I am so happy for you Bea! Congrats! 🥳

Dream count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses the pandemic as the scenario that launches introspection

A call for caution in the biological interpretation of viral auxiliary metabolic genes - Nature Microbiology This Perspective discusses virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and provides a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes.

New paper alert! We suggest caution in the analyses of viral auxiliary metabolic genes and propose a new overarching term - 'auxiliary viral genes' (AVGs) to describe different types of such genes. @simrouxvirus.bsky.social #phagesky #Microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📝New preprint!

We investigated how spatial structure affects cooperation between phages, combining mathematical modelling and experiments.

A short thread 🧶

Quantitative Phage-Bacteria Dynamics Across Scales Group Photo, College Park, MD, June 24, 2025

Midway through a full week, early career focused event at University of Maryland. Ever more excited for what could be in the study of phage dynamics across scales.

Many thanks to all the lecturers, student/postdoc participants, lab instructors, and support.

weitzgroup.umd.edu/workshops/

New preprint led by @brunoluviano.bsky.social & Fernando Santos.

We show that filamentation enhances bacterial survival under toxic stress — not as collateral damage, but as a regulated morphological response.

TL;DR: Filamentation isn’t a symptom, it’s a strategy!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

After some busy days, I'm happy to share with y'all that I successfully defended my PhD last week.
Milestones like this are never achieved in a vacuum. It takes a village and I'm incredibly grateful for the friends, family, and colleagues who supported me through this journey.

Schematic of probability distribution of the latent period along with single-cell examples of bursts that increase in magnitude as the latent period increases. Full details in the paper.

New on #biorXiv: 'Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage life-history traits from population-scale dynamics'. A theory-experiment collaboration, led by @mariandm.bsky.social + Ran Tahan w/the Lindell group at Technion (and yes, I am excited).

a 🧵

www.biorxiv.org/contenat/10....

Summer School, Quantitative Phage-Bacteria Dynamics Across Scales U of Maryland, College Park, June 23-27, 2025

A small moment of science in the world of the very small... announcing calls for applications from MS + PhD students + postdocs for a Summer School on

Quantitative Phage-Bacteria Dynamics Across Scales
U of Maryland, College Park, June 23-27, 2025

Apply by 3/21/25:

bit.ly/phageschool2...