Tessera
Folgen

Leonora Bittleston

@leonorabit.bsky.social

Associate Professor at Boise State, microbial community ecologist, lover of pitcher plant microcosms, she/her

35 Posts440 Follower343 Folgt
Joint Genome Institute@jgi.doe.gov · 2w ago

New research decodes how a single stress signal transforms bacterial metabolism, offering engineers precise targets for designing better microbial factories. 🖥️ 🧬 More: https://jgi.doe.gov/user-science/science-stories/pinch-salt-activates-silent-gene-clusters-streptomyces

A Pinch of Salt Activates Silent Gene Clusters in Streptomyces | Joint Genome Institute

This single environmental trigger highlights efficiency for users requiring multiple omics methods to examine microbial chemical production.

jgi.doe.gov

Kate Clancy@kateclancy.bsky.social · last mo.

What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:

Third, faculty salaries are falling even if we statistically control for faculty rank and institution. By our analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data, tenured and tenure-track salaries are down 10 percent in real terms since 2016 and are lower today than they were in 2002; nontenured faculty salaries are down 4 percent since 2016 and are at 2002 levels today. To put this plainly: Suppose sharply increased teaching loads enabled institutions to cut one out of every seven full-time faculty. (That’s roughly what we saw last year in severe cuts announced at West Virginia, Western Illinois, and St. Cloud State Universities.) The associated savings in salary and benefits even through such drastic action would amount to less than 2.5 percent of total institutional expenditures for the typical university. The upshot? If you think higher education has a cost problem, squeezing more teaching out of faculty is not the first place you should look.
Glen Dsouza@nonresidentdesi.bsky.social · last mo.

I had a really fun time joining @blarson.bsky.social on @scifri.bsky.social to talk about the strange and fascinating world of microbial weapons: swords, bombs, cannibalism, poison, and what this means for how microbes compete, feed, and shape communities. www.sciencefriday.com/segments/kil...

Swords, cannibalism, poison: inside the world of killer microbes

Some microbe species have evolved to stab, bomb, cannibalize, or poison each other. Can we harness their weapons for good?

sciencefriday.com

Science Friday@scifri.bsky.social · last mo.

Researchers like Ben Larson and Glen D’Souza are piecing together the world of killer microbes, including why they turn on each other and if their tiny weapons could be harnessed to fight disease. Listen to the podcast now: www.sciencefriday.com/segments/kil...

Phillip Cleves@pcleves.bsky.social · last mo.

Our work on the symbiont-containing organelle that supports coral reefs is published today. Also, new genetic tools to study symbiosis in both corals and Aiptasia. Great work by Shumpei Maruyama, Cat Henderson, and the rest of the fantastic team. #SymbioSky www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Co-option of lysosomal machinery shapes the evolution of the intracellular photosymbiosis supporting coral reefs

Corals harbor intracellular algal symbionts in specialized organelles that enable them to build diverse reef ecosystems. Corals and other cnidarians have repeatedly evolved this symbiosis through the ...

cell.com

Nancy Moran@nancy-moran.bsky.social · last mo.

A step forward in discovering Buchnera's key to the aphid's heart, published today! Thanks to Jerry Maeda and other authors--a great team -- and to the helpful reviewers #SymbioSky doi: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

A secreted endosymbiont protein essential for colonizing host cells - Nature

SyeA was present in the Buchnera ancestor, is secreted into the host cytoplasm, is homologous to secreted effectors of bacterial pathogens and is essential for Buchnera transmission.

doi.org

Jessica Bernardin@jess-bernardin.bsky.social · last mo.

(1/5) While I was standing at the door welcoming students into Botany lecture yesterday, another instructor walking by smiled and said, "That's cute." What they said felt a tiny bit dismissive, because welcoming students at the door is an important and very intentional part of my teaching. 🌱👩‍🏫

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants.bsky.social · last mo.

🧪 🪰 🐜🪲🐞🦗🐛🦋🪳🦟 "Study finds number of insect species on Earth is more than double previous estimates" 🎁link to a wonderful article by @ivansemeniuk.bsky.social in the @theglobeandmail.com about our #OA PNAS paper doi.org/10.1073/pnas.... @gdfcf.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/c231c7b...

Study finds number of insect species on Earth is more than double previous estimates

Research shows there could be at least 20 million different insect species

theglobeandmail.com

Rauf Salamzade@raufs.bsky.social · last mo.

Microbes that have the greatest genomic potential for secondary metabolism tend to be multicellular. Here, we show that signatures of ancestral BGC expansions within 3 bacterial phyla and 2 fungal lineages coincide with origins of complex multicellularity [1/12] 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Complex multicellularity is linked with expanded specialized metabolite production in microorganisms - Nature Microbiology

The evolutionary emergence of complex multicellularity in bacteria and fungi, such as the ability for mycelial growth, is strongly associated with increased genomic carriage of biosynthetic machinery ...

nature.com

Coleen Murphy@ctmurphy1.bsky.social · 2mo ago

one anecdote: I was searching for a link to one of my old papers on Google, and the automated Gemini summary attributed all of my lab's work to my husband

Mel Andrews@bayesianboy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

Leonora Bittleston@leonorabit.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Can we use ecological principles to increase coexistence in synthetic bacterial communities? Our new paper is now out in @isme-microbes.bsky.social: "Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes" doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes

Abstract. Microbial communities are often more species-rich than predicted from classical ecological models. The high levels of coexistence observed in nat

academic.oup.com

Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo@multicellgenome.bsky.social · 2mo ago

1/7 We often picture eukaryogenesis as a symbiosis between two lineages: an archaeal host & the ancestor of mitochondria. But what if the origin of eukaryotes emerged within a much more complex microbial ecosystem? A fascinating study from @tonigabaldon.bsky.social et al. explores exactly this. 🧵

Toni Gabaldón@tonigabaldon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our paper "Gene ancestries reveal diverse microbial associations during eukaryogenesis.” is finally out in Nature. Eukaryogenesis was likely a gradual process shaped by multiple microbial partners and virus-mediated gene transfer, rather than a single binary symbiosis. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Michael Okun@michael-okun.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

Daniel Bolnick@danielbolnick.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Do any of you have an AI policy document for your lab group clearly stating expectations regarding student / postdoc use of LLMs in background research, coding, writing, reviewing, etc? I'd be interested in a model as we develop one.

Lily Khadempour@khadlily.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Do you study human microbiomes? Have you used the word "commensal"? Then this paper was written with you in mind! It was an absolute pleasure to write this with the incomparable @ginalewin.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

mGem: Tapping into the language of symbiosis to advance human microbiome research | mBio

An overarching goal in microbiome research is to understand how the complex communities in our bodies contribute to health and disease, and ultimately, we aim to leverage and control these communities...

journals.asm.org