Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Aug 12

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge

This week I was looking for info on what cognitive scientists mean when they speak of ‘domain-general’ cognition. I was curious, because the nuances are relevant for something I am researching at t…

irisvanrooijcogsci.com

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Aug 14

How sad. Losing public trust in mRNA vaccines should spark massive education efforts to rebuild understanding - not abandonment of genuinely good technology.

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · Aug 12

Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH Director, thinks that if science isn’t popular it should be abandoned.

“No matter how elegant the science, a platform that lacks credibility among the people it seeks to protect cannot fulfill its public health mission”.

He is unfit for his job in every imaginable way.

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Aug 13

Of course! I should have said recent and in areas with high antibiotic likelihood (ie hospital or student wastewater in some cases)

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Aug 12

If you ever find yourself needing evidence for ‘Plasmids are just as common in microbes without resistance genes,’ we’ve got you covered! Check our new paper, out today:

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Plasmid prevalence is independent of antibiotic resistance in environmental Enterobacteriaceae

The rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens poses a critical threat to the treatment of infectious diseases. While the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) via plasmid conjugation has bee...

www.microbiologyresearch.org

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Aug 8

Why does ppt always refuse to let me draw a straight line at the times I need it most 😞

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Jul 23

First official Master from the lab 🥰 congrats Yuchang!!!!

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Jerónimo Rodríguez-Beltrán @jerorb.bsky.social · Jul 2

🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!!

Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species,
stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Universal rules govern plasmid copy number - Nature Communications

Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

www.nature.com

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Jul 4

Very excited for my first microbial population biology GRC!!

Mike Blazanin @mikeblazanin.bsky.social · Jul 3

Looking forward to seeing everyone, new and old, at the Microbial Population Biology GRS + GRC in just a couple days!

go.bsky.app/GGxRjzC

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Santiago Elena @sfelena.bsky.social · Feb 20

Experimental evolution of evolvability | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Experimental evolution of evolvability

Evolvability—the capacity to generate adaptive variation—is a trait that can itself evolve through natural selection. However, the idea that mutation can become biased toward adaptive outcomes remains...

www.science.org

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Feb 20

New review out in @NatureRevMicro on the complex rltnshp btween metabolism & AMR! A true labor of love from previous postbac Mehrose, grad students Varun & Zirui, and collaborator @drrobsmith.bsky.social (plus figures I'll likely use for many talks to come 😊) rdcu.be/eaES2

The role of bacterial metabolism in antimicrobial resistance

Nature Reviews Microbiology - In this Review, Ahmad et al. examine how antibiotics influence bacterial metabolism and how metabolism, in turn, affects drug efficacy and the emergence and evolution...

rdcu.be

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Jan 30

It’s official. Twitter is (mostly) a cesspool of bots.

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Jan 30

Great idea 🙏🏻

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Jan 4

Favorite 3D printer cad software for the lab?

Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Alicia Calvo-Villamañán @aliciapcv.bsky.social · Jan 2

Very happy to see this work published! We unveil a plasmid-chromosome crosstalk by showing that pOXA-48 encodes for a regulator that mediates the transcription of an enterobacterial chromosomal operon, resulting in a growth benefit for the plasmid-carrying bacteria!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A plasmid-chromosome crosstalk in multidrug resistant enterobacteria - Nature Communications

The authors describe a new crosstalk between a globally disseminated carbapenem resistance plasmid and clinical enterobacteria clones. This crosstalk provides a fitness advantage to the plasmid-carryi...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Jay Hinton @jayhinton.bsky.social · Nov 13

Incredible graphic - the myriad of ways that bacteria defend themselves against antibiotics.

14 resistance mechanisms, summarised by Idan Yelin & Roy Kishony in Cell

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Nov 21

Can someone please standardize graduate school recommendation letter submission portals so I don’t need to make 5 different accounts and give slightly different answers to very similar questions

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Nov 21

Please add me 😊🙏🏻

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Nov 18

We should’ve moved here years ago

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Joe Peters Lab @joepeterslab.bsky.social · Nov 16

Please consider attending the 2025 ASM Microbe meeting! I will be talking about Tn7 and Tn7-like elements as a "Track Hub" talk and it would be great to see you there! asm.org/events/asm-m...

ASM Microbe | Abstracts

ASM Microbe 2025 showcases the best microbial sciences in the world and provides a one-of-a-kind forum to explore everything from basic microbiology to translation and application.

asm.org

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · Nov 10

Mobile Elements Starter Pack on BlueSky!

Interested in plasmids, phages, ICEs, transposons, integrons, and all things accessory genome? Follow this curated list of researchers and labs doing exciting work in mobile elements.

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · Nov 16

Thank you for the continued support of my lab through purchasing my rainbow plasmids! Just paid for primers to isolate a putative blue gene from our #BlueSoup microbe. Excited to get some cloning done with @bielleogy.bsky.social If anyone wants 🌈🦠, fresh stabs at atinygreencell.com

elmo from sesame street is surrounded by flames

ALT: elmo from sesame street is surrounded by flames

media.tenor.com

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Nov 15

And here I was about to ask again since I forgot I already asked once 😂😅😭 still getting the hang of this app 😁 thank you!!!

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Nov 15

Thank you!! I hope you enjoy 😊

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Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Nov 15

On our website here!! lopatkinlab.com/assets/PDFs/...

lopatkinlab.com

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Reposted by Allison Lopatkin, PhD

Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · Nov 14

Directed evolution of engineered virus-like particles with improved production and transduction efficiencies https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02467-x 🧬🖥️🧪

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