What, is it over already? MEEHubs2026 concluded just minutes ago. It's been a blast, and here are some stats for you: 711 registrations, 241 posters, 71 talks, 3 days, participants from 32 countries. Bye from all the hubs 🩵🩵🩵 #MEEHubs2026 #MEEHubs26

MEEHubs doesn't stop when the talks stop: from a mouth-watering spread in Morelia to a bonfire in Irvine to an Apero in Zurich, we've got your social calendar covered during the conference #MEEHubs2026 #MEEHubs26

MEEHubs2026 is underway! We had a great start in the first two sessions with Zurich and Manchester hosting some excellent talks! It's not too late to join us virtually via last-minute registration: meehubs.org #MEEHubs2026

You know it’s @meehubs.bsky.social if one hub has beer while another has breakfast. The Zürich hub is concluding a fantastic first day of #MEEHubs26 - can’t wait to rewatch what we’ll be missing out on tonight and excited for two more days of science and fun across hubs 🙌🏼🚀

Ok, here's the final draft of my Microbe expansion for Terraforming Mars: tinyurl.com/4v4majy4. All thematic and scientifically correct! 44 projects cards, 4 prelude cards, 2 cooperations, 1 file w special tiles (+1 fixed colony card, 1 fixed project card). Will update after play tests. 🦠🔬

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 planktonic microbiome of the Great Barrier Reef - Nature

The Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database compiles prokaryotic, viral and eukaryotic genomes from seawater collected from the Great Barrier Reef, providing a rich resource for the study of mar...

nature.com

🚨 We're hiring! My new lab at EMBL Hamburg is looking for a Research Technician. I'm looking for someone excited by phages, metabolism, enzymes, structural biology and bacterial immunity—if you know the right person, please share this post!🧵⬇️ Apply here: embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Research Technician (Osterman Group – Metabolism-driven immunity)

EMBL Hamburg / CSSB The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s flagship life sciences organization, with more than 110 independent research groups across Heidelberg, Hamburg, Grenobl...

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com

⏳𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗧𝗛 𝗭𝘂̈𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗵𝘂𝗯 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝟭𝟲 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲! Last chance to join us for the very unique #MEEHubs Microbial Ecology and Evolution hybrid conference, featuring fantastic local keynote lectures by Martin Ackermann, Sara Mitri and Alan Pacheco, alongside many more across the globe.

MEEhubs@meehubs.bsky.social · 4w ago

🚨The program for MEEHubs2026 is now online, as is more detailed information about the hubs! Check it out at meehubs.org and register‼️ Less than a month before the conference kicks off! 🦠

New Assistant (tenure-track) or Associate Professor position in Climate #Biophysics! Join our international research community to explore fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying climate-relevant biological processes. Apply by 7 Sept 2026! www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/de/open-posi...

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

“It’s just a microscopic water droplet surrounded by a fatty membrane and stuffed with chemicals and snippets of DNA encoding a mere 36 genes. But it’s also arguably the closest researchers have come to building a living cell from scratch.”🧪 My story in @science.org on a fascinating preprint:

Lab-created ‘SpudCell’ marks ‘stunning’ step toward building life from scratch

A synthetic cell can now grow and divide—but it’s still far from alive

science.org

Claude Science - an AI workbench for science. This looks like an interesting attempt at making scientific workflows easier and more reproducible. I'm curious to give it a try. www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientists

Claude Science is a customizable app that integrates the tools and packages researchers most often use, produces auditable artifacts, and provides flexible access to computing resources.

anthropic.com

Since it's writing season at university, sharing a few nice resources (that I know) about academic writing: 1/ How to write a scientific paper in fifteen steps @jdrakephd.bsky.social @bahanbug.bsky.social doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Oxidative stress reshapes diatom-microbiome interactions by shifting benefits from mutualistic to opportunistic bacteria www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs 🌊

"The Case for a Validity Layer in Life Science Research" - a very interesting article by Meir Maor, QED's CTO. Meir explains why biology is harder for AI than mathematics. www.qedscience.com/blog/life-sc...

