The labs of KC Huang and Justin Sonnenburg at Stanford are working on an exciting and impactful project related to infant probiotics and are hiring a Life Science Research Professional to be part of that team. Take a look at the posting if you're interested. Please share/apply

Featuring leading voices in microbiome research, with sessions on multi-omics, genetic tools, ecological context functions, and new model species. Focusing on research that moves from descriptive to molecular understanding and functional discoveries.

One of the biggest challenges in microbial biotechnology? Unlocking the potential of non-model microbes and synthetic communities! Glad to share our review @sonjablasche.bsky.social @simonemozzachiodi.bsky.social @kiranrpatil.bsky.social @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social🧵(1/7) doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

ISBB 2026 registration is now open! 🧫🧬 📍Parma, Italy (University of Parma) 📅 17-19 Sept 2026 Updated programme + confirmed speakers now online. Early reg: 5 May 2026 | Abstracts: 30 June 2026. Website/registration: www.bifidosympo26.it #ISBB2026 #Bifidobacterium #microbiome #microbiology

BioBloom, a method for barcoded saturation mutagenesis of an entire bacterial genome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.04.703572v1

Excited to share our latest publication, led by Dr. Ellie McCallum and Juan Burckhardt! bit.ly/4kfzQaf You can access the article for free here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1mWb4L7PXu... And more information is available on the updated preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Glowing bacterial sensors detect gut illness in mice before symptoms emerge

UBC researchers have engineered gut bacteria that dim their fluorescent glow in the presence of illness.

bit.ly

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...

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...

doi.org

High-throughput transposon mutagenesis defines the essential genome of diverse phages https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.19.695335v1

academicjobs.uchicago.edu/positions/16...

📍Our paper is out!📍 Here, we show the development of a GC-MS/MS method for the quantification of 120 compounds produced by gut bacteria, including short-chain fatty acids, indols, nucleotides, organic acids, and amino acid derivatives. Check it out! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Development of a GC-MS/MS method to quantify 120 gut microbiota-derived metabolites - Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry

The gut microbiota produces metabolites that are important for host physiology and have critical roles in the development of diseases, such as metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer....

link.springer.com

Characterizing phage gene essentiality with PhageMaP: • High-throughput approach to generate genome-wide loss-of-function phage libraries. • Interrogates gene essentiality w/insights into phage genome organization, host antiviral defense & gene function www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Systematic, high-throughput characterization of bacteriophage gene essentiality on diverse hosts

Chen et al. report PhageMaP, a high-throughput approach to generate and characterize genome-wide loss-of-function phage libraries. PhageMaP systematically interrogates conditional gene essentiality, p...

cell.com

A future perspective article on the next 10 years in microbial molecular biology and physiology is online now. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... 🧵👇

An exciting future for microbial molecular biology and physiology | mBio

The first two bacterial genomes were sequenced nearly 30 years ago (1, 2). The cost of one of those sequences, that of Haemophilus influenzae, was over 1,000,000 U.S. dollars and took multiple years (...

journals.asm.org

I reused “Well-Lit” tech from the pandemic, with thanks to Rafael Gómez-Sjöberg, Joana Cabrera, and @andercot.bsky.social. We had a huge task—picking bacterial stocks from >200 96-well plates and re-arranging them—and the lab's anaerobic liquid handler was broken without the funds to repair. 🧵

Berkeley Lab released a news article describing our recent work on the genetics of the infant-specialized bifidobacteria biosciences.lbl.gov/2025/05/01/h...

Barcoded Transposons Help Mine the Secrets of the Human Gut - Biosciences Area

Researchers have demonstrated a high-impact approach for dissecting complex host-microbe interactions in the infant microbiome, revealing new possibilities for studying the broader microbial world.

biosciences.lbl.gov

Interested in the influence of the infant microbiome on health? Quickly interrogating non-model organisms using omic approaches? A new publication, describing genome-scale resources in bifidobacteria, is now available online: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... #microbiome #microsky