Tim Read

Time for a thread on our Christmas preprint “Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes”. I had so much fun with this project and paper. It will be hard to summarize in a thread, but I’ll try www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/21]

Wow. Journals like this should be immediately removed from the Clarivate database.

The HPV vaccine prevents cervical and other cancers.
This is a good thing and because of that reason RFK. Jr and his ACIP are going to go after this safe and effective vaccine to undermine its uptake.
Measles is back, Pertussis is back & if they have their way cervical cancer will not be eliminated.

William H. Foege, Key Figure in the Eradication of Smallpox, Dies at 89

William Foege has died. He was a central architect of smallpox eradication, pioneering surveillance-driven ring vaccination when vaccine supply was limited. That strategy helped eliminate the deadliest human pathogen we’ve ever known.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Characterising antibacterial toxins in the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Characterising antibacterial toxins in the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com

www.findaphd.com/phds/project... interested in bacterial antagonism? PhD opportunity in our team, see below. Please repost!

‘We’ve invaded Iceland by mistake’

Metabolic reprogramming promotes Staphylococcus aureus serum resistance during bacteraemia. Staphylococcus aureus is a leading cause of bloodstream infections causing an estimated 300,000 deaths worldwide. Using a functional genomics approach, our group previously identified that adaptation ...

The first of some rather chunky papers coming out of Sam Fenn’s work here at @uccmicrobiology.bsky.social

Here we identify and characterise yet another way S. aureus survives life in the bloodstream, but remodelling a major part of its metabolism

Jan. 5, 2026 The rationale for the recent updates to the U.S. childhood immunization schedule is, at best, uncertain and sets a potentially dangerous precedent for public health. Whatever improvements may be needed to the process the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has followed in the past to update vaccine recommendations, it is unclear what scientific evidence led to these new guidelines. Protecting a country’s public health presents unique challenges that are specific to that country’s population. The prevalence of diseases in the U.S. is not the same as it is in other countries, and public health recommendations should be made based on the public health challenges faced by the American people. The changes by the CDC will reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11. This includes narrowing the recommendation for the flu, which has already contributed to the deaths of at least 9 children this season and a near record number of pediatric flu deaths last season. Vaccines are a safe and effective tool to prevent the spread of infectious disease and infection-related deaths, and they have saved and continue to save lives. While we concur with National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya that “science demands continuous evaluation,” that must occur with full transparency and input from the scientific community. The schedule changes weaken vaccine recommendations at a particularly critical time. It is crucial that expert consultation and a review of scientific evidence be included in the decisions that impact the health and safety of the country.

The @asm.org statement in response to the changes in the childhood immunization schedule:

asm.org/press-releas...

Kennedy Scales Back the Number of Vaccines Recommended for Children

bad news for fans of children www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/h...

How Unethical Research Seeds Medical Mistrust The absence of equipoise can turn research into harm

The planned hepatitis B birth-dose trial in Guinea-Bissau raises serious ethical concerns. Withholding a proven, life-saving vaccine from newborns to answer speculative questions is an absence of equipoise with real downstream harms for trust in vaccines.
bktitanji.substack.com/p/how-unethi...

Microbial Primer: The R-pyocins of Pseudomonas aeruginosa R-pyocins are phage tail-like protein complexes produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa that deliver a single, lethal hit by depolarizing the target cell membrane. Unlike phages, R-pyocins lack capsids and...

Our new Microbial Primer describes the mechanistic action and therapeutic potential of R-pyocins produced by P. aeruginosa. www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Bronze plaque saying "A Letter to the Future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. August 2019. 415ppm CO2"

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

Opinion | The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course.

"There were car gods there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs."

Ending road deaths will be one of the greatest public health wins.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Don't trust the CDC while RFK Jr. is in charge The HHS secretary, a notorious anti-vaxxer, is now posting his crank views on CDC's website

I can't stay quiet about what RFK jr is doing to the CDC and FDA:
stevensalzberg.substack.com/p/dont-trust...

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

What is the best strategy to win any contest?

Eliminate your opponents of course.

Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight.

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

My reviewing style has changed over time. Rather than litigate every little thing, and pushing my own ideas, I focus only on 2 things:
(1) Are the claims interesting/important?
(2) Does the evidence support the claims?

Most of my reviews these days are short and focused.

Remembering Hamilton O. Smith Hamilton O. Smith August 31, 1931 – October 25, 2025 It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Hamilton O. Smith, M.D., a...

My former mentor, colleague, and friend Hamilton Smith passed away this week. He was a giant in science, a Nobel Laureate, but also one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He will be missed by many. www.jcvi.org/media-center...

Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?

Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

Bactopia v4 - Overview & Help Wanted · Issue #628 · bactopia/bactopia Bactopia v4 Yo! Well, it is about that time! I am planning to release version 4 of Bactopia in the near future. With this version, Bactopia will introduce new and exciting things, but at the same t...

Seems I'm not good at Bactopia v4 progress updates!

Since my last update:
- Nextflow v25+ compatible
- Converted to nf-test
- nf-bactopia plugin released

If you are interesting in testing (very much appreciated!), I now have a dev build available here: github.com/bactopia/bac...

This is the sort of routine task that you would hope LMMs could do for you but it always seems that they can't

Pope Leo hits out at critics of global warming In his first major statement on climate change, the pontiff criticises those who minimise climate change.

This was a powerful speech by Pope Leo which built on Pope Francis’ teaching legacy.
He criticised those who “have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming”.
It was a privilege to be in the room. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It’s #MythBustingMonday.
Today’s myth: “Multiple vaccines at once will overload a child’s immune system.”
This idea is popular with anti-vaccine groups and also POTUS. But immunology, decades of research, and real-world data all say the same thing: it’s false. 🧵

Phenomenal. In my 10 year update of A Brief History, I make the point that in the first edition, not one disease had been successfully treated using gene therapy. Today that number is at least 7.

Good luck with your new adventure!

I had to triplecheck this because I didn't believe it...

All of the world's discovered reserves of fossil fuels = the same energy as just 5 days of sunlight hitting the Earth🤯

Solar power is basically unlimited🤷‍♂️

Partner fidelity and coevolution: Useful but not required for rapidly increased mutualistic benefits Evolutionary theory predicts that specialization between mutualistic partners is beneficial, limiting conflict and increasing the opportunity to evolve cooperative benefits through sustained reciproca...

Proud of the work in this new preprint from my postdoctoral research.

We used experimental evolution of mutualistically cross-feeding yeast to test how generalized interactions alter benefit evolution and opportunities for coevolution.

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

Delighted to see the first version of our new ELife paper. A collaboration with Levi Morran, we show how an intact antibiotic resistance gene (mecA) changes the course of S. aureus evolution on a new host. Kudos to Michelle Su and Kim Hoang for making this happen.

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

“Well I don’t like that study because it doesn't give me the result I want’