Louis-Marie Bobay
lbobay.bsky.social
Louis-Marie Bobay
@lbobay.bsky.social
Associate Professor. NC State. Microbial Genomics, Evolution, Bioinformatics.
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Some fantastic sessions being planned for ASM Microbe 2026, including "Long-term Dynamics of Environmental Microbiomes", and "Eco-evolutionary Dynamics of Phages and Their Roles in Horizontal Gene Transfer". Get your abstract(s) ready, and join us June 4–7, 2026 in D.C. ! asm.org/events/asm-m...
November 24, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Due to the shutdown, NIH cancelled >370 study sections, impacting >24,000 applications

Rescheduled meetings will only discuss 30-35% of applications, have simplified summary statements (no narrative paragraph), and a new category - "competitive but not discussed"

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
NOT-OD-26-012: Updated Guidance on Reopening of NIH Extramural Activities Following the October 1, 2025 - Lapse in Appropriations
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Updated Guidance on Reopening of NIH Extramural Activities Following the October 1, 2025 - Lapse in Appropriations NOT-...
grants.nih.gov
November 24, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
The ecological roles of bacterial #immune systems are poorly understood. Rafael Custodio @ellinoralseth.bsky.social @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @brownlab.bsky.social & Edze Westra explore how mobile genetic elements and bacterial defenses shape #microbiome structure and function 🧪
Bacterial immune systems as causes and consequences of microbiome structure
Bacterial immune systems have evolved in response to diverse molecular "parasites", yet their ecological roles remain poorly understood. This Essay explores how interactions between mobile genetic…
plos.io
November 24, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Review: Inference and applications of ancestral recombination graphs https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-024-00772-4 (read free: https://rdcu.be/dVyQH) 🧬🖥️
September 30, 2024 at 11:18 AM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
I'm recruiting PhD students for the Barker Lab @uofa-eeb.bsky.social We study plant evolutionary genomics - polyploidy, hybridization & machine learning for genome evolution. Work with Selaginella, Xanthisma, Brassica & more. Funding available via CAMBIUM Fellowships. Reach out if interested! 🧬🌵🤖
October 24, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics
From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...
www.science.org
November 20, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Our paper describing the GlobDB is now published in @bioinfoadv.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/bioa...

The GlobDB is the largest species dereplicated genome database currently available, containing 306,260 species representatives.
More information on globdb.org 1/5
🖥️🧬🦠
GlobDB: a comprehensive species-dereplicated microbial genome resource
AbstractMotivation. Over the past years, substantial numbers of microbial species’ genomes have been deposited outside of conventional INSDC databases.Resu
doi.org
November 21, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Very happy to see this piece out in @plosbiology.org, on the bacterial immune systems and microbial communities. It was a great team effort with Rafael Custodio, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social , @brownlab.bsky.social, and Edze Westra! 🦠🧫 #phagesky #mevosky

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Bacterial immune systems as causes and consequences of microbiome structure
Bacterial immune systems have evolved in response to diverse molecular "parasites", yet their ecological roles remain poorly understood. This Essay explores how interactions between mobile genetic ele...
journals.plos.org
November 19, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Our latest paper is out with @adiop.bsky.social and @gmdouglas.bsky.social. We analyzed the extent of homologous recombination between bacterial species (introgression) and how it affects species borders (it can vary a lot depending on the approach used to classify species!). rdcu.be/eQAMf
Introgression impacts the evolution of bacteria, but species borders are rarely fuzzy
Nature Communications - It is commonly thought that bacterial species borders tend to be fuzzy, due to frequent exchange of DNA. Here, Diop et al. quantify the patterns of gene flow between core...
rdcu.be
November 18, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Mechanistically, incoming ssDNA is a game changer: it promotes attC site folding, triggers integrase expression via SOS, and allows cassette excision without the need for replicative resolution. This suggests both intra- and inter-bacterial shuffling shape integron recombination dynamics. 4/5
November 17, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
We discovered a universal scaling law linking copy number and plasmid size, which can be used to predict the PCN of your favorite plasmid! 6/7
July 2, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Excited to share some new work led by grad student Sophie Walton (w/ @petrovadmitri.bsky.social). We used in vitro gut communities to study how natural selection acts on strains of the same species as they compete within larger communities. Check out Sophie's thread below for details!
Super excited that the bulk of my PhD work is now preprinted! Here we used whole-community competition, or coalescence, experiments to quantify selection acting on genetically diverged strains within larger communities. (1/n)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
November 12, 2025 at 3:43 AM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
The Department of Biology at @eastcarolinauniv.bsky.social seeks to fill a tenure-track faculty at the Assistant Professor level with expertise in evolutionary Biology! Come join us!

