Amelia Randich
@ameliarandich.bsky.social
Molecular evolution of cell morphology and growth mechanisms in alphaproteobacteria 👾 Assoc Prof of Biology at The U of Scranton 🥟
🚨🪲🧬🦠 We have a new preprint out! Link: doi.org/10.64898/202... Insects and microbes are more connected than we realize. Some insects owe part of their ability to feed on plants to genes acquired from bacteria millions of years ago 🤯 See what we found about glycoside hydrolases in leafhoppers.
Bacteriology-Focused Assistant Professor Position in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Application deadline: August 15, 2026 Come be my colleague!
My alma mater (College of the Atlantic) is hiring faculty in Field Ecology, Agroecology, and Chemistry. If you're looking for a very cool small liberal arts college on the coast of Maine with a strong environmental focus, check it out (happy to answer questions!): www.coa.edu/human-resour...
Career Opportunities | College of the Atlantic
Career opportunities at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor Maine.
coa.edu
1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science
As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...
arxiv.org
Development and Evaluation of Exosporium-Anchored Bioluminescent and Fluorescent Reporters for Tracking Clostridioides difficile Spores Formed In Vivo | ACS Synthetic Biology pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... #teamluciferase
Development and Evaluation of Exosporium-Anchored Bioluminescent and Fluorescent Reporters for Tracking Clostridioides difficile Spores Formed In Vivo
Clostridioides difficile is an anaerobic spore-forming pathogen and a major cause of hospital-acquired and antibiotic-associated colitis. C. difficile spores are key for persistence and transmission o...
pubs.acs.org
The Social Lives of Viruses is coming to Vancouver, Canada, from 4th-8th August 2026! This is a free meeting dedicated to all aspects of virus-virus interactions & evolution. To apply: socialviruses.zoology.ubc.ca @sociovirology.bsky.social #socialviruses #evosky #lovevirology #virosky
Across scales from cells🦠 to atoms⚛️ – We reveal how anaerobic #bacteria break down very stable aromatic compounds found e.g. in oil spills 🛢️ #Bioremediation #TeamTomo 🧪 🧶🧬 🔬 Awesome collab with Lena, Matthias, @schullerjm.bsky.social @rnfr2d2.bsky.social @tomaspascoa.bsky.social @tamb-o.bsky.social
Tomas Pascoa@tomaspascoa.bsky.social · 4mo ago1/ Excited to share our preprint! 🥳 Degradation of aromatic compounds, including BTEX pollutants, requires highly endergonic aromatic ring reduction. Using #cryoEM and in situ #cryoET, we show how BCRII couples electron bifurcation modules in one giant redox machine www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
My latest for @sciam.bsky.social is all about the real biology, ecology, and climate science that is used to create the world of Pokémon, and how scientists use it to teach science in the real world. This is just about the most fun I’ve ever had interviewing anyone, and I hope you enjoy! 🧪🌎
The Pokémon universe goes hard on ecology and climate science
The Pokémon franchise, including its recent game Pokémon Pokopia, is inspired by real animals and their ecology. It’s no surprise that so many scientists love to try and “catch ’em all”
scientificamerican.com
🆒 new pub! Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro -> adaptations selected during infection by @gretazabo.bsky.social & Linus Sandegren *hypermucoidy evolves via 📈c-di-GMP, overlaps w/ mutations in UTI and wound isolates. *pleasure to advise this! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro delineates adaptive changes selected during infection - Nature Communications
Biofilm formation on implanted medical devices facilitates infection by the pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae. Here, Zaborskytė et al. use experimental evolution to show that the bacteria rapidly evolve ...
nature.com
Molecular kinetics dictate population dynamics in CRISPR-based plasmid defense | PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2525424123
Molecular kinetics dictate population dynamics in CRISPR-based plasmid defense | PNAS
Understanding and manipulating the spread of mobile genetic elements represents a great challenge with potential benefits across synthetic biology,...
