UKRI's chief executive said recently that the UK "may wish to explore" paring back its association to the EU's research programme, to make it partial. That would be a "profound strategic error", critics now warn. By @clanicholson.bsky.social www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-euro...

Any UK plan for partial Horizon association ‘a profound error’ - Research Professional News

Academic leaders warn against UK abandoning participation in collaborative part of EU R&I programme

researchprofessionalnews.com

Our paper "Ecosystem health shapes viral ecology in peatland soils" is out in Nature Microbiology! We show that peatland health strongly structures viral communities, shaping virus–host networks, and carbon and nutrient cycling. Please share. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #phagesky #Microsky

Ecosystem health shapes viral ecology in peatland soils - Nature Microbiology

Metagenomics shows that viral diversity and community structure are shaped by geography and ecosystem health status, positioning viruses as unexpected players in peatland restoration.

nature.com

The Metagenome Stability Diagram uses gene markers across ecosystems to understand how environmental conditions constrain metabolic activity in microbiomes. 🖥️🧬🦠 https://jgi.doe.gov/user-science/science-stories/data-discovery-tool-helps-identify-microbial-roles-within-metagenomes

Data Discovery Tool Helps Identify Microbial Roles within Metagenomes | Joint Genome Institute

Protein annotations provide insights into environmental tendencies

jgi.doe.gov

Soil viruses are important regulators of ecosystem function, but what are their roles in environments that face long-term degradation and restoration? In our paper published today in Nature Micro, we asked how soil viruses influence peatland recovery, and vice versa. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ecosystem health shapes viral ecology in peatland soils - Nature Microbiology

Metagenomics shows that viral diversity and community structure are shaped by geography and ecosystem health status, positioning viruses as unexpected players in peatland restoration.

nature.com

📢 New preprint is out on bioRxiv 📢: How much does virome prep influence our view of the human gut virome? Short answer: a lot. Long answer: doi.org/10.1101/2025... Different methods lead to distinct community structures, richness, and major virus-host abundance patterns. 🧵 1/5

PhD opportunity with me at University of Edinburgh linked with Forest Research, funded by E5 DTP. On the microbial mechanisms of soil carbon cycling in tree-planted upland soils. Apply before 14th Dec. Please share with your network. Pic: one of our Scottish sites. e5-dtp.ed.ac.uk/project?item...

We're hiring for several positions (a post-bac researcher in #transcriptomics, a #phage #postdoc, a senior researcher (broad topics) and a graduate student to work on #ciliates) - find info here: www.marine.usf.edu/genomics/app...

Love this new paper from @gtrubl.bsky.social and @alexjprobst.bsky.social on the importance of accurate use of terminology in microbial ecology. I’ve seen a lot of use of lysogenic instead of temperate recently so it’s nice to see that distinction being made. doi.org/10.1111/1462...

Clarifying Terminology in Microbial Ecology: A Call for Precision in Scientific Communication

The rapid evolution of microbiology as a field of research has led to the introduction of new terminology and the adaptation of existing terms. However, inconsistencies in the use of these terms, inc...

doi.org

🎉Woot woot 🎉Finished a 2 week writing challenge with sending a manuscript off to co-authors/ submitting data to NCBI. Onto the next one 😁

Learn more about EcoFABs in this episode of our #GenomeInsider podcast ⬇️ 🖥️🧬

Experimenting with EcoFABs for Student Labs - Jill Bouchard & Ying Wang | Joint Genome Institute

This episode, we visit Los Medanos Community College to see EcoFABs in action in Jill Bouchard’s BIO 21 lab course.

jgi.doe.gov

Ákos T Kovács@evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Comparing EcoFab 2.0 results from 5 labs on 3 continents‼️ Breaking the reproducibility barrier with standardized protocols for plant–microbiome research @plosbiology.org by Vlastimil Novak et al from Trent Northen @jgi.doe.gov journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Fitting that Google has DNA in today’s doodle,the same day Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoc fellowship proposals are due in 😁🧬

📢 We are thrilled to announce the International Soil Virus Conference 2026 in conjunction with the Saint Loup Research Institute. 🗓️ June 16 – 18, 2026 📍 Château de Saint Loup sur Thouet, France 👇 RSVP by October 31st, 2025 #virus #phage #ISVC2026

ISVC2026

International Soil Virus Conference 2026! We are excited to announce and provide RSVP details for the next International Soil Virus Conference that will be held in Saint-Loup Lamaire, France on Jun…

soilmicrobes.fr

The Department of Biology at Colorado State University is hiring an Assistant Professor in the area of plant-microbe interactions! Please spread the word! jobs.colostate.edu/postings/165...

Assistant Professor Plant-Microbe Interactions

We seek a creative, collaborative, and visionary plant biologist to establish an internationally recognized research program at the forefront of plant-microbe interactions aimed at understanding how t...

jobs.colostate.edu

#Perspective A discussion on virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes. #MicroSky 🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A call for caution in the biological interpretation of viral auxiliary metabolic genes - Nature Microbiology

This Perspective discusses virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and provides a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes.

nature.com

Awesome looking review on RNA phage discovery 😁

Emmanuele Severi@emmseveri.bsky.social · 11mo ago

academic.oup.com/nar/article/... #phagesky on RNA #phage s

A new theme issue of #PhilTransB examines the evolutionary history of bacterial immune systems, their modes of action, and the patterns how different bacterial immune systems are distributed across different ecosystems. Read: buff.ly/Z4qdxY1

🚨 New preprint! 🧬 𝐏𝐡𝐚𝐠𝐞-𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐬 (𝐏-𝐏𝐬) are fascinating elements: both 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 and 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐬 ➡️ tricky to detect. We present 𝐭𝐲𝐏𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐠 — the first 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥 🛠️designed specifically for P-Ps: ✅ Accurate ✅ Sensitive ✅ Easy to use 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Efficient detection and typing of phage-plasmids

Phage-plasmids are temperate phages that replicate as plasmids during lysogeny. Despite their high diversity, they carry genes similar to phages and plasmids. This leads to gene exchanges, and to the ...

biorxiv.org

🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵 Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open. doi.org/10.1101/2024...

