While I am obviously incensed that ankylosaurus didn't make the leaderboard, I actually laughed out loud when reading the footnote "We know pterodactyls and plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs"

This may be lost in the noise--this is as impactful or more than the cuts to NIH and NSF 🧪

A large green aphid fills the whole screen. Magenta splotches of the symbiont Buchnera are in the posterior end of the aphid

I've been working to visualize the biogeography of the aphid's intracellular symbiont within whole insects. The pink bacteria live in the host's specialized bacteriocytes and embryos. Really excited about where this work is going! #FluorescenceFriday

Convergent extreme reductive evolution in ancient planthopper symbioses - Nature Communications Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...

Our paper is now out in its final form in @natcomms.nature.com ! We show that ancient insect symbionts can undergo extreme, convergent genome reduction to as little as ~50 kb - driven by ecological shifts and symbiont replacement.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

More below 👇
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Happy to share Episode 126 of #MattersMicrobial, w Spencer Nyholm, discussing how maternal microbes protect squid eggs from fungal infection. Please spread the #GoodMicrobialWord? #MicrobialEvangelist #MicrobialCentricity @microbetv.bsky.social @spencernyholm.bsky.social

youtu.be/aQKZNfx4nRQ?...

I'm hiring! I have 2 open positions:

🔬 Postdoc
🧪 Research associate

We study how animal multicellularity evolved by exploring the molecular logic of cell adhesion using cell biology, 'omics, and tool-building in non-model organisms.

Come join us!

Details and application links 👇

Please repost

A flyer reading "MCC Education Working Group Committee Members Needed" It asks if you are an early career scientist wanting to explore careers paths and if you enjoy networking. Learn more at microbiomecenter.org

The Microbiome Centers Consortium (MCC) Early Career Working Group is looking for committee members! It's a great opportunity to explore career paths and connect with scientists across academia, industry and policy by assembling speaker panels for fellow early-career scientists!

lnkd.in/em4hyq7E

Knock knock, no one’s there. Study finds scientists’ jokes mostly fall flat Survey examines how often academics attempt jokes during conference talks — and how these attempts at comedy land.

A chemist, physicist, and biologist walk into a bar

go.nature.com/3PfmrDS

Poster with the conference name hanging on the wall, atrium of a big glassy building visible on the background

Super stoked about the EMBL cellular mechanics of symbiosis conference. I loved the first time this conference was held 3 years ago, and this is going to be just as good. Let's see if I manage to stock to live skeeting this time! #EESSymbiosis @events.embl.org

A flyer showing each of the four panelists: Menaka Wilhelm DOE Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Matthew Schepers, 10x Genomics Tess Konnovitch, EarthShift Global McKenzie Mullis, Association of Public Health Laboratories

How do scientists effectively communicate their work beyond the lab?

Join us for Careers in Conversation: Communicating Science for Impact, a virtual panel featuring professionals who build careers around translating complex science for diverse audiences.

Register Here: lnkd.in/gwxC-ujJ

A flyer reading "MCC Education Working Group Committee Members Needed" It asks if you are an early career scientist wanting to explore careers paths and if you enjoy networking. Learn more at microbiomecenter.org

The Microbiome Centers Consortium (MCC) Early Career Working Group is looking for committee members! It's a great opportunity to explore career paths and connect with scientists across academia, industry and policy by assembling speaker panels for fellow early-career scientists!

lnkd.in/em4hyq7E

Hosting this panel this Friday! Come check it out

Pb concentration by decade in hair from Salt Lake City region residents. Value plotted for 1940 includes all samples from 1916 to 1959; value plotted at 2022 includes all samples from 2020 to 2024.

One of last week’s most-viewed PNAS articles is “Lead in archived hair documents a decline in lead exposure to humans since the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency.”
Explore the research: https://ow.ly/SMKg50YetGP

More trending articles: https://ow.ly/bQ8f50YetzE

New preprint from @pawley.bsky.social @scottnichols.bsky.social is a great testament to how intentional imaging helps untangle potential functions and mechanisms of host-microbe interactions

The discovery of an external bacterial niche reconciles sequencing-based microbiomes in a freshwater sponge

Come join our network at prideinmicrobiology.github.io!

🏳️‍🌈 Sign up for our mailing list for information about our events! 🦠

#Pride #STEM #LGBTQ

Fearing ICE, Native Americans rush to prove their right to belong in the US - ICT As Native Americans around the country rush to secure documents proving their right to live in the United States, many see a bitter irony.

The widespread targeting of Native Americans demonstrates its not about legal status, its about racial profiling. ictnews.org/news/fearing...

