Our new article is out in #PLOS Pathogens!

What drives nestedness in phages–bacteria interactions network in an agro-ecosystem? 🌱

📖 journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

#Phagesky @inrae-pv.bsky.social @phimresearch.bsky.social @phagedirectory.bsky.social

(Yes, that's a phage in those kinetics!)

Screenshot from GRC portal confirming microbial population biology meeting June 27, 2027 in Andover, New Hampshire.

It’s officially happening folks! The Microbial Population Biology Gordon Research Conference is back in Andover, New Hampshire starting June 27th of 2027!
See you there!!

@wcratcliff.bsky.social @ksbakes.bsky.social @surtlab.bsky.social

#microsky #mevosky

Bottleneck size drives the evolution of cooperative traits in an aggregative multicellular myxobacterium Population bottlenecks shape the evolution of cooperative traits in Myxococcus xanthus through life cycle trade-offs. This study shows that stringent bottlenecks favor growth and sporulation, while re...

Very cool paper by Jyotsna Kalathera et al. from @iamsamayp.bsky.social 's-lab on

Bottleneck size drives the evolution of
cooperative traits in an aggregative multicellular
myxobacterium

just out @plosbiology.org

Congratulations to all coauthors.

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

If you work on Dark Oxygen --> come to #AbSciCon2026 this year. 17-22 May, Madison

Join our session on ""Dark Oxygen" Production: where does it happen, how does it work, and what does it mean for astrobiology?"

Submit your abstract until January 14

More info here: agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon...

Experimental evolution in the cystic fibrosis chemical environment reveals early TCA cycle flux as a central regulator of Mycobacterium abscessus biofilm formation Mycobacterium abscessus (MAB) is an emerging opportunistic pathogen that can cause severe, recalcitrant pulmonary infections in susceptible groups, in…

Congratulations to Sean Yu-Hao Wang, Will DePas, @catarmbruster.bsky.social and colleagues on their use of experimental evolution to identify regulators of Mycobacterium abscessus biofilm production!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Please do not miss the opportunity to apply for this exciting PhD position in my lab.

The project will providefundamental insights into the coevolution of cross-feeding microbial consortia within and between species.

The deadline ends this week.

Looking forward to receiving your application.