Tonight's @asm.org MD Branch meeting - Rodney Rohde talking about reemerging pathogens

Keep Cats Indoors - American Bird Conservancy Outdoor cats kill up an estimated 2.4 billion birds in the U.S. each year. Discover how American Bird Conservancy is reducing the threat of roaming and stray cats through our Cats Indoors program.

Little migrating songbirds are performing one of the most stunning behaviors on the planet-- some are flying from Brazil to Canada, overnight. When they stop to rest they are exhausted and vulnerable.

Protect them by keeping cats inside! It helps cats too!

abcbirds.org/solutions/ke...

An mRNA treatment for PANCREATIC CANCER was in trials, among many other uses. Choosing to end this research is choosing to sentence millions to an early, painful death

God bless Bruce

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The awesome virome logo of a phage above a strand of DNA

Have you developed a new #bioinformatics tool to understand #phage or #virus? Make sure you add it to #awesome-virome

github.com/shandley/awe...

On schedule now for #MattersMicrobial: podcast releases every other Tuesday. This week, Dr. Nahui Medina-Chavez (of the Michael Travisano lab) joins the #QualityQuorum to discuss halophilic archaea and evolution in the lab. Please spread the #GoodMicrobialWord??

youtu.be/oz04oGDiRY0?...

Why do we live in such a childish, stupid country? A country that wastes its money on useless billion dollar aircraft carriers, when it could be spending those tax dollars to actually help its citizens like sane countries.

"The greatest danger to our future is apathy."

-- Jane Goodall, born #OTD 1934

A black-and-white photo shows Dr. Leila Denmark (center), an elderly woman with glasses, seated and smiling while looking at a baby who is laughing and facing her. Another younger woman is also seated to the right, laughing and placing her hand near the baby's midsection. The scene suggests a warm, inter-generational interaction, possibly in a clinical or home setting. Dr. Denmark was a pioneering pediatrician, known as the world's oldest practicing pediatrician upon her retirement at age 103.

Dr. Leila Denmark co-developed the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine in 1932.

She was the world's oldest practicing pediatrician until she retired at age 103 (practicing for 73 years). She died a supercentenarian #OTD in 2012 at the age of 114 years and 60 days.

#WomenInSTEM

But left unbrushed, our teeth develop biofilms where communities are truly "stronger together".
For more "Silly Stickers, Serious Science" see mostlymicrobes.redbubble.com. If you need bulk purchases for outreach or clients, DM me. 🧪🦠🍎🦷🪥

To get my kids to brush their teeth I tell them about bacterial biofilms. Within biofilms, each bacterial species has a "job". Streptococcus oralis & friends hold on to the tooth. S. mutans (top left) makes acid that causes cavities. Brushing removes S. oralis, so S. mutans can't grow! 🧪🪥🦷🦠🍎

Sticker with a diversity of bacterial colonies on a petri dish. The sticker reads " I've got a lot on my plate!".

In Gen Micro we "swab something". I encourage students to swab 👟b/c the diversity is fabulous! Here's a sticker dedicated to all the diversity we find on our plates. 🍎🦠🧪As a mom-scientist it's the diversity of things that is sometimes a bit much! At my RedBubble site: mostlymicrobes.redbubble.com

New Book Review up! Breaking Through: My Life In Science by Katalin Kariko. An inspirational story of an unconventional scientist who created the COVID19 mRNA vaccine. For anyone who doesn't fit into the status quo. @asm.org 🦠🧪🍎https://www.mostlymicrobes.com/brbreaking_through/

Cartoon of a bacterial growth curve with bacteria "multiplying by dividing" underneath the growth curve

I always tell my students that bacteria are bad at math - they multiply to divide. *groan*. This and other silly stickers about serious science are up on my RedBubble site. mostlymicrobes.redbubble.com. Need bulk orders for #scicomm? LMK. #stickers 🧪🦠🍎

@markowenmartin.bsky.social thanks so much for the dung beetle and brood ball kits!! You are too kind. The girls and I will have a ton of fun.

How Bacteria Die in the Microbial Marine Forest

Dr. Anne Thompson explores her research on salps, some of the most abundant animals in the ocean, and how their feeding mechanisms shape marine microbial food webs and carbon cycles.

