Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Shabaana Khader @khadershabaana.bsky.social · 3d

Dear #microbiology and #immunology community- I took a break from social media after I deleted my Twitter account, but am back here. Please help me rebuild my community by following me and amplifying this message- I will follow you back. Thank you and I look forward to our many interactions!

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

David Tobin @tobinlab.bsky.social · 2d

Important piece from Sarah Stanley at Berkeley on new NIH definitions that can be construed to arbitrarily halt research that is both safe and important to public health and future cures www.statnews.com/2025/10/06/g... via @statnews.com

The NIH ordered me to stop my ‘dangerous’ gain-of-function research. It isn’t dangerous at all

Safe gain-of-function research is necessary to identify new treatments for diseases like for tuberculosis — but the NIH has imposed unfounded stops.

www.statnews.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · 15d

🧪 Excited to share our new work on reactive metallo-scaffolds (r-mS)! We combine metal complexes with chemoproteomics to discover new liganding sites across the proteome! Shout out to a great collaboration with GSK! Fantastic team effort 🫶🏻 chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

Proteome-Wide Target Identification Using Reactive Metallo-Scaffolds (r-mS): A Platform for Metallodrug Discovery

Metal complexes offer unique opportunities as scaffolds in chemical biology and drug discovery, with tuneable geometry, modular coordination environments, and structural features not readily accessibl...

chemrxiv.org

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Eachan Johnson @eachanjohnson.bsky.social · 2d

📆 Deadline: 14 November.
🩺 Doctoral Clinical Fellows programme (3-year PhD)
🤝 Exciting collaboration with the amazing @jeanninehess.bsky.social
Curating bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria using accumulation signatures across species
✍️ Apply here: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Johnson lab and Hess lab | Curating bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria using accumulation signatures across species

www.crick.ac.uk

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Eachan Johnson @eachanjohnson.bsky.social · 2d

📆 Deadline: 5 November.
Charting an atlas of bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria
How can we computationally design experiments to more quickly discover new chemical probes and antibiotics?
✍️ Apply here: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Johnson Lab | Charting an atlas of bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria

www.crick.ac.uk

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Eachan Johnson @eachanjohnson.bsky.social · 2d

📢 PhD Opportunity @crick.ac.uk

Want to help fight against antimicrobial resistance? Join us in London! Open to international applicants.

We have non-clinical & clinical PhD positions to accelerate antibiotic discovery across bacterial species.

November deadlines. More details ⬇️🧵

PhD students

Our PhD programme attracts the brightest scientific minds and is an opportunity for talented people to embark on their career in biomedical research.

www.crick.ac.uk

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

David Balchin @davidbalchin.bsky.social · 19d

Our article on human multidomain protein biogenesis is now published in @natsmb.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The human ribosome modulates multidomain protein biogenesis by delaying cotranslational domain docking - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

By studying dynamic folding intermediates on the human ribosome, Pellowe et al. show that newly made domains help each other to fold but do not stably interact until synthesis is complete, avoiding in...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Rashmi Priya @rashmi-priya.bsky.social · 19d

Development does not happen in isolation! Material properties, geometry, stiffness, fluid flows...can all steer how development unfolds. If you’re exploring these kinds of questions, we’d love to see your work @dev-journal.bsky.social
More info below ⬇️

Development @dev-journal.bsky.social · Sep 1

📢Call for papers. Submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue – The Extracellular Environment in Development, Regeneration and Stem Cells

Guest Editors: Alex Hughes and Rashmi Priya

📅 Deadline: 1 March 2026

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ex...

#DevBio

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Cell - a Cell Press journal @cp-cell.bsky.social · 23d

Now online! Mining the CD4 antigen repertoire for next-generation tuberculosis vaccines

Mining the CD4 antigen repertoire for next-generation tuberculosis vaccines

Systematic antigen selection is an enduring challenge in tuberculosis (TB) vaccine development. An antigen screen ranks protective CD4 T cell antigens and yields a novel trivalent mRNA vaccine that protects against TB challenges in mice.

dlvr.it

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Ashley Ringer McDonald @aringermcdonald.bsky.social · 21d

Be my colleague! Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is hiring two tenure-track positions for Fall 2026, chemical education and coatings technology.

Chen Ed: jobs.calpoly.edu/en-us/job/55...

Coatings: jobs.calpoly.edu/en-us/job/55...

Cal Poly - Details - Tenure Track Position - Chemistry

jobs.calpoly.edu

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

John Lees @bacpop.org · 21d

The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026):
www.embl.org/about/info/e...

We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them

EMBL International PhD Programme – Unique in the world and waiting for you!

www.embl.org

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Polly Fordyce @pollyfordyce.bsky.social · 21d

Please apply to our tenure-track faculty position at
@stanford-chemh.bsky.social! We are searching for a new colleague working at the interface between computation and molecular sciences. See post below and pls forward widely!
chemh.stanford.edu/opportunitie...

Faculty Recruitment

chemh.stanford.edu

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Eachan Johnson @eachanjohnson.bsky.social · 20d

Welcome back! It will be good to have you on this side of the pond.

