Laila Phillips

I GASPED

With many postdoc grants like the NSF PRFB, Ford Fellowship, and Hanna H. Gray fellowships disappearing, I am currently looking for grants that could fund incoming postdoctoral scholars. Here is a thread of some of them 🧵

Hey #Drosophila folks - its #fivedays to go to sign up as #FlyCROSS #mentor 👀

If you're faculty/postdoc/ equivalent in any scientific career & have #Drosophila research experience - fill up the mentor survey by July 14 to empower #earlycareer scientists in #Dros #community!
@flybase.bsky.social

Exit Cost 9th November 2023 Playing Techno, Breaks, Breakbeat Hardcore, Gabber. Ongoing selections by EXIT COST - a project from NYC based artist and producer Michael Quick

#bioinformaticsbangers

A tuxedo cat sniffing a mug with a tuxedo cat printed on it.

Are you this kind of tuxedo cat owner or are you normal?

FlyBase funding squashed amid Harvard grant terminations The team behind the Drosophila genetics database is now requesting donations from labs to keep the resource afloat.

FlyBase, a crucial resource for drosophila research, has lost its funding because its grant is awarded to Harvard. The team is scrambling to find other sources of funds, including donations from labs. Read more: www.thetransmitter.org/community/fl... @flybase.bsky.social

SUSTAINABILITY & #DROSOPHILA - If you keep flies & have tried to re-use containers but then given up on it, please could you let us know & tell us the reasons? We urgently need statements for a publication about sustainability in fly labs. Please, contact Andreas.Prokop@manchester.ac.uk

Do you have any sources for best practices re: a sustainable fly lab? As someone who does re-use fly plugs and vials, I am always brainstorming ways to make that process easier 👀

NTS x JET SET RADIO: BAE BAE (LIVE FROM BRAIN DEAD STUDIOS) 14th June 2025 Playing Breakbeat Hardcore, Footwork, Jungle. Recorded live from Brain Dead Studios, BAE BAE presents a DJ set taking inspiration from Jet Set Radio’s influential high octane, multi-genre soundtrack.

👾🎧 I like keeping track of music that gets me into a flow state while doing computational work, so here's the first installment of the #bioinformaticsbangers of the day:
www.nts.live/shows/nts-x-...

🫶🫶🫶

A group of incredible folks sitting in a booth in a crowded bar. The image may be noisy and chaotic but that's part of the charm.

Learning about science is always rad. But as the Animal-Microbe Symbiosis GRC wraps up, I'm most excited about whom I get to do that science with.

You can read those papers here 👇

Volkmann et al (2010): doi.org/10.1099/ijs.0.019026-0
Kwong & Moran (2013): doi.org/10.1099/ijs.0.044875-0

These bacteria are in the family Orbaceae, a little-studied group that appears to be exclusively associated with insects! The first cultured member of the Orbaceae, Orbus hercynius, was isolated in 2010 by Volkmann et al., and the family was described in 2013 by Kwong & Moran.

Characterization of gut symbionts from wild-caught Drosophila and other Diptera: description of Utexia brackfieldae gen. nov., sp. nov., Orbus sturtevantii sp. nov., Orbus wheelerorum sp. nov, and Orb... Non-culture based surveys show that the bacterial family Orbaceae is widespread in guts of insects, including wild Drosophila. Relatively few isolates have been described, and none has been described ...

Flying bacteria!!! We recently described one genus and four new species of bacteria isolated from wild Drosophila & Neogriphoneura spp.:

🧫 Utexia brackfieldae
🧫 Orbus sturtevantii
🧫 Orbus wheelerorum
🧫 Orbus mooreae

Read our paper here: doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.006516