New postdoc opportunity in our team! Topic is computational analysis of (meta)genomic data to study evolution of plant-microbiome interactions. Part of the AEGIS consortium (aegisearth.bio/en). Apply here: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/p... Please RT!

Postdoc on computational (meta)genomic analysis

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges for global food security, requiring new approaches to understand and harness the natural diversity that enables plants and their associated microbiomes...

wur.nl

Bacterial extracellular vesicles exhibit distinct functional potential across biogeographic provinces of the South Pacific Ocean | The ISME Journal | Oxford Academic

Bacterial extracellular vesicles exhibit distinct functional potential across biogeographic provinces of the South Pacific Ocean

Abstract. Bacterial extracellular vesicles (BEVs) are nanoscale membranous structures released by diverse types of bacteria, and are capable of transportin

dx.doi.org

In addition to GC and strain bias, certain taxa showed systematically underestimated completeness via CheckM1 and 2, so historically much more likely to get erroneously thrown away in fragmented short read MAGs—a 3rd reason for the existence of Ghost Taxa. A sub-🧵. bsky.app/profile/stev...

Steven Robbins@stevenjrobbins.bsky.social · 2w ago

It's out! Excited to present the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database (GBR-MGD), a comprehensive DB of 1000s of high-quality prokaryote, virus, plasmid, and chromosome-level eukaryote MAGs using Nanopore long reads. Subthreads incoming. Please share widely. 🙂 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The MiDAS global genome catalog: 53,501 long-read MAGs representing all core prokaryotic genera in the global activated sludge microbiome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

High-quality phage assembly from metagenomes with PALACE www.nature.com/articles/s41...

High-quality phage assembly from metagenomes with PALACE - Nature Biotechnology

PALACE combines homology features and deep learning to improve phage assembly from metagenomics.

nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The surprising career parallels between footballers and researchers

Sarah Blackford reflects on how early-career scientists and professional football players share similar motivations, pressures and challenges.

nature.com

New tool sracat-rs extracts .sra format files from NCBI - streaming, flexible, as fast as anything else I know of. github.com/wwood/sracat...

GitHub - wwood/sracat-rs: Flexible streaming .sra format extraction

Flexible streaming .sra format extraction. Contribute to wwood/sracat-rs development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Universal microbiome signature for CRC Large gut microbiome meta-analysis of colorectal cancer uncovers CRC microbiome signatures universal across ages & sequencing methods & modifiable by dietary interventions, ie fiber. www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Meta-analysis reveals microbiome signatures for colorectal cancer that are universal across age groups and sequencing methods

Pekel, Karcher, et al. present the largest gut microbiome meta-analysis of colorectal cancer to date, integrating 6,779 amplicon and shotgun sequencing profiles. They establish a robust microbiome sig...

cell.com

Sampling in Koltur (Feroe Islands) to study soil microbial and microfauna diversity in that Island thanks to EU-Polarin and Faroe Islands National Museum (Tjóõsavniô). #PolarMelt #SoilDrivers @microbiomacsic.bsky.social. @mncn-csic.bsky.social @agneskreiling.bsky.social @sarasanchezmo.bsky.social

Oxygen production via nitric oxide dismutation in diverse ammonia oxidizers academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs

Check out our latest manuscript, now published in ISME Communications! 🎉 Congratulations to all the authors, and especially to @tomeuviver.bsky.social and @ramonix.bsky.social for their leadership on this work academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

Metagenomics reveal unrestricted dispersal of extreme halophiles and higher connectivity among coastal vs. inland solar salterns and hypersaline lakes

Abstract. Hypersaline environments constitute ideal systems for studying evolutionary processes and microbial diversification due to their relatively low (

academic.oup.com

I’ve been maintaining a list of shotgun #metagenomics tools and resources which I got Claude to turn into a GitHub repo. It has 300+ entries. Please share and tell me if I’ve missed anything! github.com/feargalr/Met... #microbiota #bioinformatics #microbiome #genomics

GitHub - feargalr/Metagenomics-tools-atlas: An inventory of tools and resources for short-read shotgun metagenomics.

An inventory of tools and resources for short-read shotgun metagenomics. - feargalr/Metagenomics-tools-atlas

github.com

excited to see this one with @leahtaylorkearney.bsky.social @prywes.bsky.social et al. out, bringing a truly interdisciplinary (comparative genomics/phylogeny + biochemistry) lens to our favorite enzyme rubisco

bioRxiv Biochemistry@biorxiv-biochem.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Diversity-driven biochemical survey reveals dimeric structural origin of rubisco https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.05.686826v1

Viruses are highly abundant in the oceans, but there is one place you won't typically find them: in global ocean ecosystem models... until now. Introducing "vDarwin", an explicit integration of viruses into the MITgcm/Darwin global ecosystem framework: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... a 🧵

Thrilled that our paper "Eco-evolutionary dynamics of massive, parallel bacteriophage outbreaks in compost communities" is out! 🎉🦠🧬 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... w/ @paulbrainey.bsky.social, Petros Skiadas, Paulien Hogeweg, @bedutilh.bsky.social

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of massive, parallel bacteriophage outbreaks in compost communities

A single bacteriophage can dominate microbial communities yet only evolves when migration changes its ecological context.

science.org

Do microbes breathe peat? 🦠⚡🌿 New preprint: we sampled Swedish bogs to 7 m and found dominant, uncultured Acidobacteriota & Verrucomicrobiota encode conserved extracellular electron transfer (EET) machinery that was transcriptionally active all the way down.

