This job ad is now live! Please share or apply here: jobs.montana.edu/postings/52780 Screening of applicants begins Sept 15, 2026 #MicroSky #PhageSky #ScienceJobs

Postdoctoral Researcher - Lyme Disease Bacteriophage Biology

The Secor Lab seeks a postdoctoral researcher to investigate bacteriophage biology in the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. The successful candidate will help define how phiBB-1 controls h...

jobs.montana.edu

Patrick R. Secor@prsecor.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I’ll soon be #Hiring a postdoc to join the Secor Lab at Montana State University. This NIH-funded position will investigate phage biology in Lyme disease spirochetes. The official ad will be available soon. Please share with anyone who might be interested! #MicroSky #PhageSky 🔬🦠🧪🧫

I’ll soon be #Hiring a postdoc to join the Secor Lab at Montana State University. This NIH-funded position will investigate phage biology in Lyme disease spirochetes. The official ad will be available soon. Please share with anyone who might be interested! #MicroSky #PhageSky 🔬🦠🧪🧫

We said farewell to @dominickfaith.bsky.social last Friday with a float on the Yellowstone River with the Secor, Wiedenheft, and Jennings labs from Montana State University. Dom is off to do a postdoc with @pbollyky.bsky.social at Stanford and we wish him the best! #MicroSky #PhageSky 🔬🧪🦠🧫

Check out this fun collaboration on phages and Polyamines with the Marshall Lab! #microsky #phagesky 🧪🧫🧬🔬

Chris Marshall@sirmicrobe.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is our 2nd recently posted paper where we wanted to build off the fantastic 2023 PNAS paper by @prsecor.bsky.social group (www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...) 1/3

Nice write-up in Mountains & Minds on the Lyme disease research we’re doing at Montana State University. #MicroSky #PhageSky 🧪🦠 @ortizdeora.bsky.social 🔬 www.montana.edu/news/mountai...

From discovery to defense

As the Schutter Lab confirms the first blacklegged tick in Montana, MSU scientists continue exploring the microscopic viruses that influence the Lyme disease bacterium

montana.edu

Excited to share a 6 yr long journey to develop & validate a biomarker-based acute #Lyme disease diagnostic test using urine. Herculean effort by Osas and Saadman, which wouldn’t have be possible w/o outstanding collabs @harvard.edu, @tuftslyme.bsky.social, @pireschembio.bsky.social #Microsky

New lab group photo! #MicroSky #PhageSky

Fire’s out…

Patrick R. Secor@prsecor.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Watching this wild fire burn during a rainstorm from my living room

🆒 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

Watching this wild fire burn during a rainstorm from my living room

Montana State Rodeo

Advancing “Science of Science” Research to Understand and Strengthen the Biomedical Research Ecosystem 🧪 "This topic encourages research projects focused on a better understanding of the biomedical research ecosystem and strengthening the study of the 'science of science' within biomedicine."

‼️Please share‼️ Nemudryi lab is looking for postdocs to join our team and study: 🦠 Bacterial phage defense mechanisms 🧬 RNA repair & CRISPR-based RNA editing Excited about RNA, host-virus interactions & mechanistic biology? Let's talk! Apply: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

📣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.

New paper 🔔 Collaboration @sullivan-lab.bsky.social Marissa Gittrich led the work Klebsiella phage biology has focused almost entirely on capsulated strains, but capsule loss is the #1 resistance mechanism under phage predation. We used a naturally acapsular host to reveal the receptor landscape

🚨Preprint! Happy to share the research from my PhD “Genome delivery of a contractile tailed phage and its superinfection exclusion mechanism”. We use cryoEM to study the genome ejection of the phage T4, revealing how the tape measure protein regulates the process. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🖥️ 🧬 ⚛️ 🔬 Plz spread the word. 2-week computational biology workshop in Singapore. No registration fee or expenses for US citizens. Protein annotation, function, structural modeling, and simulation. ~35 attendees. Lectures and hands-on tutorials with intensive instructor interaction. compbioasia.net

