Five year old girl on BBC News in item on Artemis II hopes we can find life on other planets so "we can be family with them.."
Wish politicians would share her attitude to those who are different.

DefensePredictor: A Machine Learning Model to Discover Novel Prokaryotic Immune Systems Anti-phage defense systems protect bacteria from viruses. Studying defense systems has begun to reveal the evolutionary roots of eukaryotic innate immunity and produced important biotechnologies such ...

Congrats Mike Laub and Emily Mahoney!

Lots more in the manuscript: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

7/n

A membrane-bound nuclease directly cleaves phage DNA during genome injection - Nature A widespread bacterial defence system called SNIPE is shown to localize to the cell membrane, where it identifies and cleaves the DNA of infecting phage as it is injected into the bacterial cell.

Nature research paper: A membrane-bound nuclease directly cleaves phage DNA during genome injection

go.nature.com/3P2jKFh

Thanks so much, Jennifer! Great talking with you today

Looking for a cutting-edge and fun conference in 2026?
How about:

GRC Geobiology in Ventura, CA - January 11-16, 2026
www.grc.org/geobiology-c...

AbSciCon in Madison, WI - May 17-22, 2026
www.agu.org/abscicon

🤩The Ruff Lab will be there with sessions and presentations on Dark Oxygen Production 🥳

Subsurface Life on Earth as a Key to Unlock Extraterrestrial Mysteries This paper discusses current research on subsurface microbiology. Exploring Earth's deep and extreme subsurface environments provides critical insights into life's limits and adaptability. Subsurface...

Thrilled to share our new paper: Subsurface Life on Earth as a Key to Unlock Extraterrestrial Mysteries. 🧪

@melroselane.bsky.social, @drbradbrad.bsky.social , @geobiomaggie.bsky.social, @emilruff.bsky.social
@mblscience.bsky.social

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An Asgard Archaeon (Lokiarchaeum ossiferum) growing and retracting its arms

Redox conduction facilitates direct interspecies electron transport in anaerobic methanotrophic consortia Methane-consuming microbial partners use redox conductors to pass electrons.

Redox conduction facilitates direct interspecies electron transport in anaerobic methanotrophic consortia www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

Petroff et al study the magnetotactic properties of multicellular magnetotactic bacteria from Little Sippewissett salt marsh.

Deep-branching magnetotactic bacteria form intracellular carbonates enriched in trace metals journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

Ha! Except we weren't in a brain and thankfully Donald Pleasence didn't sabotage our dive!!

If you want to pick the project up again, I'm happy to help grab a sediment core anytime, Ian!

Dive through purple sulfur bacteria 101825 lrg YouTube video by Michael McCormick

Delighted to share this with your students, Mark! Here is a link to a slightly higher resolution version. The white specks you see at beginning of the video are zooplankton feeding on the PSB (daphnia and copepods).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm9y...

Yes! About a meter below the PSB you can catch the faint green/yellow color of the green sulfur bacteria. Just like the Winogradsky column in my window.

Diving through the purple sulfur bacteria layer of Fayetteville Green Lake with our ROV last month. This is the most intense density of PSB that I've seen in many years!

Possible biosignature on Mars?
astrobiology.com/2025/09/nasa...

Putting my "Hands Off" protest sign in the front yard.