Effects of sulfide on the activity of the ammonia-oxidizing archaeon Nitrosopumilus maritimus SCM1 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

Sandpiper 2 is up. 913,000 metagenomic community profiles w @ace-gtdb.bsky.social R232, 200k more than 1.0. sandpiper.qut.edu.au GlobDB coming. Thanks to @aroneys.bsky.social @thepatientwait.bsky.social @iambrettb.bsky.social and especially the new kid @nhstefan.bsky.social

Do microbes reinvent their metabolism when shifting ecosystems? 🌊🦠 Marine and gut Akkermansiaceae share conserved glycan uptake. Ecological transitions may reflect substrate specialization on an inherited framework. @mpimarinemicrobio.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu #microsky

Conserved glycan-utilization strategies shape Akkermansiaceae success across aquatic and gut ecosystems

Abstract. Elucidating interaction mechanisms and substrate specialization is central to understanding bacterial adaptation across ecological niches. Specia

doi.org

What happens to Arctic soils when they thaw? ❄️🦠🔬 We thawed frozen Svalbard soils & identified which microbes grew following thaw. Our results highlight how dormancy, predation & seasonality shape carbon cycling in thawing Arctic soils @microbemac.bsky.social #ERC_SIESTA tinyurl.com/4sawn2dj

Seasonal thawing of high Arctic soils triggers selective microbial growth and predation | mSystems

Microorganisms play key roles in transforming soil carbon into greenhouse gases. As Arctic soils warm as a result of climate change, greater depths and expanses of permanently frozen soil are experien...

tinyurl.com

Don’t reach for ChatGPT Images or Nano Banana as your first option when creating scientific images There are multiple free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations. #plantscience @stephenturner.us blog.stephenturner.us/p/free-open-...

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations

Phylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics

blog.stephenturner.us

In #Microbiome 🚨Introducing Pilea: A novel bacterial growth profiling approach for better ecological modeling 🦠Enabling large-scale analyses of bacterial growth dynamics across biomes 👉 doi.org/q4rk #OpenAccess #Bacteria

Diverse phages of ammonia oxidizers with the potential to modulate nitrification www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

Interested in working on the evolution of photosynthetic endosymbioses? Come join us! I have 2 open positions in my new group @cemess.bsky.social in Vienna 3yr postdoc info: tinyurl.com/4emkjpn4 4yr PhD info: tinyurl.com/mtxmsjpy Apply by 1st June! Please share/repost #Protists #Symbiosis #PhD

Come work/study in a wonderful department with a great group leader!!!

Asher Leeks@asherleeks.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We're recruiting! We're looking for two graduate students to join us at UBC in Vancouver. Fully funded and open to global applicants, with flexible start-date. Topics include theory, bioinformatics, and microbiology. More details: asherleeks.com/apply #socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪

Out Now! The ecology of bacterial attachment to phytoplankton #MicroSky

The ecology of bacterial attachment to phytoplankton

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 22 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02287-6Here the authors review current understanding of the mechanistic marine microbial interactions that underpin large-scale ecosystem processes and biogeochemical cycling.

go.nature.com

Check out our latest preprint!!! We report the LTPlus, a manually curated and aligned database of ~87k best-quality 16S rRNA gene sequences collected from LTP, NCBI, GTDB, and SILVA databases. We also developed the OPUcheck tool to automate the OPU approach. www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9...

8 more days left to apply for this 3-year postdoc position. Please repost! The position offers a lot of freedom to test new ideas about how archaea and bacteria communicate & sense the extracellular environment.

Amelia Rotaru@ameliarotaru.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Please help spread the word about this 3-year postdoc position in my team. If your expertise & interest lie in studying how organisms from different domains of life (Bacteria and Archaea) communicate, come join us this summer in cozy Odense, Denmark. Job post: www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Benchmarking of shotgun sequencing depth reveals the potential and limitations of shallow metagenomics and strain-level analysis www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Benchmarking of shotgun sequencing depth reveals the potential and limitations of shallow metagenomics and strain-level analysis - Nature Microbiology

A comparison of sequencing of complex mock communities performed at multiple depths and analysed using different methods establishes minimum standards that can ensure the accuracy of metagenomic analy...

nature.com

Grab a coffee and enjoy reading up on CO metabolism in methanotrophs! Freshwater ANME (own work): www.nature.com/articles/s41... Marine ANME (@Orphan lab): www.nature.com/articles/s41... Big thanks to our collaborators at QUT! @sjmcilroy.bsky.social (Heyu/Andy/Gene!) @cuwelte.bsky.social

Carbon monoxide metabolism in freshwater anaerobic methanotrophic archaea - Nature Communications

Anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea mitigate methane emissions in anoxic environments. Here, Egas et al. show that these microbes can also oxidize carbon monoxide, prompting re-evaluation of their cla...

nature.com