Episomal virus maintenance enables bacterial population recovery from infection and promotes virus–bacterial coexistence Abstract. Viruses are ubiquitous in aquatic environments with total densities of virus-like particles often exceeding 107/ml in surface marine oligotrophic

Excited to share our grad student Akash Arani’s (co-first author) recent paper in the ISME Journal! Along with collaborators at @ua.es, we show how episomal virus maintenance enables bacterial recovery and promotes virus–host coexistence in hypersaline environments.

doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Congratulations to @juliepourtois.bsky.social, a postdoc in our group, on her new paper now available as an In Press Preview on JCI! 🥳🥳🥳 Based on her PhD at Stanford, the study shows how new Pseudomonas infections drive Pf phage spread in CF airways.

Read it here: insight.jci.org/articles/vie...

Akash Arani, a biology grad student in our group, has been accepted to @sfiscience.bsky.social's Complex Systems Summer School! A fantastic opportunity to dive deep into transdisciplinary science—congrats, Akash! 👏

Dr. Joshua Weitz: Asymptomatic COVID-19 Spreaders Podcast Episode · Critically Speaking · 04/29/2025 · 32m

@joshuasweitz.bsky.social joins Dr. Teri Markow on the @criticallyspeaking.bsky.social to discuss silent transmission, asymptomatic spread, and what it all means for the future of pandemics. 🎙️

Listen to the episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

Accounting for cellular-level variation in lysis: implications for virus–host dynamics | mBio Quantifying viral traits—including the adsorption rate, burst size, and latent period—is critical to characterize viral infection dynamics and develop predictive models of viral impacts across scales ...

Exciting news! A paper co-authored by Weitz Group member @mariandm.bsky.social has been selected as the Best Paper in Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology for the 2024 QBioS Award at Georgia Tech. Congrats to Marian! 🥳🥳🥳

Read it in mBio: doi.org/10.1128/mbio...

Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage life-history traits from population-scale dynamics Phage-induced lysis of bacteria transforms population dynamics, community structure, and ecosystem functioning. Scaling up infected cell fate to ecosystem-scale impacts requires quantitative estimates...

A new paper co-authored by Weitz Group member @mariandm.bsky.social on latent period heterogeneity is now on bioRxiv! It explores how variation in viral latency shapes virus-host dynamics and introduces a new framework for trait estimation.

Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to share news that Emma Wachter defended her honor's thesis on 'Assessing mechanisms of non-exponential decay in viral systems' in the Dept. of Biology at UMD as part of her work in @weitz-group.bsky.social.

She is off to Dana Farber for a postbac. Congrats to Emma!

An engaging meetup on matters aquatic viral ecology related... in advance of the international Aquatic Virus Workshop in early May to take place in Banyuls-sur-Mer. Thanks to @beckettstephen.bsky.social, @juliepourtois.bsky.social + @tgoel.bsky.social + all participants for making it possible.

Group photo

Event flyer

Had a great meeting talking science and discussing avenues for moving frontiers at the Maryland aquatic viral ecology meeting last week. Many thanks to co-organizers @juliepourtois.bsky.social and @tgoel.bsky.social, and to all who participated!

Diel partitioning in microbial phosphorus acquisition in the Sargasso Sea | PNAS The daily cycle of photosynthetic primary production at the base of marine food webs is often limited by the availability of scarce nutrients. Micr...

A new paper co-led by Prof. @joshuasweitz.bsky.social reveals how marine microbes avoid direct competition by timing their phosphorus uptake throughout the day.

Check it out here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Bonus link for those interested, another way to look at this same issue is here:

bsky.app/profile/leos...

Reinforcing the key message - CDC's measles page should be updated to dispel the impression that the outbreak is always on the way out, when that's not the case.

Visualizing the Impacts of Federal Cuts to Medical Research & Why It Matters Why it matters how we communicate and visualize the impacts of proposed and ongoing cuts to science and medical research nationwide.

Visualizing the Impacts of Federal Cuts to Medical Research & Why It Matters

New #substack on collaborative effort with @asinclair.bsky.social and our #SCIMaP team

Website: scienceimpacts.org

Read more here:
open.substack.com/pub/joshuasw...

US map via scienceimpacts.org visualization of economic loss due to IDC cuts to 15% as part of Feb 7, 2025 executive order, with shading denoting intensity of cuts.

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs.

Find out how your community may be impacted.

Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org

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It's publication day for "Asymptomatic" via Johns Hopkins U Press. The book explores the paradox of asymptomatic transmission and rationale for proactive steps to confront future pandemics:

bit.ly/asymptomatic...

👋 Hello Bluesky! We’re the Weitz Group at the @univofmaryland.bsky.social, led by Prof. @joshuasweitz.bsky.social. We study how viruses shape the fate of cells, populations, and ecosystems—combining theory, data, and a dash of quantitative chaos.

Please, follow us here. 🧪📈🦠 #WeitzGroup