Ajai Dandekar

Worked out OK in the end!

@sound-transit.bsky.social there are hundreds of people waiting for trains and the current wait is 19 minutes. Absurd and incomprehensible.

Taylor Swift, also

The degree to which the President can be swayed by the last person he talked to is really astonishing

(This is a good outcome, but it’s only until he talks to someone else)

“Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything was still possible for them, which supposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences”

More than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, this passage from Camus’ “The Plague”, written decades ago, still resonates

Inactivation of MexT in Pseudomonas aeruginosa destabilizes cooperation and favors the emergence of a unique quorum sensing variant Pseudomonas aeruginosa , an opportunistic gram-negative pathogen, uses a cell-cell signaling system called quorum sensing to coordinate group behaviors. Quorum sensing in P. aeruginosa is a model to s...

New lab preprint! We set out to explore interstrain differences in P. aeruginosa cooperation and discovered an interesting variant of the quorum sensing receptor LasR. — by Kiki Bellamoroso, Maxim Kostylev, and Nicole Smalley

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

No idea, sorry -- NCI and NIGMS use the R35 mechanism really differently, despite the same identifier.

Somehow I missed this tentative but important news -- extension of the NIGMS MIRA (R35) mechanism

simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/...

I wish that I had a way to thank all of the program officials, grants specialists, scientific review officers, et al. at NIH — this is amazing and important work in the face of politically manufactured, ongoing adversity

YouTube video by smica_lica Twin Peaks We'll meet again in Valhalla

Ive been thinking about this scene from Twin Peaks all day

youtu.be/3bT-pzuo0tc

When there are guns everywhere, nobody is safe anywhere

settings > content & media > autoplay video & gifs = off

Quantitative modeling of multi-signal quorum-sensing maps environment to bacterial regulatory responses Bacterial quorum sensing is often assumed to follow a strict hierarchy, limiting understanding of how multiple signals interact. This study finds that Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses a reciprocal, coopera...

Paper by Thomas et al here
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Better together: Reciprocal activation of quorum sensing circuits enhances bacterial communication Many bacteria use quorum sensing to control gene transcription based on population density. This primer explores a recent study in PLOS Biology which found that in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, two quorum-s...

Andrew Frando, @jrchandler.bsky.social, and I wrote a primer about excellent work done in Sam Brown's group @brownlab.bsky.social

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Inverse stable isotope probing–metabolomics (InverSIP) identifies an iron acquisition system in a methane-oxidizing bacterial community | PNAS Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and a target for near-term climate change mitigation. In many natural ecosystems, methane is sequestered by micr...

Excited to announce this is now published!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

U.S. Soccer announces that Cristian Roldan has been added to the #usmnt roster. He’s been outstanding for Seattle this season.

It’s amazing to me how addled people get about the necessity of accommodating cars everywhere, even in places where they are obviously detrimental

NIH progress on new R01s in FY 2025 I know Doctor Editor Director Professor Berg has more sophisticated analyses going but this simple data set made sense to me once I realized how few new R01 NIAAA has issued so far (5). Since we ar…

NIH progress on new R01s in FY 2025 drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/18/n...

Postdoc

PI (me) drops all the bagels on the floor, somehow setting fire to the kitchen while doing so.

The invisible hand of the free market

Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo Can Both See Zohran Mamdani Is Dangerous. Why Can’t New Yorkers? We Asked JD Vance. Tomorrow in the @nytimes.com

My average steps before the visit: 8 950 / day; during: 20 433 / day

I visited Paris for a week

Looking to engage in interesting science that bridges microbiology, evolution, ecology, and plant biology?

If so, join Phoebe’s new lab in Taipei!

Exciting news! I am launching the Lab of Polymicrobial Interaction & Evolution at IPMB at Academia Sinica (ipmb.sinica.edu.tw/en)! 🎉Our brand-new website is live: (www.labofpie.org). Check the lab of PIE out!!🥧🎈

Seattle World Cup 2026 poster with an orca tail, Mt Rainier, city skyline, and a football

New poster for my office

An advertisement at the UW light rail station.

Things are going great.

Congratulations Lauren!

In these times, it’s even more important to share and celebrate good news.

It’s helpful to blend into the American urban - suburban environment. Lots of sand. /s