Travis Wheeler@wheelerlab.org · 9mo ago

Please spread the word: We invite applications to a two-week Computational Biology workshop in Singapore, June 14-27. This NSF-funded workshop brings together 16-20 US grad students with international peers. Apply by March 21: compbioasia.net 🧵 Details below:

📣new preprint from the phagefoundry.org team 🎉 Jessica Trinh and Catherine Mageeney (Sandia National Laboratories)!! Systematic analysis of prophages from ~1000 Acinetobacter baumannii isolates, induction & screening. We found this 😎 looking phage with bunch of 💍💍

bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Discovery, induction, and screening of prophages in clinical Acinetobacter baumannii isolates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.16.706188v1

🧵 New preprint! Our 4-lab team evolved Streptococcus pneumoniae in antibiotic-treated mice of varying immune states and discovered something surprising: bacteria rarely evolved resistance. Instead, they found a different way to survive — by rewiring RNA turnover. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy to share a preprint—the last chapter of my dissertation with @mcsymbiont.bsky.social and Co—on what happens when bacterial endosymbionts accumulate huge numbers of pseudogenes during early genome reduction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

My office this morning

Friends, please help spread the word about our microbiology REU program at Montana State University. www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/ Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided. Details in the attached pic--Feb 14 deadline 🧫🧪🦠#microsky

Check out our exciting new paper out now in @plos.org where Dr Ahmad manipulated #peptidoglycan chemistry to understand Lyme disease and arthritis 👇👏 #Microsky #glycotime journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Peptidoglycan architecture dictates protein interactions, tissue tropism, and arthritis in the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi

Author summary Many of the pathogenic mechanisms by which Borrelia burgdorferi causes disease involve cell envelope interactions with host components. To further elucidate the role of peptidoglycan in...

journals.plos.org

I’m thrilled to share our work on phage triggers of the bacterial immune system in its final form @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A phage protein screen identifies triggers of the bacterial innate immune system - Nature Microbiology

A library of 400 phage protein-coding genes is used to find a trove of antiphage systems, revealing systems that target tail fibre and major capsid proteins.

nature.com

Are you a graduate student or postdoc who wants to apply your science to policy? The Gulf Research Program’s Science Policy Fellowship provides experience for one year on the staff of federal, state, local, NGO in the Gulf region and impt networking. www.nationalacademies.org/programs/GUL...

Gulf Research Program Science Policy Fellowships

The Gulf Research Program’s Science Policy Fellowship helps scientists hone their skills by putting them to practice for the benefit of Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems. Fellows gain first-hand e...

nationalacademies.org

Here, we find that many Genomic islands have origins of transfer (oriT) mobilisable by conjugation, incl. known Pathogenicity & defense islands. iOriT use only an oriT for transfer by hitching on conjugative elements: they make abundant, diverse, ancient families of mobile genetic elements. See🧵

Manuel Ares-Arroyo@aresarroyom.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Bacteria chromosomes contain Genomic Islands that provide virulence, antibiotic resistance, MGE-defence,... They transfer between cells, but the mechanism of most remains elusive. Here we explore the conjugative capacity of these mysterious Genomic Islands. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨Call for papers🚨 Microbial Evolution: Impacts on Human Health in the society journal Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health Guest Editors: Bob Woods, Silvie Huijben & Camilo Barbosa EIC: me This will be great, please submit and share! academic.oup.com/emph/pages/m...

Now published in PLoS Pathogens! #microsky #phagesky journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Patrick R. Secor@prsecor.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨New paper! A prophage-encoded sRNA limits lytic phage infection in adherent-invasive E. coli. Huge thanks to members of the Round Lab, @duerkoplab.bsky.social, Wiedenheft Lab, and phage legend Sherwood Casjens. #microsky 🦠🧫🧪🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A prophage-encoded sRNA limits phage infection of adherent-invasive E. coli #PLoSPathogen from @prsecor.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

A prophage-encoded sRNA limits phage infection of adherent-invasive E. coli

Author summary Prophages—viral genomes integrated into bacterial chromosomes—are common in enteric bacteria and can profoundly influence bacterial physiology and ecological fitness. Here we show that ...

journals.plos.org

Merry Christmas! #microsky