The case for a validity layer in life science research

When OpenAI recently announced that one of its models had disproved a long-standing conjecture in discrete geometry, the scientific community took notice...

qedscience.com

Very excited to share our new preprint, led by Alyssa Henderson! We ask why auxotrophy is so widespread in bacteria, and find that phylogeny is the dominant predictor of autotrophy, as opposed to environmental context. Check it out! 👇

Amino acid auxotrophy is a feature of a distinct bacterial lifestyle across environments

Amino acid auxotrophy, the loss of biosynthetic potential for an amino acid, is a highly prevalent feature of microbial life, yet the evolutionary processes driving its distribution in nature remain u...

doi.org

TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...

How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated?

We’ve documented more than 100 instances of apparent data manipulation in Thermo’s catalog

reeserichardson.blog

What is the scope of ISME Host Microbe, ISME's newest journal? Effects of antimicrobial agents, human activities, immunity and environment on AND ecological studies, cross-kingdom studies, microbiome studies of host-microbiome/microbe interactions academic.oup.com/ismehm/pages... #MicrobialEcology

Thallusin biosynthesis finally revealed! This compound induces metamorphosis in Ulva algae and, to our surprise, occurs in diverse bacterial phyla from land to sea. Spearheaded by N. Kallscheuer, C. Jogler and T. Wichard #MicroSky @microbiomeresearch.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Revised 16S rRNA V4 hypervariable region targeting primers enhance detection of Patescibacteria and other lineages across diverse environments academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs

The version of record of our revised preprint is finally out today. In it, we introduce a fast and reliable methdology for the full factorial design of microbial communities, i.e. constructing every monoculture, pair, trio, four-member,... n-member co-culture of N strains. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Full factorial construction of synthetic microbial communities

A rapid, inexpensive, and easy to implement experimental protocol enables the construction of combinatorially complete sets of microbial consortia.

doi.org

Five days left to apply! 🌊 Exciting #PhDPosition in #PlanktonEcology at the University of Koblenz, Germany! Work on #marine #protists with a mix of 🔬 wet lab and 💻 bioinformatics in a 3-year, 60% position. 📅 Apply by 20 May 2026 Please repost/share 🙌 Link: tinyurl.com/yu27knau #ProtistsOnSky

“You would hope that German officials would support scientists’ advice, but they have ignored it,” says one marine biologist who asked not to be identified because they feared repercussions. Must-read story by @martinenserink.bsky.social in @science.org. Feels like an encapsulation of our times 🧪

Chaotic whale rescue shocks marine biologists

Timmy, a humpback whale stranded in Germany 6 weeks ago, was ailing and may already be dead

science.org

🦠 Can microbes think? 🍄 Can they learn, remember, and react? 🤔 "Cognition without brains? Learning and memory in microorganisms" by @kostchristian.bsky.social lab raises some legit #Points2Ponder. #MicrobeMatters #MicrobialMemory

Trends in Microbiology@cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Cognition without brains? Learning and memory in microorganisms

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

Pseudoalteromonas is a symbiont of marine invertebrates that exhibits broad patterns of phylosymbiosis #ISMEJournal from @hollybik.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Pseudoalteromonas is a symbiont of marine invertebrates that exhibits broad patterns of phylosymbiosis

Abstract. Despite growing insights into the composition of marine invertebrate microbiomes, our understanding of their ecological and evolutionary patterns

academic.oup.com

New paper entitled "Sea urchin eggs contain a plastid-derived structure that contributes to their development" is now out in @plosbiology.org! Here is a summary... journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

How diverse are E. coli capsules? In collaboration with @mucosalimmunology.bsky.social we mapped this uncharted diversity in >66k genomes with a new tool, kTYPr, paving the way to capsule-targeted therapies and vaccines www.nature.com/articles/s41... @eth-microbiology.bsky.social

In silico typing maps the natural diversity of Escherichia coli transporter-dependent capsules - Nature Microbiology

Escherichia coli ABC transporter-dependent capsule gene analysis alongside the development and application of the kTYPr in silico capsule typing tool uncovers E. coli capsule diversity across environm...

nature.com

Our first collaboration with the Levine lab! Defining metabolic niches for marine microbial heterotrophs www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊

Defining metabolic niches for marine microbial heterotrophs

Understanding carbon cycling requires simplifying bacterial diversity into functional groups defined by genetic signatures.

science.org