Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Shelly Scribner @shellyscrib.bsky.social · Apr 2

Did you know that it only takes one spontaneous mutation in your bacterial culture to activate a phage, and trigger a subsequent cascade of bacterial/phage evolution? 🧪 Curious how you could detect similar events in your experiments? Check out Nanami’s work!

Nanami Kubota @nanamikubota.bsky.social · Apr 2

Preprint out! Bacteria w/ hyper-replicative filamentous phage lead to overnight emergence of cheater phages. Bacteria w/ both phages can outcompete wildtype, then rapidly lose phage via a phage Tragedy of the Commons
@shellyscrib.bsky.social @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness

Many bacteria carry phage genome(s) in their chromosome (i.e., prophage), and this intertwines the fitness of the bacterium and the phage. Most Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains carry filamentous phages ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Shelly Scribner

Daria Van Tyne @dariavantyne.bsky.social · Mar 21

Excited to share our latest, out today in @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social Bacteriocin production facilitates nosocomial emergence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium www.nature.com/articles/s41... @idpittstop.bsky.social

Bacteriocin production facilitates nosocomial emergence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium - Nature Microbiology

Genomic and functional analyses of healthcare-associated vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium reveal that bacteriocin T8 is enriched in emergent lineages and provides a competitive advantage in v...

www.nature.com

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Feb 14

CDC's "disease detectives" halved as part of DOGE cuts at health agencies www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-dis...

CDC's "disease detectives" halved as part of DOGE cuts at health agencies

More than 1 in 10 of the health agency's workers are being let go, including an entire new class of CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officers.

www.cbsnews.com

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Reposted by Shelly Scribner

Alex Sundermann, DrPH @sundermannaj.bsky.social · Feb 14

Many researchers are still waiting on Notice of Awards to start their work. Delays (or worse, withdrawals) don’t just pause projects—they ripple through the entire system, stalling discoveries and breakthroughs.

Cutting off research funding means cutting off progress.

#PublicHealth

Christina Jewett @by-cjewett.bsky.social · Feb 14

NEW: N.I.H. medical research grants are ⚠️ $1 billion dollars ⚠️ behind this point hit last year -- and hundreds of millions behind prior years amid Trump administration chaos. w/ @teddyrosenbluth.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/h...

NIH Research Grants Lag Behind Last Year by $1 Billion

After weeks of disruption to scientific federal grants, the National Institutes of Health has fallen behind in funding research into treatments for deadly diseases.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Shelly Scribner

Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · Jan 31

Since 1991, the NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) is dedicated to K-12 students & funds innovative STEM educational projects.

It supports our EvolvingSTEM program that engages >1500 students/yr in authentic research.

🚨Its Program Announcement (PAR-23-137) is now GONE.😡
nihsepa.org

Home

The Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program funds innovative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and Informal Science Education (ISE) educational projects for pre-kinde

nihsepa.org

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Ryan Wick @rrwick.bsky.social · Jan 20

Do you make core genome alignments for phylogenomics? Mona Taouk and I explored how including sites with some missing data (a soft core) can improve analysis, especially for large datasets.
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
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Exploring SNP filtering strategies: the influence of strict vs soft core

Phylogenetic analyses are crucial for understanding microbial evolution and infectious disease transmission. Bacterial phylogenies are often inferred from SNP alignments, with SNPs as the fundamental ...

www.microbiologyresearch.org

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Shelly Scribner @shellyscrib.bsky.social · Jan 21

Congrats Vaughn!

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Reposted by Shelly Scribner

Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · Jan 21

I'm incredibly honored by this opportunity to serve as President-Elect of @asm.org starting this summer. Looking forward to working with the Board, ASM leadership ,and staff to help advance the microbial sciences. I'm also glad to share my Vision statement, please join us!
asm.org/Press-Releas...

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Andrew Page @andrewjpage.bsky.social · Jan 10

I'm putting together a Microbial Bioinformatics starter pack to help get everyone connected in our community. Let me know if there are any bluesky users to be added and share so that twitter refugees can tune back in to the fantastic world microbes go.bsky.app/3ezLo7e

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Alex Crits-Christoph @acritschristoph.bsky.social · Oct 25

Ryan Wick has tested out the latest kits and basecalling for bacterial genome assembly:

rrwick.github.io/2023/10/24/o...

At assembly error rates like this I start to begin wondering what is "ground truth"

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