@ampersandy
PhD Student at UZH/USZ๐จ๐ญ Focusing on visualising microbes to understand spatial host-microbe interactions. More microbiologist than your average engineer; more engineer than your average microbiologist. Bad at both! ๐ณ๏ธโ๐
The landscape of microbial associations in human cancer www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
TLDR -- most cancers do not have microbiomes...but a few do have consistent microbe associations (i.e., colorectal and oral cancers). Make sense!
The results seem to strengthen the case that these systems rely on elaborate pattern-matching rather than the kind of systematic reasoning their marketing might suggest.
Are you a recent PhD (or soon to be PhD) from outside Canada looking to do a postdoc in Quebec?
Get in touch if you are excited about microbes, evolution, ecology, genomics (or all of the above!) and I'd be happy to help develop a project together!
www.mcgill.ca/gps/funding/...
Fascinating! Will read the moment Markie stops purring my lap
#caturday
#WorkLifeBalance
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The Republican administration has halted all student (and postdoc etc) VISA interviews.
I've written a lot about soft power here. The attacks on foreign students in the US not only undercuts the funding stream for US universities; they hemorrhage US soft power.
Risk of cancer in people with HIV experiencing varying degrees of immune recovery with sustained virological suppression on antiretroviral treatment for more than 2 years: an international, multicentre, observational cohort
โ
Just Accepted
โญ Editor's Choice
#IDSky
This is fascinating, but also terrible news regarding antimicrobial resistance in multidrug-resistant Gram-positives
'Emergence of transferable daptomycin resistance in Gram-positive bacteria'
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
๐ข SBMI 2025
Join us at the 8th International Symposium "Systems Biology of Microbial Infection", Sept 18โ19, 2025 in Jena
Submit your abstract & consider applying for a Tandem-Talk!
Info & speakers: asb-conference.hki-jena.de
#SystemsBiology #InfectionBiology #BioimageAnalysisTools
CHECK IT OUT ๐ฆ ๐
Very cool article by science journalist Carrie Arnold reviewing recent research from leading laboratories on how the unique shape of a microbial #biofilm emerges from interactions of its component microbes with each other and their environment
www.quantamagazine.org/how-a-biofil...
Often in English people confused definitely and defiantly, which gives some of their statements a strong rebelliousness.
โI will defiantly finish reading this book today.โ
In German I can never remember if itโs lebe or liebe. So I often say, โIch liebe in Zรผrichโ, which is poetic as hell.
New work showing that multidrug-resistant ๐๐ค๐ช๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฐ๐ฃ๐ข๐ค๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฃ๐ข๐ถ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ช๐ช isnโt a scattered threatโitโs a structured epidemic!
A dominant super-lineage and a rising clade (2.5.6) are spreading worldwide, fueled by gene exchange.
Li et al. Nat Commun
#AMR #bacterialgenomics
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Fresh in @NatureBiotech! We developed a synthetic biology tool for tracking gene transfer in microbial communities and applied it to study plasmid hosts in a wastewater microbiome. Awesome collab with James Chappell & @joffsilberg.bsky.social and incredible students. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Join us on Friday, March 21 @ 13:00 CET for the #Virtual Pub with Alexander Morrell, Kingโs College London, @bioimaginguk.bsky.social. He'll give an exciting talk on "Metallomics Imaging: Unlocking Elemental Insights into Human Health & Disease."
Register๐ฝ
www.eurobioimaging.eu/events/metal...
๐จ Paper Alert ๐จ
Absolutely delighted to share our last paper on "spatial mechano-transcriptomics" @naturemethods๐!!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) is a great example of an organization that is supposed to stand up for science and scientists, but is completely spineless.
They're kowtowing to pressure from the Admin, refusing to stand up at one of the most critical times in U.S. science.
Compare๐
Patient partners play a vital role in research but face systemic barriers to fair pay. Institutions must match their equity commitments with actionโtransparent, equitable compensation is long overdue.
Macrophages are just the tireless workhorses of the immune system.... #ImmunoSky ๐งช
www.nature.com/artic...
ISME supports students and postdocs to further develop their academic knowledge and skills in a host institution outside of their country of study. Submit your application by 31 March 2025.
๐https://isme-microbes.org/isme-scholar-mobility-fund-call-for-applications/
#MicrobialEcology #microbes
Tumor cells help each other out when amino acids are scarce www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The most achingly beautiful explanation of what science is, from @edyong209.bsky.social: โthe idea that much of the world is hidden from us, that we donโt perceive it and donโt understand it, and that it is worth understanding and it is necessary to understand.โ
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...
It's hard to express how cool this work is, so I'll just say that if you crave beautiful experiments and rigorously done theory to match, @fernpizza.bsky.social is your guy. Go read this amazing paper right now!
Has anyone ever hosted a Wiki-write in?
Dear federal scientists: If you have been affected by the probationary firings and would be willing to speak with Science, please reach out to me by email (klangin@aaas.org) or on Signal. We can guarantee annonymity.
Indonesia and WHO launched a national survey on AMR in bloodstream infections, targeting 10,000 patients to improve treatment and policy. This initiative strengthens surveillance, laboratory capacity, and hospital preparedness to combat AMR. #AMR #GlobalHealth
www.who.int/indonesia/ne...
I have seen lots of flavors of smart/event-driven microscopy, and this builds directly on the shoulders of existing works, but also takes this idea an important step further, both conceptually and in terms of accomplishments. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We really just take turns presenting in lab meeting and itโs just an adult form of โshow & tellโ
Academics: Jevin and I would love to see this course used broadly around the world. Would you recommend publishing some sort of journal article about the course? (We don't need the publication for our CVs, but just want to get the word out.) If so, where would you target it?
Other promotion ideas?
For every dollar of federal research funding in the United States, universities generate between $2.30 and $3.00 of economy activity, much of that in local communities.
That doesnโt even include the return on investment of getting a college or graduate degree, which research also dollars support.