An announcement poster for a career panel on February 27, 2026. The panel is titled "Careers in Conversation: Pathways in Higher Education." It features images of the three panelists: Dr. Andrea Suria of Ohio Wesleyan University, Dr. Jennifer Oberle of Rutgers University Camden and Dr. Jo-anne Holley of The University of Texas at Austin.

Interested in a career focused on microbiology or microbiome education?

The Microbiome Centers Consortium is hosting a panel of educators representing different paths in secondary education. Come hear the advice and experience of some great teachers!

Register here: rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Speak of the devil....

bsky.app/profile/kamp...

Image shows large, rainbow-colored ovoids onna black background. Inside each ovoid is a speckling of white dots.

A z-stack image of aphid embryos and bacterial protein. The rainbow depth-coded projection grants the embryos a 3D effect, while the punctate white spots are bacterial protein. Feels very nebulous, in the most literal sense!

#FluorescenceFriday

Multiple ovals on a black background, some branching from each other. They appear to be glowing with a red blue and green hue from their fluorescent dyes.

The cool part of microscopy is that even when you don't get good data, you can still get cool images.

Aphid embryos labeled with DAPI, antibody and WGA. Imaged on an epifluorescence scope.

An announcement poster for a career panel on February 27, 2026. The panel is titled "Careers in Conversation: Pathways in Higher Education." It features images of the three panelists: Dr. Andrea Suria of Ohio Wesleyan University, Dr. Jennifer Oberle of Rutgers University Camden and Dr. Jo-anne Holley of The University of Texas at Austin.

Interested in a career focused on microbiology or microbiome education?

The Microbiome Centers Consortium is hosting a panel of educators representing different paths in secondary education. Come hear the advice and experience of some great teachers!

Register here: rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Bacterial diversity within the accessory nidamental gland of a Hawaiian bobtail squid (E. scolopes), showing Alphaproteobacteria (magenta), Verrucomicrobia (yellow), and Flavobacteriia (green). CREDIT: Nidhi Vijayan

Hawaiian bobtail squid maintain distinct microbiota in different organs, including bioluminescent bacteria in their light organs, by deploying immune factors with tailored expressions in each niche. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/QxLo50XPnyS

A super detailed protocol + video on Cryo-ExM - Cryo-Expansion Microscopy, led by the labs of our former postdocs @marinelap.bsky.social & @ebertiaux.bsky.social.
Clear, practical, and very useful for anyone doing nanoscale imaging 🚀 app.jove.com/t/68595/expa...

A hill on which I will die: Calvin and Hobbes is one of the great pieces of 20th-century American literature in no small part because it was never turned into anything aside from a comic strip. Leave it be.

Grey spots form the outline of an aphid abdomen on a black background. Inside, there are splotches of different colors. Closer inspections shows the splotches are made of little spots that are bacteria. Some are found in donut-shaped bacteriocytes and others are entering the aphid embryos.

I've started imaging the symbionts inside the bacteriocytes of aphids.

You can see the aphid body in white and the bacteria are depth-coded different colors to show the dimensionality. Some of the embryos are getting loaded up with symbionts!

#FluorescenceFriday

“‘In evidence-based policy, you gather data and then make a decision,’ [Jake] Scott said. ‘This is the reverse. CDC made the policy decision and then funded research to back it up. When you commission research after making a decision, you're not looking for answers—you're looking for validation.’”

This 🧵 is important & I want to highlight: They are going to give kids in an Guinea-Bissau a placebo for Hep B even though it's already proven to be safe. These white supremacists are putting African children at risk to support a thesis we know is wrong. They do not value Black lives.

Where Did Anti-Trans Laws Start? How a Forgotten Houston Ordinance Turned Into a Massive, Nationwide Culture War In fighting for bathroom bills in Houston, Texas conservatives provided a blueprint for the rest of the country.

IRW — a Pulitzer-winning nonprofit newsroom at American — and @thebarbedwire.com traced the history of anti-trans legislation. Houston conservatives realized homophobia didn’t fly anymore, weaponized girls’ safety, and parroted segregationist language. It worked.

thebarbedwire.com/2025/12/04/a...

A secreted endosymbiont protein essential for colonizing host cells Intracellular bacterial symbioses have arisen myriad times in eukaryotes, with dozens known from insects alone[1][1],[2][2]. Beginning with Buchnera , the obligate endosymbiont of aphids, genomes of e...

New preprint characterizing a protein likely required for vertical transmission. Some really stellar undergrads contributing to this work too!

A secreted endosymbiont protein essential for colonizing host cells

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