@markowenmartin.bsky.social

5/6 For anyone worried about synthetic vs "natural" compounds, synthetics are often purer, more stable, & engineered to be more effective and SAFER than "natural" compounds. So do what's right for your baby, get them the vitamin K they need, prevent VKDB, and avoid risk of fatal brain bleeds. 🍎⚛️🧪🧬👩‍🔬🥽

Facts and myths parents should know about vitamin K shots for newborns | Cultivating Health Vitamin K shots are part of routine care for newborns. However, there are many myths about vitamin K injections. Our experts give you the facts about this potentially life-saving vaccine.

6/6 here's a helpful resource:

Oh and talk to your doctor about the hepatitis B vaccine for your baby as well. The fact I had to sign a waiver in order to get the vaccine for my baby because of the current misinformation is sad. 🥽👩‍🔬🧬🧪⚛️🍎

health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultiva...

Distribution of capsule and O types in Klebsiella pneumoniae causing neonatal sepsis in Africa and South Asia: A meta-analysis of genome-predicted serotype prevalence to inform potential vaccine cover... Thomas Stanton and colleagues use whole genome sequencing to evaluate the prevalence of Klebsiella pneumoniae K and O antigen types in 13 countries in Africa and South Asia to help inform vaccine desi...

This is the sort of strategic planning that should go into #vaccine design 💉

They analysed 1,930 #Klebsiella pneumoniae 🦠🧫🧬 neonate blood isolates from 13 countries and estimate that 20 antigens 🧪 could cover 72.9% of all infections for 5–10 years

#IDSky #EpiSky

journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

Battersea rescue dog trained to detect lung infection Chilli will be able to identify the scent of pseudomonas aeruginosa in people with cystic fibrosis.

A rescue puppy is to become one of only a handful of dogs in the world able to detect a multi-drug resistant lung infection.

Chilli is being trained to identify the scent of pseudomonas aeruginosa, a major cause of lung damage in cystic fibrosis.

🧪🐕🦠
@medsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A bearded man in nurse's scrubs offers aid to Justice, wearing a blindfold and holding a sword and scales, who has fallen to her knees.

Street art memorializing Alex Pretti in Seattle. Per r/Seattle, it was painted on a building facing Swedish Hospital in the First Hill neighborhood www.reddit.com/r/nursing/co...

Join #MVIF 46 cassyni.com/s/mvif-46

and #MeetTheSpeakers

@jeremyjbarr.bsky.social will discuss isolation, engineering and ecology of temperate phages from the human gut!

Let's start a virus snowflake blizzard! Snip out some viral snowflakes this weekend - using the great templates by @socialinfluenza.bsky.social See new blog post here: wp.me/p5dMJb-Rg

Assembly of the infant gut microbiome and resistome are linked to bacterial strains in mother’s milk - Nature Communications Here, with metagenomic analyses on longitudinal samples collected from 195 mother-infant pairs, the authors show that the breast milk microbiome contributes to infant gut assembly through bacterial st...

Breast milk isn't just nutrition – it delivers live bacterial strains that colonize the infant gut and persist for months.

Happy to share our new paper, where we used metagenomics to track bacterial strains between 195 mother-infant pairs over the first 6 months of life:

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Book Review: Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change - Mostly Microbes . This review was first published in American Biology Teacher 2025 Vol. 87, No. 2, pp. 147–150, ISSN 0002-7685. Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change. By David L. Kirchman. 2024. Oxford Univer...

Book review of Microbes:The Unseen Agents of Climate Change is up on the blog - rb.gy/wchw8f. Really love this book and will use for Environmental Microbiology!

Zika Virus Outbreak ... This report describes a Zika outbreak in Dhaka, Bangladesh, during September-December 2024.

🧵 1/7 #AltComms
MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) this week on a Zika outbreak in Bangladesh in 2024

This is classic, boots-on-the-ground epidemiology—and exactly why it still matters. Let’s dig in.

As you partake of bread and beer - give thanks for Saccharomyces cerevisiae! Yeast ferments sugar into alcohol. The CO2 given off is what helps bread rise.
Each semester we do a Fermentation Feast in class to "taste the diversity of cultures". Microbiology - the field full of sensory delights :)

This student for "Thank a Microbe" really loved Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus. Predatory bacteria are easy to love! It bores its way into another bacterium, digests the bacterium, then reproduces, with its babies breaking out of the empty shell of the bacterial prey.