Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent immune response against a distant tumor. Y. Erin Chen, MD PhD led the charge w/ help from Djenet Bousbaine, Alessandra Veinbachs, Belkaid Lab. Science Magazine 1/26 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Thanks "Djenet Bousbaine" for following me on Twitter, You rock! x.com/DjenetBousbaine

Thrilled to see our #microbiome #immunology paper is out in nature! We mapped T cell receptor specificity to the gut microbiome at the level of a single TCR versus a single strain. nature.com/articles/s4158… Here are highlights of our findings.

I anticipate recruiting two PhD students for Fall ’24 (or earlier) in the following areas: 1. Cyanobacterial blooms and their strain diversity and interactions with heterotrophic bacteria 2. Broad metagenomic data to track biodiversity in the #GreatLakes.

Today I noticed that dRep, a program I first wrote in 2016, has 1000 citations on Google Scholar! 🎉I want to share a thread on why I think the program "caught on" what I've learned maintaining it for ~7 years

🎉 Exciting News! 🎉 I'm thrilled to announce that I will be joining #GeorgiaTech as an Assistant Professor starting Jan 1, 2024! I'm actively recruiting members to join the lab. So please spread the word! The lab website also goes live today. murtylab.com

The news from OpenAI that they have developed an AI that can reason and solve simple maths problems is HUGE! Anyone who watches reality TV knows this makes the AI smarter than the majority of humans.

We’re building for this moment to accelerate progress in science with AI. Our co-founders Priscilla + Mark share our annual letter on how our early bets are making this possible: czi.co/AnnualLetter

Diversity of Bathyarchaeia viruses in metagenomes and virus-encoded CRISPR system components academic.oup.com/ismecommun/art…

Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. We applied it to 250,000 metagenomes- in environmental samples 75% lack a genome/MAG (abundance-weighted). A 🧵biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

In the past few weeks, there's been an explosion of new tools for programming DNA and RNA 🧬 A thread with everything you need to know about these new results:

If you are interested in prophages, we have a new database: Prophage-DB. Check it out and all feedback is welcome biorxiv.org/cgi/content/sh…

Come join us! If you use AI (loosely defined) for any microbiology applications, consider applying for these faculty positions. Great dept with amazing colleagues and a supportive environment.

Check out our last pub. from Michael Fischbach lab! We discovered that skin commensal microbes induce systemic and local B cell responses upon colonization and took advantage of this knowledge to create topical vaccines using engineered skin microbes. Please read the thread for details.

OUT NOW Unraveling viral ecology and evolution over twenty years in a freshwater lake Karthik Anantharaman & co nature.com/articles/s4156…

PLEASE SHARE! 📢 #CIGLR is excited to announce the opening of our 2025 #GreatLakes Summer Fellow applications! There are 7 full-time, 12-week positions paying $10,000 each. Applications are due 09 Feb 2025 at 11:59 pm EST! Eligibility & how to apply: ciglr.seas.umich.edu/2025-great-lak…

If you're a scientist that serves on an NSF panel that got cancelled today, I'd love to talk to you about it for an NPR story. DM, email or reach out on signal.

This is not true! Any phage scientist could tell you that phage are everywhere from sewage, to rivers, to human skin and human gut. Literally everywhere. They are not a barometer of river purity or anything else.

new work from CIGLR finds that "the Great Lakes have entered a new era of temperature extremes". nature.com/articles/s4324…

Phylogenetically and metabolically diverse active carbon-fixing microbes reside in mangrove sediments microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…