A plea: If you are leading a faculty search and you expect 100s of applications - please do not request letters up front! You are basically telling your colleagues that you do not value their time.
Noah Fierer
@noahfierer.bsky.social
Microbial ecologist https://www.fiererlab.org/
It is rare to find a paper that really blows my mind. This is one of those papers: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Self-generated hydrogel ejects bacterial cells for localized biofilm dispersion - Nature Microbiology
Bacillus subtilis biofilms locally disperse by ejecting motile cells through osmotic pressure generated by their poly-γ-glutamic acid hydrogel, a mechanism resembling that through which Cnidaria eject...
nature.com
@jeffinerca.bsky.social FYI - you can enter NZ even without your NZETA approved.
Lecturer position in soil science opportunity (equivalent to Assistant Prof. Looking forward to seeing some great applicants. elhs.fa.ap1.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Lecturer in Soil Science
Take the next step in your academic career, conducting original research in soil science and contributing to teaching the next generation of scientists within the Earth and Environmental Sciences Team...
elhs.fa.ap1.oraclecloud.com
This study is amazing: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A representative of a ubiquitous bacterial lineage parasitically feeds on host RNA
Cellular metabolism is widely understood as an integrated network of redox reactions, energy conservation, and biosynthetic pathways. Here we show that across diverse prokaryotic lineages, loss of red...
biorxiv.org
New preprint up: the power of protein language models - using a single gene (adenylate kinase) to predict the temperature optima of bacteria and bacterial communities from genomes or metagenomes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Predicting optimal growth temperatures of bacteria using learned structural information from a single protein
Temperature is a fundamental determinant of bacterial physiology and ecology. Optimal growth temperature (OGT) is highly variable across species, contributing to differences in where and when species ...
biorxiv.org
Ever wanted to use metagenomic data to infer oxygen levels (or the oxygen preferences of whole bacterial communities)? We have the tool for you: journals.asm.org/eprint/9GUIR...
Predicting oxygen levels in microbial habitats using a metagenome-based approach | mSystems
Oxygen is one of the most important environmental variables affecting microbial activity and composition, but is often difficult to measure in situ. We developed a tool, OxyMetaG, that leverages diffe...
journals.asm.org
Really useful paper explaining why richness/diversity metrics are rarely informative when applied to microbial community sequencing data: enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Rethinking Alpha Diversity in Marker‐Gene Microbiome Studies: Dominance Matters More Than Richness
Marker-gene microbiome surveys systematically under-sample rare taxa, causing alpha diversity metrics to reflect dominance rather than true richness. This conceptual mismatch can lead to misleading e...
enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The recent NY Times article on Oath (a soil inoculant company) warrants a mini-thread, so here we go: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/b... (1/9)
After Prison, a Financial Titan Plots an Unlikely Comeback
nytimes.com
New pre-print out - we sought to determine if Antarctic soil bacteria are really endemic to the continent. Would love feedback. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Evidence for endemism and local adaptation in Antarctic soil bacteria
Antarctic soils represent one of the more extreme environments for microbial life on Earth, yet they harbor heterogeneous and diverse microbial communities. Biologists have long hypothesized that Antarctic microorganisms are unique from those found on other continents due to the extreme geographic isolation and the cold, dry, and challenging conditions typical of Antarctica. To test this hypothesis, we focused on a cosmopolitan bacterial genus, Arthrobacter, that is widely distributed across global soils. We first profiled a global metagenomic dataset from both Antarctic and non-Antarctic surface soils to quantify the distributions of Arthrobacter strains. Despite high strain-level diversity, 90% of the strains found in the Antarctic soils were only found on the continent. We then used cultivation-based phenotypic analyses and strain-level genomic comparisons to assess how Antarctic strains and non-Antarctic strains differ in their traits and environmental preferences. Not only did we find evidence of endemism, but Antarctic Arthrobacter also have genomic characteristics and environmental tolerances that suggest they are uniquely adapted to Antarctic conditions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. U.S. National Science Foundation, NSF 21-567, EAR 1950681 Australian Research Council, FT240100502, DE250101210
biorxiv.org
I was excited to read this paper until I got to this section describing their Methods. Big claims require better evidence. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Looking for a tool to estimate abundances of aerobes versus anaerobes directly from metagenomes? Here you go: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
New preprint up on airborne fungi across the US with a focus on fungal allergens - would love feedback. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Spatiotemporal dynamics in airborne fungi and fungal allergens across the United States
A broad diversity of fungi can be found in the near-surface atmosphere, with both the amounts and types of airborne fungi varying across space and time. However, the specific spatiotemporal patterns i...
biorxiv.org
New paper up - inspired by the periodic table of the elements, we attempted to organize bacterial diversity in genome-inferred trait space academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Constructing a “periodic table” of bacteria to map diversity in trait space
Abstract. Despite an ever-expanding number of bacterial taxa being discovered, many of these taxa remain uncharacterized with unknown traits and environmen
academic.oup.com
New paper out looking at mycobacterial diversity across soils, premise plumbing, and surface waters to try to figure out the source of environmentally-acquired mycobacterial infections: journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10....
