The final form of my 2nd postdoc paper with the Bassler Lab! Turns out our favorite quorum-sensing phage isn’t a one-off, but rather a member of a globally dispersed family of phages that sense a universal autoinducer.
#phagesky #microsky
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
4 microbes acting all moody like they are on cover of an album. two have some pilli, one has a big flagella, and they all have vacant eyes. they are on my left wrist.
Finally got my dissertation artwork tattooed (art by @fsantoriello.bsky.social)
They're super adorable, based on the Ramones and the colors are the seasons since my work was seasonal changed in wastewater microbiome (red-summer, orange-fall, blue-winter spring-green)
New short story from my postdoc in the Bassler lab is up on bioRxiv!
Turns out our favorite quorum sensing responsive phage VP882 is a member of a larger family of phages that is distributed across multiple bacterial species and can eavesdrop on a universally conserved autoinducer.
#PhageSky 🦠🧫
This is a very good essay if you, like me, have been grappling with the changing world and what it all means and where we're going. Despite the title and heavy topic, it's actually more hopeful than most things (while still being real).
rojospinks.substack.com/p/how-i-beca...
We’re excited to advertise the Microbial Friends and Foes REU program! Please share info with your undergrads, for 10 weeks paid research experience at Cornell. Apps due on Feb 1. @heatherfeaga.bsky.social
cihmid.cornell.edu/academics-pr...
I’m so bummed that building was just being finished when I graduated. Always wanted to go inside.
As an undergrad in micro lab class, I aspirated bacteria into a micropipette. We were taught to flame sterilize things that touched bacteria, so my child brain thought “why not flame sterilize the micropipette?”. And that’s how I melted a micropipette and learned to ask before I do.
Civic duty done! Now I guess I run a gel and dissociate or something.
Happy to share our work that's now online in Nature Microbiology: Gamma-Mobile-Trio systems are mobile elements rich in bacterial defensive and offensive tools.
If you're interested in Anti-phage, T6SS, Vibrio, or MGE then this is for you. 🦠
rdcu.be/dXMwQ
Today I will be doing my first western blot since 2020 (which is when I did my first ever western blot). Pray for me.
Fun fact: We have been in the seventh cholera pandemic since 1961, and it's still going strong. Global cholera deaths are surging, WHO says www.cidrap.umn.edu/cholera/glob...
A phage particle with multiple eyes in the capsid surrounded by laurels made of two yellow flowers and DNA strands.
Green bacterium being stabbed by a tailed bacteriophage.
Artist, QRP your 2 sides.
🚨We are also hiring a postdoc to work on our newly funded Lyme disease phage project at Montana State!
Are you a spirochetologist interested in phage biology? Come work with us in beautiful Bozeman, MT!
Apply here:
jobs.montana.edu/postings/43811
🧫🧪🦠
Welcome refugees from X! Follow microbiologists and more in the @binningsingletons.com and Friends Starter Pack!
go.bsky.app/H5k2p2g
It’s been a couple months, but I never posted about it. The final form of my first postdoc paper is out! Really excited to keep digging into this whacky phage that we love so much. #MicroSky 🦠
journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...
A gel image from a horribly failed PCR experiment.
If anyone is feeling like an imposter today…I present you with this thing.
I am a postdoc who has been doing PCR for 12 years. Sometimes it just be like that.🧪
Flash-tattoo-style bacteriophage with a human skull capsid.
It’s been a year since I’ve posted new art on the internet. Let’s get back at it.
Death head phage #1
ink painting of bacteriophage in purple and blue
ink painting of bacteriophage in black and blue
New! a couple of cool bacteriophages in ink on yupo (poly paper) artologica.etsy.com 🧪🐡🦠
Nobody tells you just how sweaty Lexapro is gonna make you.
New preprint from my postdoc with Bonnie Bassler! We show that phage VP882 responds to different host factors depending on the environmental context of the infected host, highlighting the need to study phage-bacteria interactions in relevant contexts to get the full picture. #MicroSky 🦠
If you see this, post something toothy
(Some oldies of mine)
Hi Erik. Could you please add me to the Science feed? I’m a postdoc at Princeton with Bonnie Bassler.
orcid.org/0000-0002-30...
basslerlab.scholar.princeton.edu/people/frank...
The Genewiz pickup person is the molbio equivalent of the tooth fairy.
2023 StoryGraph mood map with sharp negative trend
Rude of StoryGraph to call me out like that.
Multicolored face and eye in blue and yellow tones.
Very happy I decided to play, and make something like nothing I’ve ever made before.
‘Blue Light’ (2023)