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Cara Boutte @caraboutte.bsky.social · 22d

My institution is looking to hire a new microbiologist: apply.interfolio.com/173702. Please share, and let me know if you have any questions about the position or UTA.

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Matthew Saunders @mjsaunder.bsky.social · 29d

So...what would happen to the global TB epidemic if we hypothetically "eliminated" undernutrition? In this preprint, we combined estimates from our new review (doi.org/10.1093/ije/...) with population-specific BMI distributions to find out...(doi.org/10.1101/2025...)

Global, regional, and national estimates of tuberculosis incidence averted by eliminating undernutrition in adults: a modelling study

Background Current efforts to reduce global tuberculosis incidence have proved insufficient, highlighting that urgent action is needed to address underlying modifiable risk factors such as undernutrit...

doi.org

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

pen(Taka) @iwatobipen.bsky.social · Aug 25

How to make training data from tacit knowledge in medicinal chemistry is one of the big challenges.

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Emmanuele Severi @emmseveri.bsky.social · Aug 22

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

#microsky

Discovery of a widespread chemical signalling pathway in the Bacteroidota - Nature

The N-acyl-cyclolysine system regulates the expression of co-localized operons encoding diverse secreted molecules in Bacteroidota.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Henrik Strahl @henrikstrahl.bsky.social · Aug 22

A new methods paper from us, this time with a focus on reliable monitoring membrane potential and cell lysis at different growth stages and cell densities. Also, note the surprisingly high level of background lysis in seemingly healthy B. subtilis cultures.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Monitoring single cell bioenergetic status and cell lysis in dense and differentiating Bacillus subtilis cultures

Bacillus subtilis is a major model organism for studying population heterogeneity in clonal bacterial cultures due to its high genetic tractability and ability to differentiate into subpopulations wit...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Sateriale Lab @saterialelab.bsky.social · Aug 20

Now available in a polished format! An important step toward accelerated functional genomics for the Cryptosporidium parasite. Brought to you by the incomparable @lucy-watson.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Targeted CRISPR screens reveal genes essential for Cryptosporidium survival in the host intestine - Nature Communications

Cryptosporidium is an important threat to public health, yet it lacks a robust genetic toolkit. Here, Watson et al. introduce a targeted CRISPR-based screening method to identify parasite genes that a...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Jen Herman @jukebarosh.bsky.social · Aug 16

My Friday night hot take is that replication studies are largely a waste of time & $

If a result is worth following up on, it's better to address from a different angle & see if it holds water. Strong ideas withstand this

Conversely, there R infinite ways a replication can fail that teach you zip

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Stephan Hacker @stephanhacker2.bsky.social · Aug 10

Are you excited about using cyclic #peptides in #DrugDiscovery?

Here is a great opportunity to perform a #postdoc with a great mentor in the group of @ljwalport.bsky.social at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social!

www.linkedin.com/posts/louise...

#ChemBio #Chemistry #ChemSky

🚨 Looking for a new research opportunity?🚨 | Louise Walport

🚨 Looking for a new research opportunity?🚨 We are looking to recruit two talented postdocs to join our group based at the Molecular Science Research Hub at Imperial College London: - Both to join ou...

www.linkedin.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Sean Gibbons 🦠💩 @gibbological.bsky.social · Jul 24

Interesting work on characterizing steroid-modifying enzymes in commensal gut bacteria:

"Identification of gut bacteria reductases that biotransform steroid hormones" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Identification of gut bacteria reductases that biotransform steroid hormones - Nature Communications

Here, the authors identify and characterize three gut bacterial enzyme families that metabolize endogenous and synthetic steroid hormones, showing to act on diverse substrates, to exhibit gene fusions...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

Mireille Kamariza @kamariza.bsky.social · Jun 25

Working link here! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Eachan Johnson

bishara marzook @ghostpathogen.bsky.social · Jul 24

Our paper has finally graduated from pre-print to peer-reviewed, pretty much unscathed, and is out now! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

The essential host genome for Cryptosporidium survival exposes metabolic dependencies that can be leveraged for treatment

An arrayed microscopy-based CRISPR screen revealed host genes affecting multiple infection phenotypes of the intracellular parasite Cryptosporidium. Hits in the host cholesterol biosynthesis pathway a...

www.cell.com

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Eachan Johnson @eachanjohnson.bsky.social · Jul 24

Cool to see this elegant approach finally pre-printed!

Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · Jul 24

📣Preprint 📣
You want to degrade a protein in Gram-negatives? We have tackled this challenge! Detailed study of our Light-Activated Metal-Dependent Protein Degradation LAMP-D system in targeting and rescuing NDM-1 activity. What an amazing team effort 🫶🏻 doi.org/10.26434/che...

Light-Activated Metal-dependent Protein Degradation (LAMP-D): A Heterobifunctional Ruthenium(II) Photosensitizer Targeting New Delhi Metallo-β-lactamase 1

The growth of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant global health threat, yet despite this alarming trend, antibiotic drug discovery has significantly slowed. Most compounds entering the cli...

doi.org

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