Alex Crits-Christoph
@acritschristoph.bsky.social
4.8K followers 1.6K following 1.7K posts
Computational microbiologist I like to post about: microbial genomics, microbial ecology, evolution, micro+plant biotechnology, climate, symbiosis, virology, ag, sci publishing and policy
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Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
drkeithsmith.bsky.social
How can we tell what's inside an #exoplanet? @timlichtenberg.bsky.social et al review how a planet's atmosphere interacts with its interior. Atmospheric observations can distinguish between lava worlds, water worlds, temperate surfaces or supercritical interiors. ☄️
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social
Glad to share a collaboration with Yicen Lin's group at Kunming University of Science and Technology published in ISME Journal

Synergistic biodegradation of polyethylene by experimentally evolved bacterial biofilms
academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

#MicrobiomeEcology at #LeidenBiology
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
carlzimmer.com
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
nyti.ms
acritschristoph.bsky.social
and the nice thing about climate change is, every bit counts! Unless we're playing "Oh but will talking about ERW distract people from the obviously most important thing which is getting rid of fossil fuels" game, which is kinda true but also kind of paternalistic IMO
acritschristoph.bsky.social
Yes it almost certainly does, and this is more so true as societies and industries electrify

I think folks shouldn't talk past each other and just say: "ERW is good and can likely help with climate change but not come close to solving it, which still requires rapid transition from fossil fuels"
acritschristoph.bsky.social
I really like how you aggregate comments across sites. Is that done automatically? How the heck do you accomplish that?
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
mugkraemer.bsky.social
The role of climate variability in shaping the 2023/24 outbreak of Dengue in Brazil (📉 in north regions; 📈 in southern populous regions).

Brazil recorded the largest outbreak on record which coincided with the warmest ever reported temperatures in the Americas.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
rosalafersousa.bsky.social
Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen.

He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
alanmcn1.bsky.social
After being with the journal since its very inception, the time has come for me to step back from Microbial Genomics. This is a wonderful opportunity to have a leadership role in one of the leading journals for microbial genomics research

microbiologysociety.org/news/society...
<i>Microbial Genomics </i> Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Call for Expressions of interest
microbiologysociety.org
acritschristoph.bsky.social
Really interesting to hear your bindcraft challenges. "BindCraft appears to be much better at targeting certain binding pockets than others" common wisdom right now, but hope we can start to generalize it....

Dumb q: any evidence many of your 100+ binders *are* binding, just not inhibiting >LOD?
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
maddyseale.bsky.social
Wonderful to see this beautiful image on the cover of Science this week highlighting a paper that uses high resolution imaging to show the spatial patterns of bacterial attraction to glutamine from roots.
Paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Perspective here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
3rdreviewer.bsky.social
The most important paper in evolutionary biology I'd never heard of:

1/

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
jeremymberg.bsky.social
I have been trying to get this published as an op-ed, but I am going to post it here since I think it is timely in light of the "consent" extortion events.

Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment

jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

1/14
jeremymberg.github.io
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
brockhurstlab.bsky.social
New preprint!

Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠

Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare!

An epic effort by Rosanna Wright

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Resistance mutation supply modulates the benefit of CRISPR immunity against virulent phages
Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...
www.biorxiv.org
acritschristoph.bsky.social
The full language is even worse, asking to ban gene drives and microbes as well. Would exclude work like this on modified mosquitoes: www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1...

I love the IUCN, but also, they have no political authority, this is just a suggestion. Not a good one though!
acritschristoph.bsky.social
I don't think there's any great answer here but running all of the HMMs with HMMsearch and then doing the stats separately

maybe github.com/WrightonLabC..., although I haven't used it recently myself ...
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
climatecabinet.org
Since Trump took office the U.S. has been backsliding on climate. New data shows we’re now falling far behind on cutting pollution to protect people’s health and our future.

But this isn’t inevitable. State and local leaders have real power to step up, act boldly, and keep climate progress alive.
Chart: Trump is slowing climate progress. Here’s how much.
After Trump’s budget law and regulatory rollbacks, the country’s carbon emissions are set to fall much slower than they would have under the Biden admin.
www.canarymedia.com
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
enirenberg.bsky.social
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was just announced:
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...

This seems like a good opportunity for me to explain a bit about peripheral immune tolerance and where the prizewinners' work comes in 🧵
6 October 2025

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to:

Mary E. Brunkow
Institute for Systems Biology,
Seattle, USA

Fred Ramsdell
Sonoma Biotherapeutics,
San Francisco, USA

Shimon Sakaguchi
Osaka University,
Osaka, Japan

“for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”
Reposted by Alex Crits-Christoph
daumlab.bsky.social
Out in Science Advances: Our #cryoEM structure of HFTV1, a virus infecting the halophile #archaea. *First full atomic structure (containing all structural proteins) of any tailed virus!* Congrats and thanks to all co-authors and our fantastic collaborators! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Cryo-EM resolves the structure of the archaeal dsDNA virus HFTV1 from head to tail
This structure of an archaeal tailed virus (arTV) provides detailed insights into arTV assembly and infection mechanisms.
www.science.org