Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Scott Barolo @sbarolo.bsky.social · 1h

Plant-based nicotine? What’ll they think of next

Poster ad for an e-cigarette claiming “100% Plant-Based Nicotine”

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 1h

Deep dive by WRAL into the chaos of UNC's football program and our $30 million coach 1/n
www.wral.com/sports/belic...

Divided locker room, disastrous results: Players, parents blame Belichick culture for UNC problems

Multiple sources with knowledge of the inner workings of Bill Belichick's program say that UNC football's losses are a product of a divided locker room, a disorganized coaching staff and a failure to ...

www.wral.com

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Scott Imberman @imbernomics.bsky.social · 2h

Constant mockery is how we win this.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4h

#WarRavagedPortland

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Sergey Kryazhimskiy @skryazhi.bsky.social · 10h

Dear colleagues!

@davidmccandlish.bsky.social and I are serving as guest editors for the new special issue of GENETICS on fitness landscapes:

doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Submissions are due on March 18, 2026. Please spread the word! And reach out if you have questions.

The Fitness Landscape: A Call for Papers

Ruth Isaacson; The Fitness Landscape: A Call for Papers, Genetics, , iyaf206, https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyaf206

doi.org

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John Dennehy @drjdennehy.bsky.social · 23h

www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

New entry into the Disability in Ecology and Evolution series in TREE featuring me :)

Disability in ecology and evolution

In this TrendsTalk series 'Disability in ecology and evolution' in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, we will be hearing from people about their experiences being disabled in ecology and evolution. We a...

www.cell.com

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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 19h

When are you there?

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Department of Microbiology, The University of Chicago @uocmicrobiology.bsky.social · 1d

UChicago Microbiology is searching for tenured or tenure-track faculty working in host-pathogens interactions, viral and bacterial pathogenesis, and emerging infectious diseases. Come join our vibrant Department! microbiology.uchicago.edu
Apply here apply.interfolio.com/174404

Department of Microbiology | The University of Chicago

microbiology.uchicago.edu

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JL Weissman @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social · 21h

Stony Brook is hiring an Assistant or Associate Professor in Marine Molecular Ecology (assistant encouraged, molecular broadly defined, includes microbial omics!): apply.interfolio.com/174869

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

apply.interfolio.com

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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 23h

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

blog.genesmindsmachines.com

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David Enard @denard.bsky.social · 1d

I am convinced that we have massively underestimated the impact of substitution reversions on the amount of molecular positive selection that we are able to see. Large populations will readily have reversing mutations readily available, and gene flow will also reintroduce ancestral alleles.

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Alan McNally @alanmcn1.bsky.social · 1d

After being with the journal since its very inception, the time has come for me to step back from Microbial Genomics. This is a wonderful opportunity to have a leadership role in one of the leading journals for microbial genomics research

microbiologysociety.org/news/society...

<i>Microbial Genomics </i> Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Call for Expressions of interest

microbiologysociety.org

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Arif Ashraf @aribidopsis.bsky.social · 7d

🍀🔬

MSL10 is a high-sensitivity mechanosensor in the tactile sense of the Venus flytrap @natcomms.nature.com from Toyota lab.

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

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Natalie Wright, Ph.D. @coereba.bsky.social · 23h

I have never been jealous of a Nobel prize winner before….

Jason Shepherd @jasonsynaptic.bsky.social · 1d

#goals

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Jarrett Byrnes @jebyrnes.bsky.social · 1d

Heeeeey #Microbial #Ecology folk! My department has a job opening for a tenure track Microbial Ecologist! Feel free to DM me with questions. Come join our awesome supportive whip-smart & kind crew in the Biology Department of @umassboston.bsky.social! employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us...

The ISC - your new home at UMass Boston?

The view of Boston Harbor from front of campus

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Paul Carini @uncultured.carinilab.com · 1d

Good opportunity!

Nagissa Mahmoudi @nagissa.bsky.social · 1d

Interested in life’s co-evolution with planetary environments?
🌎🦠🧪

I'm looking for a postdoc to join my group at #McGill and happy to sponsor applicants for the TSI fellowship.