ecu.peopleadmin.com/postings/89839
Assistant Professor
The Department of Biology at East Carolina University (http://www.ecu.edu) seeks to fill a tenure-track faculty position (9-month appointment) at the Assistant Professor rank with expertise in evoluti...
ecu.peopleadmin.com
November 3, 2025 at 8:25 PM
After defunding science, he is now attacking the colleges and departments of Interior Design
sure, you might not be able to eat or go to the doctor, but check out how nice Trump's new marble shitter is
October 31, 2025 at 8:29 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
📣 PhD Scholarship Opportunity for International Students!
Are you looking to do a PhD in soil microbial and viral ecology?
✍️ Get in touch now!!
✅ Requirements: Masters degree, Distinguished CV, Highly motivated
⏳ Application deadline: November 24
www.univ-lyon1.fr/recherche/fo...
APPEL A PROJET
www.univ-lyon1.fr
October 21, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
The Johri Lab has an open postdoc position. Please send me an email, if interested. Start date is flexible. Please do share! Thank you in advance.
October 28, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
In the meantime, we've been collecting a list of these at tinyurl.com/mag-collecti.... Feel free to add more you find.

See also GlobDB from @daanspeth.bsky.social which incorporates some of these into a new MAG collection arxiv.org/abs/2506.11896
Public MAG datasets not available at NCBI or ENA
Some metagenome assembled genome (MAG) datasets are not available in the standard locations (NCBI / ENA / etc) for a variety of reasons. Here you can contribute new ones you come across. To be recorde...
tinyurl.com
October 24, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Come join us in Knoxville!

The Dept. of Microbiology 🧫🦠 at the University of Tennessee is hiring 2 Assistant Professors (tenure track, 9-month appt.).

Microbial Drivers of Chronic Disease: apply.interfolio.com/173153Quantitative Microbe-Plant-Environment Interactions: apply.interfolio.com/173345
October 24, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
For population genetics and evolutionary biology folks in the Bay Area: the next BAPG will be hosted by Stanford CEHG and the Petrov lab at Stanford on 12/6.
Registration is free but required. The deadline for talk submission is Nov. 16. Hope to see you soon! Pls RT!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
October 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Come join us in beautiful Britanny, France in May 2026 for a workshop that I am organizing with @lucievirevolte.bsky.social and @psudmant.bsky.social on Rapid host adaptations to infections:

sites.google.com/berkeley.edu...
October 23, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
Now published: EnVhogDB, a large database of viral protein family HMM profiles to help functional annotation of new phage genomes - peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
EnVhogDB: an extended view of the viral protein families on Earth through a vast collection of HMM profiles
peercommunityjournal.org
October 18, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Reposted by Louis-Marie Bobay
#microsky #mevosky The UNC Chapel Hill Biology Department is hiring 2 Teaching Assistant/Associate Professors with expertise from any area of biology. Individuals with expertise in microbiology are particularly encouraged to apply. Read more and apply at unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...
Two (2) Open Rank Teaching Faculty
The Department of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seeks applicants for two (2) Teaching Faculty positions to be effective July 1, 2026. These positions will be fixed-term 9-...
unc.peopleadmin.com
October 14, 2025 at 1:44 PM