Type VI Sophia System

Look out world - @baym.lol is stepping back into the lab and is already breaking things!

Excited to see this preprinted!!! It's been so cool watching Arya develop a computationally feasible way to find deletion-borne fusion genes across the tree of life :)

much like certain cookies it's hype but unlike crumbl Kepler treats his employees well

Kepler serving up some really sweet science
(not sponsored by Crumbl)

Early Career Scientist Awards 2026 Application to the UW-Madison Evolution Seminar Series - Early Career Scientist Awards.

Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for our Seminar Series' Early Career Scientist Award. Come share your evolution research and visit UW-Madison's evolution community. Open to grad students and postdocs (<5 yrs post PhD) from outside UW-Madison.

Apply by Dec 15th here: shorturl.at/4a4O6

I have started trying to use Obsidian for this! Definitely a good searchable system. (with some dedication I'm hoping that being able to link these notes/ideas should make it even more powerful than just notes)

(The demo microbes are Photobacterium leiognathi, not quite Dinoflagellates but easy to culture and quite bright!!💡)

Loved having a chance this weekend to showcase the science behind bioluminescence & talk about the bioluminescent bays of Puerto Rico at the Harvard Museum's Celebremos Puerto Rico 🕺🇵🇷!

Really cool work on anthropomorphic driven change of plasmids :)!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So cool! What species is this?😍

we were losing our minds over this yesterday, it’s so wild

Very relatable stuff from President Garber, this is how I feel learning that the incoming freshmen were probably all born in 2007

speaking of excellent lore I wonder who will be the first to find the easter egg #ImageForensics >:)

This is one of the findings that really motivates my research: yes, antibiotic resistance genes are ancient, but the age of antibiotics has likely contributed to a big change in their mobility and of the landscape of MGEs we see today! Very happy for Arya and to see this published.

broke: the professor writing professor x grad student romance novels
woke: the PhD student writing about a student going to Hell to bring her PI back from the dead bc he hadn’t finished writing her rec letter

Microbial communities demonstrate robustness in stressful environments due to predictable composition shifts Environmental stress reduces species growth rates, but its impact on the function of microbial communities is less clear. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that increasing salinity stress shifts com...

Have you ever wondered what increasing environmental stress will do to microbial communities?

In our new preprint, @martinadalbello.bsky.social, Jeff Gore and I studied the impact of salinity on microbial community composition and function. 🧵 (1/5)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

time to truly test the pet policy in my dream apartment's listing

SUPER cool, I've never managed to take a phone picture of this much luminescence!! What species/strain is this?

Spring 2nd half! Third times the charm :)

Proud to announce I got this new piece of paper !!! (And also finished my Bok teaching certif)

For the past 3 years I’ve done coursework, teaching observations & made a portfolio to try to become a better TF. It’s been amazing so far and I’m excited to teach Integrated Science again this spring :)

We will miss you Hue!!!

Last week with our summer undergrads 🥲💔 SPECTACULAR students and we will all miss them immensely. Summer research experiences are (for me) one of the most rewarding parts of being in academia so I am really praying that they will continue to be a learning opportunity for mentors and mentees alike

Getting powerpoint alt text to summarize my PhD (colorful image of a long line)

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

I will also be giving the first conference talk of my PhD on my continuation of @fernpizza.bsky.social ’s plasmid MLS work, on determinants of plasmid competitive fitness :)

the Baym lab 🔜 Molecular Mechanisms GRS! Come talk about the evolution and ecology of MGEs
@fernpizza.bsky.social Multilevel plasmid selection!
@arya (arya.casa) Creation of deletion-born fusion genes (frankenstein genes 🧟)
@theshreyaspai.bsky.social Why sex is so common even though it’s costly

Day 1 of PhD vs. Day 1000

I just called my congress members (www.congress.gov/members/find...). 5calls and Chop Wood, Carry Water have good scripts if you are not sure what to say.

I'll also add: all five federal grants that supported different parts this work were part of the mass termination of Harvard grants three weeks ago

Disco lights

Phage DisCo! Our targeted phage discovery method in press today: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Perfectly timed with our four summer undergrad's first successful phage hunt... disco lights in the lab to mark the occasion 🕺