A. Murat Eren (Meren)
@merenbey.bsky.social
2.4K followers 230 following 110 posts
Professor of Ecosystem Data Science at @hifmb.bsky.social studying the ecology and evolution of microbes through high-resolution 'omics and #anvio
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Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
radecker.bsky.social
🪸🧪 We’re hiring! Join our ERC-funded group at the @hifmb.de in Oldenburg, Germany to explore the cellular origins of photosymbiosis:⁣

𝟏 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐝𝐨𝐜 + 𝟐 𝐏𝐡𝐃𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.⁣
Deadlines: Oct 29 & Nov 5. Links below. ⁣

Questions: [email protected]
#Photosymbiosis #HIFMB #ERC #AcademicJobs
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
microbiomevif.bsky.social
💫 #MVIF Season 5 💫

Feel free to join the keynotes by presenting your work–abstract submission is open:
www.microbiome-vif.org/en-US/how-to...

#MVIF is proudly supported by #illumina @corundumsb.bsky.social
and our non-commercial co-organizing partners Seerave Foundation @cunysph.bsky.social
MVIF Season 5 program
merenbey.bsky.social
Thanks Igor! They are currently in anvio-dev, but we are working on a v9 release very soon.
merenbey.bsky.social
Great work, Martial! I love the extensive data and code reporting :)
merenbey.bsky.social
Have you ever looked at some differentially occurring gene clusters in a microbial #pangenome and thought to yourself "I wonder if they contribute to any metabolic modules"?

With the most recent changes, the answer is a few clicks away in #anvio 😇
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
bioinf.bsky.social
How do you long-read sequence metagenomes? I would argue it starts with the right sample storage & DNA extraction, to enable efficient @nanoporetech.com /@pacbio.bsky.social sequencing, which we investigated in our new paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Massive thanks to Klara for driving this
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
hifmb.de
HIFMB @hifmb.de · 29d
Congratulations to HIFMB colleague Kim de Luca, who was selected by MIT Technology Review as one of the 35 Innovators Under 35.
www.technologyreview.com/innovator/ki...
Kim de Luca
She tracks DNA damage to improve cancer treatments and save corals.
www.technologyreview.com
merenbey.bsky.social
Thank you for your time, Oded :)
merenbey.bsky.social
A blog post that covers my visit to Barhal, the village where my family comes from:

merenlab.org/2025/09/01/b...

No science this time, just life and personal reflections.
The Weight of a Honey Pot: Memory, Belonging, and the Passage of Time
Meren's pilgrimage to Barhal
merenlab.org
merenbey.bsky.social
PSA: This is what the real male loneliness syndrome looks like.
merenbey.bsky.social
Indeed.

Any of us can come up with multiple ways to fix it in theory. But I also would argue that anyone who thinks deeply about the fundamental aspects of science as a societal endeavor would eventually conclude that there is no fixing it in practice.

I find it all very depressing.
merenbey.bsky.social
Obviously. Scientists were yelling from the top of their lungs about this. That's why the argument "it is difficult to draw the line" as weak as the paper itself. An easier justification would've been simply admitting that journals benefit from publishing things, not from retracting them.
merenbey.bsky.social
Identifying BS is easy when scientists are not distracted by wishful thinking and glamour.

Incentives that are there for flashy stories makes "popularize now, apologize later" a viable strategy for exciting but weak science, since screwing up like this carries no consequences for top journals.
merenbey.bsky.social
I was a PhD student when this paper came out. I printed it out with excitement and brought it to the lab next morning.

My advisor Michael Ferris skimmed through the supplementary material and said "this is cryptic growth with As resistance".

I was shocked and learned something essential that day.
jeremymberg.bsky.social
Why I didn't retract this paper when I was Editor-in-Chief at Science (THREAD 🧵)
science.org
Science is retracting the December 2010 Research Article, “A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus.” (THREAD 🧵) scim.ag/4lGQ9g7
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
epcrocha.bsky.social
Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
graphical abstract of the article the extended mobility of plasmids
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
science.org
The mantra “location, location, location” isn’t just about real estate. For life scientists, more than 50% of their productivity can be attributed to the institution where they work, according to a new study. scim.ag/4kKs1YO
Large study of scientists who move their labs reveals how location drives productivity
Concentrating funding at high-powered universities can maximize output, paper argues, but may sacrifice broader benefits
scim.ag
merenbey.bsky.social
WE SHOULD WRITE PAPERS TOGETHER!
merenbey.bsky.social
POV: When you're a middle author of a study, and everything is a matter of life and death 💀

I AM BECOME REVIEWER #2, DESTROYER OF RELATIONSHIPS BEFORE THE STUDY WENT OUT TO REVIEW.
merenbey.bsky.social
New blog post I wrote on 'how we do not choose our families but we can choose people who push us', and ONLY for my scientist colleagues who are looking for things to procrastinate with style (by requiring them to be longer than a post on BlueSky) :p

merenlab.org/2025/07/16/s...
We do not choose our families but we can choose people who push us
A thought in structures that helps us become who we want to become
merenlab.org
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
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 A. Murat Eren (Meren)
marumunibremen.bsky.social
Join our team!
MARUM and partner institutes within the #ExcellenceCluster Ocean Floor are offering ➡️ 15 doctoral researcher positions. Please find out more about it here: www.marum.de/en/career/op...

@icbm-uol.bsky.social @hifmb.de @awi.de
Reposted by A. Murat Eren (Meren)
daanspeth.bsky.social
A short preprint describing the GlobDB is now on arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2506.11896

If you find the resource useful, please also check globdb.org for info on how to cite the underlying resources and tools.
daanspeth.bsky.social
I'm happy to announce the latest release of the GlobDB, available at globdb.org.

The GlobDB is a database of "species dereplicated" microbial genomes, and as of release 226 contains twice the number of species-representative genomes (306,260) than the latest GTDB release.
home | GlobDB
globdb.org