Abstracts open for ASM BIG. Submit now.
General abstract submissions are open for ASM BIG 2026!
Submit by June 17 (2 p.m. ET) to present your work in bioinformatics, genomics and big data and connect with a global community advancing microbial science.
asm.social/2TP
It’s been a real week of triumph for JD; maybe we should try having him endorse cancer or something
Now would be a great time to reconsider that 46% cut to NASA’s science budget for FY2027.
If you are working on staphylococci you might want to travel to Banff this September
banff.isssi2026.com/event/ISSSI/...
“It really just bent your mind. It was an extraordinary human experience.”
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4vhyUay
Oh nothing, just a peer reviewed paper my colleagues found...
doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...
"1 mL of the mass killing of an ethnic group was opposed to 20 mL of the skin sample and unprotected to light for 7 min."
Even AI knows what's wrong here, but @elsevierconnect.bsky.social doesn't.
Please Repost 🔄
Global Staphylococcus research community is heading to the Canadian Rockies!
Join the 20th International Symposium on Staphylococci and Staphylococcal Infections
📅 September 20–24, 2026
📍 Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Canada
#ISSSI2026
#Staphylococcus
Our work shows how different bacterial cell surface properties alter microbiogeography and social interactions! Fun collaboration with @digglelab.bsky.social
New personal view article
The role of microbial genomics in delivering the UK’s national action plan for confronting antimicrobial resistance 2024–29
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
#IDSky #ClinMicro #AMR #OpenAccess #OA
Courtesy of @martibartfast.bsky.social , we have a new release of AllTheBacteria which adds another 322,920 assemblies, covering all ENA (illumina, isolate) prokaryotes to May 2025.
allthebacteria.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ov...
The idea that humans sit atop an evolutionary hierarchy dates back to 1866, when a scientist drew the first tree of life with "Man" at the top. This inaccurate view still shapes how we think of the animal world, despite decades of genomic evidence proving evolution has no hierarchy.
buff.ly/055hdSo
More hope from mRNA vaccines. In this instance, individualized vaccines were given to women with triple negative breast cancer following surgery and adjuvant therapy. The results are quite remarkable. Despite cancer finding a ‘T cell-evading’ work-around in some patients.
#Science 🧪
Its a weird, head-spinning moment where, on one hand, we can create new software from scratch in minutes with Claude code and, on the other, we are entering html code manually to apply for NIH funding
Something very different and cool for my lab. Sequencing a 4.4mb TB genome using the Artic-style PCR amplicon method with >5128 primers in two reactions 🤯
Enables culture-free WGS for TB!
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
I wrote some words for this.weekinsecurity.com about how social media giants (aka: ad tech companies!) track you around the web, even if you don't have an account or use their apps. Follows from a brilliant column in the BBC about TikTok's use of website "pixels" to track people's browsing activity.
Thanks for the great summary!
Exposing Staph aureus to both low-dose antibiotics and a host drove rapid evolution of extreme virulence. Researchers passaged MRSA and MSSA through nematodes with sub-MIC oxacillin for 12 rounds, then tracked how virulence and resi...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08....
"We are deliberately walking away from the most advanced form of one of the most effective public health measures available to the human race, and instead we are investigated older technologies that happen to involve the administration’s friends"
Indeed.
www.science.org/content/blog...
Absolutely love this story! Turns out Staph aureus strains in the wild have developed some cool tricks to survive and thrive in the presence of other common bugs. Metal transport seems to be key! Great work from Sam 👏🏼👏🏼
The State Dept is reviewing the online presence of all applicants for F,M,J,H1B visas. I warn clients all the time about the risks of international travel. Visa processing today is a minefield & it's key to weigh risks before going. This is one example of what we are seeing.
"in July 2023, 80% of Danes said they saw the US as a friend or ally. Now, fewer than 26% do".
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
Time for a thread on our Christmas preprint “Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes”. I had so much fun with this project and paper. It will be hard to summarize in a thread, but I’ll try www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/21]
Wow. Journals like this should be immediately removed from the Clarivate database.
The HPV vaccine prevents cervical and other cancers.
This is a good thing and because of that reason RFK. Jr and his ACIP are going to go after this safe and effective vaccine to undermine its uptake.
Measles is back, Pertussis is back & if they have their way cervical cancer will not be eliminated.
William Foege has died. He was a central architect of smallpox eradication, pioneering surveillance-driven ring vaccination when vaccine supply was limited. That strategy helped eliminate the deadliest human pathogen we’ve ever known.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...
