A cartoon of Eliza coli riding a bacterium in LB broth - Eliza is light blue with purple hair and glasses, wearing purple and raspberry pink clothes. The bacterium has a big grin and flagella, with 3 eyes staring at you and one eye looking behind into the murky broth.

Hello world, what on earth going on with bluesky right now?!

In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of me riding an E. coli in LB broth (not to scale). I drew it as my bio pic for Upfest - I'm taking part in Europe's largest graffiti festival this year!

#microsky #sciart #science #scicomm

‘Treasure trove’ of antiviral proteins could inspire powerful molecular tools Two research teams mined genomic data from bacteria to create databases containing thousands of antiviral defence proteins that could inspire powerful biotechnologies.

Bacteria have been fighting off viruses using a huge arsenal of molecular weaponry that scientists did not know about — until now. Researchers have identified proteins that could lead to virus-fighting drugs and technologies.

go.nature.com/4dqQnXI

Dissecting host stress responses for predictable heterologous gene expression in E. coli Abstract. Predictable expression of heterologous genes remains a key challenge in biotechnology, largely due to cellular stresses imposed on the production

Dissecting host stress responses for predictable heterologous gene expression in E. coli url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

#microsky

Frontiers | First genome sequence and functional profiling of Psychrobacter SC65A.3 preserved in 5,000-year-old cave ice: insights into ancient resistome, antimicrobial potential, and enzymatic activi... IntroductionAncient cryospheric environments may preserve overlooked reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and bioactive potential. This study reports...

Genome sequence of a 5,000 year old bacterium (Psychrobacter) from cave ice contains more than 100 genes associated with antimicrobial resistance 😳

www.frontiersin.org/journals/mic...

Phage receptor prediction from genome sequencing alone. Bacterial receptor (blue) interacting with phage proteins (purple) is shown here

📣Huge preprint 🔔
Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.

Generalist biological artificial intelligence in modeling the language of life - Nature Biotechnology This Review discusses the promises and pitfalls of biological AI algorithms and presents a vision for generalist biological artificial intelligence, in which models can perform diverse tasks across bi...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Biological AI to interpret and generate DNA, RNA, proteins and cellular systems

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Phages drive the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes by facilitating host adaptation to heavy metal stress

#phage #phagesky

Fellows The European Academy of Microbiology (EAM) proudly brings together a distinguished community of leading scientists whose contributions have shaped and advanced the field of microbiology. Below, you wi...

The list of new (2026) elected members of the @femsmicro.org European Academy of Microbiology is out 👏 Congrats to the newcomers, most of them very well-known names incl many friends & close colleagues 😀 fems-microbiology.org/european-aca...

Great time in Segovia with Jay Hinton—one of my favourite microbiology colleagues. The castle of the background (El Alcazar) hosted the first chemistry lab in Spain in the XVIII century. While working there, Joseph Proust discovered the Law of Definite Proportions that every Chemistry student knows

How an imbalanced gut microbiome worsens chronic kidney disease Researchers have identified how chronic kidney disease turbocharges E. coli toxin production, worsening the disease. An investigational drug might break the destructive feedback loop.

Does an imbalanced gut microbiome worsen chronic kidney disease?

By elucidating the ecological causes for changes in the gut microbiota composition and its consequences for disease progression we were able to answer this question.

Read more at: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

📰 𝐉𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐓 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐨𝐧 𝐔𝐊 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐀𝐟𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧, 𝐌𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐦𝐚𝐫, 𝐒𝐮𝐝𝐚𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐧

95 new Fellows join the European Academy of Microbiology 🔬

The newly elected Fellows represent a wide range of expertise across microbiology and related disciplines , spanning institutions across Europe and beyond.

Read the full announcement📄https://buff.ly/CdRK14U

Microscope images of Ryugu samples collected from the first and second touchdown sites of the Hayabusa2 mission, respectively. Credit: JAXA / JAMSTEC

The complete set of nucleobases found in terrestrial DNA and RNA — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — have been detected in samples returned from the asteroid Ryugu, according to research in Nature Astronomy. go.nature.com/3P9A9YN 🔭 🧪

New personal view article

The diagnostic void: how #typhoid -by-default drives antimicrobial resistance in Ethiopia

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#IDSky #ClinMicro #AMR #Salmonella #OpenAccess #OA

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#phage #phagesky

In Our Time - Bacteriophages - BBC Sounds Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how viruses can help us track and cure bacterial illnesses

🦠 “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘂𝘀 — 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘄?”

Historian @kirchhelle.bsky.social chats with 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗮 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗲 & 𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗘𝗯𝗱𝗲𝗻 about revival of phage biology & phage therapy as antibiotics fail.

🎧 2024 BBC Radio 4 — listen worldwide:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

#phage #phagesky #microsky

Sabotaging the NSF fellowship is a blunder Over the last year, the Trump administration has sent one discouraging message after another to young people aspiring to a scientific career in the United States. The corrosive rhetoric that mocks sci...

😓😢

Sabotaging the NSF fellowship is a blunder | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The metabolome of an E. coli CRISPRi library identifies benefits of minimal metabolite levels and targets for engineering Rapp et al. combine genome-scale CRISPRi and metabolomics in E. coli. CRISPRi of enzymes enforces metabolite accumulation, which leads to regulatory crosstalk and side reactions. This suggests that ma...

😮👀
The metabolome of an E. coli CRISPRi library identifies benefits of minimal metabolite levels and targets for engineering: Cell Systems www.cell.com/cell-systems...

Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Almost all of the scientists were previously at US institutions

go.nature.com/4qMlrUR

Poster for the 2nd Aerosols and Microbiology conference, June 9-11, 2026, at Leeds Marriott Hotel, UK, with microscopic aerosol imagery.

Join us for our 2nd Aerosols and Microbiology: Bridging disciplines to advance health & environmental sustainability meeting.

📅Date: 9–11 June 2026
📍 Location: Leeds Marriott Hotel, UK

Register your place: https://microb.io/Aerosols2026

#Microbiology #Conference #Health #Research

Don’t deprioritize curiosity-driven research Around the world, governments are demanding that research funding follow broader political priorities. They should be careful what they wish for.

Don’t deprioritize curiosity-driven research www.nature.com/articles/d41...

By my count, this is the third CDC outbreak notice in the past three months involving Moringa leaf and various Salmonella strains. What's with that?

Technical Programme Manager | Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Technical Project ManagerLocation: LiverpoolContract: Fixed-term contract until March 2028Salary: £47,389 - £59,967The Parish Lab at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine focuses on antimicrobial ...

Are you interested in being the first biologist in our new team? Come join our small but growing group. Deadline for applications is 3rd March. #Tuberculosis 🧪🦠 #TBDrugDiscovery

Congratulations to Mariana Byndloss @maribyndloss.bsky.social for her promotion to Associate Professor with tenure at Vanderbilt University @vanderbilt.edu

Photo credit: Bäumler lab archives

So happy to see this story out! Incredible work on systematically standardizing a good cellular model for iNTS-macrophage interactions, which clearly shows how different Salmonella pathovariants are in terms of intracellular behaviour!
@jayhinton.bsky.social

Bloodstream-associated Salmonella Typhimurium and Enteritidis iNTS pathovariants hyper-replicate in human macrophages www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01...

National Lab of the Rockies, formerly NREL, lays off more than 130 employees The cuts impacted staffers engaged in both research and operations at the lab.

😢 this is seriously unfortunate. Many places, same story.

www.cpr.org/2026/02/09/n...

Congratulations to Çagla Tükel @caglatukel.bsky.social for her election to fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology! asm.social/2OC