A cross-environment comparison of nontuberculous mycobacterial diversity
journals.asm.org
New paper out demonstrating how we can use strain-level analyses of soil metagenomes to investigate the biogeographical patterns exhibited by a dominant group of soil bacteria (Bradyrhizobium) academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Validate User
academic.oup.com
New preprint led by Matt Gebert focused on the environmental reservoirs of nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) pathogens. NTM disease is environmentally acquired, but routes of exposure unclear. Our work implicates premise plumbing as the main culprit! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A cross-environment comparison of nontuberculous mycobacterial diversity
Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are a group of environmental bacteria that encompass nearly 200 described species, some of which can cause chronic pulmonary infection in humans. What makes these inf...
biorxiv.org
After 15 years, the authors of the infamous 'arsenic life' paper are still trying to argue that their findings are legit and not just a product of 'major errors'? Unbelievable. The authors' response to the retraction is infuriating. Time to let it go. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
New pre-print from my group - project led by PhD student Michael Hoffert. We set out on a daunting mission to generate a 'periodic table' of bacterial diversity (1/6) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A periodic table of bacteria?: Mapping bacterial diversity in trait space
Bacterial diversity can be overwhelming. There is an ever-expanding number of bacterial taxa being discovered, but many of these taxa remain uncharacterized with unknown traits and environmental prefe...
biorxiv.org
Hope this is useful - consensus statement "Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies" rdcu.be/er3Io
Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies
Nature Microbiology - In this Consensus Statement, the authors outline strategies for processing, analysing and interpreting low-biomass microbiome samples, and provide recommendations to minimize...
rdcu.be
New study out - we developed a pipeline for targeted assembly of genomes from (complex) soil metagenomes to examine the strain-level diversity and ecology of a dominant soil bacterial genus (Bradyrhizobium). Feedback appreciated. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Continent-wide assessment of the strain-level diversity of Bradyrhizobium, a dominant soil bacterial genus
Global surveys of soil bacteria have identified several taxa that are nearly ubiquitous and often the most abundant members of soil bacterial communities. However, it remains unclear why these taxa ar...
biorxiv.org
This is cool - bacteria wrap their flagella to propel themselves through narrow passages www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Bacteria break through one-micrometer-square passages by flagellar wrapping
Confined spaces are omnipresent in the micro-environments, including soil aggregates and intestinal crypts, yet little is known about how bacteria behave under such conditions where movement is challe...
biorxiv.org
Just your regular reminder that 'sterile' doesn't mean 'DNA-free'! (this rant brought to you by yet another published DNA-based study conducted in a low biomass system where appropriate controls do not appear to have been included)
Dear fellow olds - recognize that the term 'next generation sequencing' is confusing to those that never had experience with the first generation. Also - what 'generation' are we on anyways?
Excited to share PhD student Claire Winfrey’s (w/ @noahfierer.bsky.social & me) new paper in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecology! She examines how edge effects in habitat fragments shape soil microbial communities. Check it out 🦠 🧪 🌎 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
New study out from my group showing how the volatile geosmin (the wonderful 'smell of dirt') serves as a cue to influence the behavior of soil protists rdcu.be/edCJj
Effects of Geosmin on the Behavior of Soil Protists
rdcu.be
New paper out that (we hope) will be useful to anyone with an interest in Antarctic soil microbial communities: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A comprehensive survey of soil microbial diversity across the Antarctic continent - Polar Biology
Antarctic soils are unique from those found nearly anywhere else on Earth yet can still harbor a broad diversity of microorganisms able to tolerate the challenging conditions typical of the continent....
link.springer.com
We are trying to recruit folks from across the US that might be willing to be involved in a beta test of a new project to quantify airborne allergen loads in their homes. If interested (no cost), sign up here: boulderblue.com
Air Quality Testing Services – Allergen Detection with Boulder Blue
Ensure a healthier space with cutting-edge air quality testing services from Boulder Blue. Our genomic tests help detect indoor allergens.
boulderblue.com