pnas.org
Our ms on re-sampling 4 years apart vibrio phage in natural environments is now out with some improvements. First, clearer evidence of cryptic population dynamics between phage and vibrio, presumably because of genetic diversity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Complex temporal dynamics of phage-bacteria populations in an animal-associated marine system - Nature Communications
It remains unclear how viral genomes remain relatively stable over time, given the rapid co-evolution seen within hosts. Here, authors explore complex marine phage-bacteria dynamics using over 1000 ph...
nature.com
A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...
statnews.com
Out Now! Local peptidoglycan composition defines division site selection in Streptococcus pneumoniae #MicroSky
Local peptidoglycan composition defines division site selection in Streptococcus pneumoniae
Nature Microbiology, Published online: 07 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02322-6Sequential peptidoglycan carboxylase activity of DacA and DacB generates a local peptidoglycan signature that recruits MapZ and establishes the division site at the Streptococcus pneumoniae cell equator.
go.nature.com
"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding."
Minas Karamanis@minaskar.bsky.social · 4mo agoHey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...
🥳 Excited to share our #diatom work out in @pnas.org. In a great collaboration with @nic-poulsen.bsky.social and @ulrichschwarz.bsky.social we show that diatoms modulate the curvature of their paths by dynamic switching of their cell–substrate contact sites. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2506122123
📣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.
Now available as a Version of Record. Thanks a lot again to everyone involved in this project! doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Peptidoglycan recycling is critical for cell division, cell wall integrity, and β-lactam resistance in Caulobacter crescentus
Peptidoglycan recycling is essential for proper cell growth and intrinsic ampicillin resistance in Caulobacter crescentus, highlighting PG recycling enzymes as potential antibacterial targets.
doi.org
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
How common is multicellularity in bacteria? And archaea? And how does it evolve? We wrote a short review "On the architecture and evolution of prokaryotic multicellularity". Preprint link: bit.ly/4ta06Gq Sharing and comments are much appreciated. 1/4
I am pleased to share my lab’s latest publication - Acinetobacter species lack canonical DNA repair pathway activation mechanisms, and we discovered a conserved transcriptional activator that fills this role: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
A WYL transcriptional regulator activates the DNA damage response pathway in Acinetobacter species
Abstract. The ability to sense DNA damage and activate DNA damage response pathways is critical for repairing DNA damage in all domains of life. The most w
academic.oup.com
I've written a review on what I think is an extremely exciting direction in cryo-EM: Cryo-EM of endogenous membrane proteins in their native lipid bilayer Open access in Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics: doi.org/10.1017/S003...
In the context of carboxysome positioning, @azaldegui.bsky.social found that the aggregation of a bacterial microcompartment is prevented by a self-organizing DNA-binding ATPase! #SingleMolecule #SuperResolution #Microscopy with @cellforganized.bsky.social and JianLiu doi.org/10.64898/202...
Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23 @cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun). Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects bit.ly/DrsHGT 1/🧵
Tobias Warnecke@tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social · 5mo agoPls re-post: My department @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social are recruiting for several new faculty positions (links below). Broad search in molecular biology/biochemistry, across prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Interested in understanding life at the molecular level, this job might be for you! 1/n
Structural basis for curvature generation and functional specialization in spirochete flagella #MicroSky
Luca Troman@lucatroman.bsky.social · 6mo ago🌀 We solved the structure for T. denticola periplasmic flagella! I'm very happy to finally showcase this work. A huge collaborative effort between myself, @bindusmitapaul.bsky.social, @debnathghosal.bsky.social, Jack Kim, @banfieldlab.bsky.social, Eric Reynolds and the Chris Fenno lab. 🦠 Enjoy!
New post-doctoral research position in my phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in @otagomicroimmuno.bsky.social at @universityofotago.bsky.social New Zealand. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link in the comments.
Really fantastic piece of work from @christianlandry.bsky.social et al., -elegant set of experiments to uncover mechanisms that contribute to understanding of duplicate retention & redundancy- Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy www.cell.com/current-biol...
Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy
Duplicated self-interacting proteins can interact and interfere with each other’s function. Cisneros, Mattenberger, et al. show that selection against interfering loss-of-function alleles extends the ...
cell.com
➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔 🧵👇
biorxiv.org