Please reach out if interested!

academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30777

McGill University, Trottier Space Institute

Job #AJO30777, Trottier Space Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, Trottier Space Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, CA

academicjobsonline.org

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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 1d

It's grad school application season! My lab (cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/ ) will be recruiting a PhD student via the MPS program at MSU (mps.natsci.msu.edu) for Fall 2026.

Happy to take inquires via email (which can be found in the lab website) if you are applying this cycle.

Our current carbon economy relies on fossil fuels, from which we isolate small organic molecules to produce medicines, plastics, cosmetic, or other chemicals that we use everyday. However, sustainability requires a more biomass-based carbon economy, where we engineer plants to produce precursor molecules, which can then be assembled to desired chemicals that we use daily. Plants have evolved an amazing diversity of metabolites, but these metabolites are not produced in every cell of the plant. Therefore, it is essential to understand how plants can express different metabolic pathways across different organs, tissues, and even cell types. We are interested in the following questions: How are metabolic pathways (especially specialized metabolism) controlled by cell fate? How can we reprogram plant cell fates for biomanufacturing? How can we toggle between differentiated cell states for metabolic engineering and totipotent cell state for genetic engineering?

cxli233.github.io

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Vivek Mutalik @vivekmutalik.bsky.social · 1d

#microsky

ᐯIᑕTOᖇ ᑎIᘔET, ᗰᗪ @nizet.bsky.social · 1d

C̳H̳E̳C̳K̳ ̳I̳T̳ ̳O̳U̳T̳

Spectacular atomic force microscopy time course studies from Carolina Borrelli et al. in Nature Microbiology show how polymyxin drugs (like colistin) cause blebbing and shedding of the Gram-negative bacterial outer membrane

It looks almost like the bacilli 🦠 caught smallpox then died

Polymyxin B lethality requires energy-dependent outer membrane disruption - Nature Microbiology

The antibiotic polymyxin B requires bacterial metabolic activity to cause sufficient damage to the outer membrane to access the inner membrane, which it permeabilizes via an energy-independent mechanism to kill the cell.

www.nature.com

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Patricia Bernal @pbernalt6ss.bsky.social · 1d

Our paper, describing how the T6SSs of P. putida shape the tomato rhizosphere, is now in its final format in @isme-microbes.bsky.social ISME Communications. If you'd like to learn more, here is a thread (1/11) or read the Article doi.org/10.1093/isme....

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Steve Mullis @stevemullis.net · 1d

"hand-to-hand combat with antifa every night"

a guy in a frog costume standing facing a line of police and ICE agents in Portland

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Greg Copenhaver @copenhaverlab.bsky.social · 1d

The @uncchapelhill.bsky.social Department of Biology is searching for tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Molecular Biology. Chapel Hill is a wonderful place and Biology is an amazing group of people. To apply, see:
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 1d

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

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Michael Brockhurst @brockhurstlab.bsky.social · 2d

New preprint!

Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠

Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare!

An epic effort by Rosanna Wright

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Resistance mutation supply modulates the benefit of CRISPR immunity against virulent phages

Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...

www.biorxiv.org

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Bruno J. Navarro @brunojnavarro.bsky.social · 2d

In the 5 to 10 percent of symptomatic cases where the fungus invades the vital organs, the death rate is as high as 25 percent. The pathogen is so powerful the U.S. army weighed whether to develop it into a bioterrorism weapon in the 1960s.

In Arizona, a fight against a deadly fungus is under threat from Trump’s health policies

What one Arizona doctor’s quest to stop valley fever says about America’s preparedness for climate-driven disease.

grist.org

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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 2d

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for discovering a class of immune cells that help to prevent the body from attacking its own tissues. #medsky 🧪

Medicine Nobel goes to scientists who revealed secrets of immune system ‘regulation’

Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi discovered cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases.

go.nature.com

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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 2d

That surplus doesn’t count bc knowledge and education are for losers