It’s life @jgi.doe.gov 🖖 but not as we know it. This symposium looks fascinating! (couldn’t resist making the Trek reference)

Joint Genome Institute@jgi.doe.gov · 11mo ago

Abstracts are due Oct. 19 for the 2025 New Lineages of Life Symposium — 80 slots available! See speakers below. More info: jgi.doe.gov/work-with-us... Full Agenda: jgi.doe.gov/work-with-us... @axelvisel.bsky.social 🖥️🧬

BLOG - Seven ingredients for a Neuroinclusive research organisation In our latest #JICNeurodiversity blog, we reflect on the remarkable impact and success of our BBSRC @ukri.org funded “Understanding, Valuing and Celebrating Neurodiversity” project 🌈🧠 Watch full video: youtu.be/bwUEJju9XQ4?...

Understanding, Valuing and Celebrating Neurodiversity – Impact of our BBSRC Connecting Culture grant

YouTube video by John Innes Centre

youtu.be

Save the Date: #MMEG2025 is coming to Birmingham! Join us on 15–16 December 2025 for the 31st edition of MMEG. This year's event is your chance to: 🔬 Share your research 🤝 Connect with peers 🦠 Discover the latest in molecular microbial ecology Register now: appliedmicrobiology.org/ems-event-ca...

Highly accurate prophage island detection with PIDE | Genome Biology | Full Text https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-025-03733-0

Highly accurate prophage island detection with PIDE - Genome Biology

As important mobile elements in prokaryotes, prophages shape the genomic context of their hosts and regulate the structure of bacterial populations. However, it is challenging to precisely identify prophages through computational methods. Here, we introduce PIDE for identifying prophages from bacterial genomes or metagenome-assembled genomes. PIDE integrates a pre-trained protein language model and gene density clustering algorithm to distinguish prophages. Benchmarking with induced prophage sequencing datasets demonstrates that PIDE pinpoints prophages with precise boundaries. Applying PIDE to 4744 human gut representative genomes reveals 24,467 prophages with widespread functional capacity. PIDE is available at https://github.com/chyghy/PIDE , with model training code at https://zenodo.org/records/16457629 .

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com

The microbial composition of metagenomes is identified in seconds by profiling against large databases go.nature.com/3BBVqDC rdcu.be/eCbj4

Rapid species-level metagenome profiling and containment estimation with sylph - Nature Biotechnology

The microbial composition of metagenomes is identified in seconds by profiling against large databases.

go.nature.com

Soil is the most diverse microbial ecosystem, which makes microbiome studies with shotgun sequencing extremely tricky! In our last paper @imetascience.bsky.social, we show that co-assembly increases gene and genome recovery tinyurl.com/59t4z8fh #soilmicrobiome #metagenomics

Unveiling soil microbial diversity through ultra‐deep short‐read metagenomic sequencing and co‐assembly

By combining ultra-deep short-read shotgun metagenomic sequencing with 5-sample co-assembly across 600 agricultural soil samples, we significantly enhanced the representation and recovery of microbia....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

🍄 UGA Plant Pathology is hiring TT faculty in Mycology/Fungal Biology/Fungal Ecology at the Asst/Assc level! Please pass along this opportunity to anyone you know who may be interested. I'm on the search committee and happy to answer questions. 🍄 www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/445...

𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗟𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 🦠🧬 Dive into the lytic cycle! A bacteriophage injects DNA, hijacks the host, and rapidly replicates until the bacterium lyses, releasing a new swarm of virulent phages! #blender #3D #cgi #science #research #biology #phage #lyticcycle #bacteria #scicomm #sciart

Do you love phage? I have an opening for a postdoc in my lab at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science (@cmarinescience.bsky.social) looking at interactions between marine phage and iron, which is an important limiting trace metal in the oceans (1/5) 🧵#phagesky 🦠🌊

🧪 New research confirms climate change is a primary driver of worsening forest fires. The likelihood of extreme fire weather has doubled since the preindustrial era, contributing to a dramatic increase in burned forest area globally. #Climate #Fires

Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World’s Forests

nytimes.com

A really great review written by @simrouxvirus.bsky.social and Clement Coclet on the state of the field of viromics and viral ecology. Well worth a look, and provides a solid reading list for those entering the field wanting more background on how it has developed and what tools are available.

Nature Reviews Genetics@natrevgenet.nature.com · last yr.

New online! Viromics approaches for the study of viral diversity and ecology in microbiomes

Exciting news: over £59m announced to support the Government’s new compute roadmap. Our investment will support the career development of researchers and innovators, enabling UK-wide capability and access to digital infrastructure. More: www.ukri.org/news/governm... or ⬇️🧵1/