Miriam Herbert

Open call for life science interns Three-month fully funded internships for bachelor‘s and master‘s students in the fields of biology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, epidemiology and any other related fields.

📣 Open call for life science #interns
Our International Summer #Internship 2026 is now open for applications. Three-months fully funded internships at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.
👉 Information on the internship projects and how to apply: www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/mpiib-isi

Thank you!

Thank you so much ☺️

Thank you 😊

Miriam standing with a bouquet of flowers, a PhD hat and a really big smile next to her PhD advisor Mark Cronan.

And it's finally PhDone! 🥳 Yesterday, I defended my PhD thesis "Eosinophils play a dual role in the immune defense against mycobacteria". #PhDsky #ImmunoSky #IDSky #zebrafish

Is academic research becoming too competitive? @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What an interesting finding! Bio image analysis is so powerful 💥

Want to image the adult zebrafish brain? Here's a nifty design that I made with the help of a talented master's student, Corey Steinhauser.

Supporting files here!
morgridge.org/research/lab...

Table 4 of manuscript comparing influenza and COVID hospitalization & death rates

Comparable data is hard to find, but when we looked at 2022/23 & 2023/24 data we see that deaths are still higher for COVID than influenza *BUT* looking at % hides the fact that COVID-19 is more contagious and in 23/24 there were almost 3x as many COVID hospitalizations than influenza. 4/n

Myeloperoxidase transforms chromatin into neutrophil extracellular traps - Nature Myeloperoxidase, a highly expressed neutrophil protein, disassembles nucleosomes, facilitating neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation, and binds stably to NETs extracellularly.

📃 New paper alert!
The Zychlinsky Lab and @raunser-lab.bsky.social identified the first protein that converts chromatin into an immune effector: Myeloperoxidase transforms chromatin into neutrophil extracellular traps. Now published in @nature.com:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I love every field's hyperspecific variant of this. (Molecular biology's is moving very small amounts of clear liquids from one tiny container to another.)

Call for Applications / Ausschreibung

Springboard for an international scientific career! 🧬🧪🔭⚛️🧠🌱 Call for #MaxPlanckResearchGroups launched; applications are possible until October 14, 2025 www.mpg.de/max-planck-r... #ScienceCareer

📌

Research posts on Bluesky are more original — and get better engagement Bluesky posts about science garner more likes and reposts than similar ones on X.

'Posts about research on Bluesky receive substantially more attention than similar posts on X, formerly called Twitter, according to the first large-scale analysis of science content on Bluesky. The results suggest that Bluesky users engage with posts more than do users of X.'

According to this review they can contain mast cells and eosinophils. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Is this about the IF picture you posted recently? I immediately thought these red cells looked a lot like eos to me. 😄 But I don't know anything about testes. Haha

Dapsone/pyrimethamine may prevent mycobacterial disease in immunosuppressed patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus - PubMed Dapsone exhibits activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) in vitro. We retrospectively examined the incidence of mycobacterial diseases within a randomized pro...

and protection from TB back in the 90s! Given the wide use of Daraprim we would love to find someone on #IDsky with retrospective data to search of improvement of treatment outcome and prevention of TB diagnosis

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7742423/

Anyone have a good method (clearing, etc) to get rid of autofluorescence across all channels in a squishy, mucus-y sample like an oyster, in order to do FISH/HCR on the bacteria that live in the mucus of the oyster?
🧪🦑🐙🔬

That already sounds very intense! We use photo bleaching with a H2O2 bleaching solution as recommended in the HCR IF/RNA co-detection protocol. However, I am not sure if that buffer is a game changer... Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

Have you tried photo bleaching yet?

Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships: Expressions of interest can be submitted until 31 October 2025.

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

Abstract from research paper in Annals of Internal Med, July 15, 2025. Conclusion: "This nationwide cohort study did not find evidence supporting an increased risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders associated with early childhood exposure to aluminum-adsorbed vaccines..."

New Danish cohort study with over 1 million kids confirms safety of aluminum in childhood vax. They looked at 50 different conditions, including autoimmune, allergic & neurodevelopmental (eg autism).

This should end further debate on this topic (but probably won't).

Annals Intern Med 15 July 2025

Screen showing a Swiss army knife and a plunger, a few people in the audience looking at the screen.

The courtyard of the medical faculty of Montpellier (very old) all set for the welcome reception of IES2025.

A mural on a house in the city center of Montpellier.

Dinner tables set in white table cloths, ready for the awards dinner of IES2025. IES logo and place (Montpellier, France) on a screen in the back of the room.

It was a pleasure to connect with the broader eosinophil community again, this year in Montpellier! Met old and new friends and left with many new ideas. Thanks to all the organizers. 🤗 #IES2025

Real world example that humans are not mice - something we should always keep in mind when studying immunology in model systems. 😉

Applications are now open! We are recruiting 20 Assistant Professors in a wide range of subject areas. We're looking for early-career researchers with strong scientific merits and future potential.
🔗 All positions: ki.se/en/about-ki/...

🎶 Straight from the Lab to the Mic: when a Pasteur scientist turns her thesis into a rap 🎶
#FeteDeLaMusique

Students who started their PhD in 2020 and are about to graduate

The main culprit behind urinary tract infections is a strain of E. coli known as UPEC. To survive in the body, UPEC has to evade our immune system, especially neutrophils, a type of immune cell that traps and kills bacteria using web-like structures called NETs. In our study, we discovered a previously unknown two-gene system in UPEC that we named DanRI (Defense against neutrophil Regulator and Inhibitor). This system is turned on by NETs and helps the bacteria block neutrophil attacks. Without DanRI, UPEC struggles to survive and persist during infections.

We're excited to share our new preprint on bioRxiv! ✨

You can view it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

See below for more information 👇

Join us in Tubingen as a Junior Research Group Leader if you do research on #ESKAPE pathogens and infections and are interested in the highly cooperative environment of @dzif.bsky.social‬ and @cmfi.bsky.social ! Please send your application or forward to colleagues!
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

Very cool study on how prior TB infections can be a risk factor for following infections! Check it out #IDSky #ImmunoSky #Microsky 🧫🧪

Congratulations! Well deserved 😃