Tami Lieberman
@contaminatedsci.bsky.social
4.8K followers 810 following 510 posts
Associate Professor, MIT Still thinking about the 10^9 mutations generated in your microbiome today. Website: http://lieberman.science
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contaminatedsci.bsky.social
Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
ent3c.bsky.social
Blog post: Ancestry and Education
Indirect, direct, confounded and quasi-causal.

I write about a preprint by Wang et al, in which they look for associations with genetic ancestry in an admixed Mexican population. They found genetic effects for height and Type-II diabetes, but not for education.
Ancestry and Education
Indirect, direct, confounded and quasi-causal
ericturkheimer.substack.com
contaminatedsci.bsky.social
Long time admirer if your work.

Thanks so much for putting these notes into the world. I think a separate article with these same points (maybe even not expanded much) would be highly impactful-- especially coming from someone like you.
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
imartincorena.bsky.social
...or (2) the observation of driver mutations in normal tissues "proves" that non-mutational factors are needed to explain cancer (epigenetics, promotion, etc). Of course, many other factors are important, but ... [2/4]
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
imartincorena.bsky.social
A short thread. For years, I have been surprised by how much confusion our discovery of clones carrying cancer-driver mutations in normal tissues has caused in the cancer community. Typical questions like: (1) if you see these mutations in normal cells, are they really cancer drivers?... [1/4]
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
imartincorena.bsky.social
In our latest paper, I wrote 2 supplementary notes (5 and 6) to briefly recap classical models, starting with Armitage&Doll and moving onto models with different types of clonal expansions. Some readers may find them of interest. [4/4] static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10...
static-content.springer.com
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
imartincorena.bsky.social
...the observation of large numbers of clones with driver mutations in normal tissues is perfectly consistent with (and indeed predicted by) multistage models of carcinogenesis dating from the 1950s. In the constant rush for new data, we seem to have forgotten invaluable lessons hidden in them [3/4]
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
asaflevylab.bsky.social
Very well deserved prize for Prof. Vorholt, one of my favorite productive and humble scientists! and what a great meating it was!
frunzkelab.bsky.social
Just returning from a fantastic symposium celebrating my former postdoc mentor, Julia Vorholt, on receiving the Novonesis Biotechnology Prize! Huge congratulations to Julia — and to the Novo Nordisk Foundation on an outstanding choice!
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
contaminatedsci.bsky.social
We did not explicitly do that, but our assumption of varying local selective pressures is quite similar to some types of frequency dependent selection.
contaminatedsci.bsky.social
Indeed it may be the same claim. We were cautious to restrict ourselves to species for which we have the most evidence, but perhaps this is generalizable.
contaminatedsci.bsky.social
Yes, thats our hypothesis. Its comes from observations of frequent in-person adaptive evolution involving stop codons in key genes (potentially phage receptors).
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
raflynn5.bsky.social
We found that csDNA is not restricted to cultured cells, but in health donors, B cells and monocytes had clear csDNA accumulation while T cells and NK cells did not.
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
raflynn5.bsky.social
We’re excited to report work led by postdoc Jennifer Porat in the lab, finding that DNA accumulates on the surface of living cells and that the secreted extracellular protein DNASE1L3 can modulate its levels on B and T cells. With a new twist for ATAC-seq as well www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
DNASE1L3 surveils mitochondrial DNA on the surface of distinct mammalian cells
The extracellular space is a critical environment for discriminating self versus non-self nucleic acids and initiating the appropriate immune responses through signaling cascades to relay information ...
www.biorxiv.org
contaminatedsci.bsky.social
The response from the senator was quite bad-- talking only about policy and paperwork, when there was the opportunity to refute her claims about caring for the state and talk about freedoms.
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
erikbakkeren.bsky.social
Note it in your calendars! Aug 3-5, 2026. Excited to bring back MEEHubs to a hub near you (Switzerland, USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Ukraine, or virtual only)‼️
meehubs.bsky.social
We’re back! ✨ The next #MeeHubs26 is coming with 7 hubs across the globe and incredible lineups at each. Can’t wait to share more soon! meehubs.org
Home
meehubs.org
Reposted by Tami Lieberman
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 Tami Lieberman
surtlab.bsky.social
Here’s published version of our manuscript using GWAS to investigate tailocin sensitivity in Pseudomonas syringae. TL:DR pretty clear LPS is tailocin receptor but also that P.syringae often completely swaps out its entire O antigen biosynth pathway w/ recombination

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...
Genomic correlates of tailocin sensitivity in Pseudomonas syringae
Abstract. Phage-derived bacteriocins, also referred to as tailocins, are structures encoded by bacterial genomes and deployed into the extracellular enviro
academic.oup.com