Sharing the protocol we're using in the lab to rapidly & easily assemble combinatorial sets of microbial communities + script to adapt the protocol to different situations. Hope it's useful to others. @the100footpole Juan Díaz-Colunga @jdiazc9.bsky.social magdalena san roman @andrea_arrabal_ biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Out today after peer review: cell.com/cell/fulltext/… Congratulations Juan Díaz-Colunga @jdiazc9.bsky.social Djordje Bajić @jccvila & Abby Skwara

How will the inclusion a microbial species change the function of a community? How will the acquisition of a specific mutation change the phenotype of an organism? Both questions can be addressed using a same quantitative framework. Find out more: doi.org/10.1016/j.cell…

We're looking for an enthusiastic experimentalist PhD student to join our interdisciplinary group interested in the ecology & evolution of microbial communities unil.ch/mitrilab. Apply tinyurl.com/mu5swnk8 before Aug 31! Bonus: Lausanne is a beautiful place to live!

I wrote a little perspective article on "Speciation in Microbes" (a tall order, bear with me!) doi.org/10.1093/evolin… Thanks to the great editors and reviewers @EvoJLinnSoc, The Linnean Society of London

Interested in plasmid biology? Our new preprint is now available!!! 🚨 In this work, we analyzed thousands of diverse bacterial plasmids to characterize for the first time one of the most fundamental aspects of plasmid biology: Plasmid copy number. 1/7 👇

New preprint up! We sequenced hundreds of samples from across one of Earth's oldest living organisms - the Pando aspen clone - to understand how mutations accumulate and spread in long-lived clonal organisms. Our results were…surprising. 1/30

In Cell, I share a major conceptual challenge for biology in the next decade, inspired by Crick’s Central Dogma: understanding information flow in the cell, the smallest indivisible unit of life bit.ly/4hQMmva

Xin is one of the most positive, genuine, and supportive friends and colleagues I’ve ever met. I cannot recommend more! If you're interested in microbial ecology, labwork, fieldwork, and modeling, you will have it all!! Xin Sun (she/her) sites.google.com/view/xinsun/ho…

Thrilled to share that I'm starting my own lab at UC Irvine in April 2025 and am recruiting at all levels - please spread the word! My lab will study how microbes interact and evolve in complex communities like the human gut microbiome. kxuelab.com 1/2

Is it “winner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧵 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

As a former colleague, I can definitely say Juan is a brilliant, creative, and genuinely great person to work with! If you're into using theory to tackle questions in microbial ecology and evolution, keep an eye out for the job posts!

I want to tell you a story about computers, creativity and awe! (1/N)🧵 Sydney Brenner once said in 2012 that “nobody has actually read the human genome. I mean, computers have processed the human genome, but we all know computers are stupid.” (This is a talk I gave last week..)