Paul Orwin

those poor ladies must be exhausted from doing that about every damned thing that happens...

Admittedly we might be better off that they can’t/won’t…

1) none of these people know how to do any kind of proper power lifting and it shows.
2) who gives a shit how much you bench or leg press? Do your f*cking job!

Opinion | I’m an Immunologist. I Grew Up Unvaccinated.

Parents make medical decisions out of love and fear. RFK Jr. exploits that vulnerability from inside HHS to spread disinformation. Shaming confused parents fails. Raw scientific data rarely changes a frightened mind. Empathy is how we rebuild trust in public health.

Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump.

An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump. n.pr/4qTItsU

Congratulations to the U.S. Men’s and Women’s hockey teams, Alysa Liu, Breezy Johnson, Mikaela Shiffrin and all the amazing Olympic athletes representing Team USA.

Plasmid heterogeneity in various strains of Bacillus megaterium - Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Seven different strains of Bacillus megaterium, obtained from strain collections, were investigated for the presence of plasmids. 6 of these contained up to four plasmids which although having identic...

apparently they've been doing it since 1983! (obv much longer than that)
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Nope! Gonna dig into the lit a bit…also quite curious how they are stabilized. Might try purifying some and running them out on a gel just for fun…

I love my Golden Gophers but that might have been the worst half of basketball I’ve ever seen. Both teams just terrible.

Graph of circular DNA elements in a newly assembled genome

I was today years old when I found out that Priestia megaterium (used to be Bacillus) can have dozens of plasmids? Pretty crazy! Thought it was an artifact but there’s literature to support…

β-strand complementation within tip initiation complexes licenses assembly of diverse type IV filaments SIGNIFICANCE Prokaryotic type IV filaments are ancient, diverse, and broadly distributed nanomachines that assemble and retract to execute diverse microbial functions. They include type IV pili and type II secretion systems, mediating toxin secretion, motility, surface adhesion, biofilm formation, DNA uptake, and other functions. Here, we show that two widely conserved subunits of the tip, PilI and PilJ, form a module that recognizes the folding of a β-sheet in a third subunit, PilK. The final β-strand in this sheet can be supplied in trans by the last ~10 aminoacyl residues of large PilC/PilY1 adhesins, or in cis by PilK itself. In a working model, this recognition results in formation of a PilIJK trimer, which then licenses fiber polymerization through a templating mechanism.

Here's the preprint. Looking forward to seeing what the type 4 filament community thinks!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

20/20

This is really cool. I am really looking forward to reading the paper...

wow. that's cool! (and I did not know it)

I did not go into that one with a lot of hope, but Murrayfield remains a very difficult ground for the Auld Enemy. Congrats @scottishrugby.bsky.social on an impressive win!

Congratulations Fellows!

The American Academy of Microbiology proudly announces the election of 63 fellows to the Class of 2026. Over the past 50 years, the Academy has elected +2,700 distinguished scientists. This year, the new fellows hail from 14 countries. Read press release: asm.social/2OC

Please share!

PhD position at the University of Copenhagen. Start date: 1st of June!
 
The project integrates field work, RNAseq, MALDI-MSI & FISH to explore composition, regulation, and resilience of termite host-gut symbiont metabolism.
 
👉 employment.ku.dk/phd?show=156...
 
⏳ Deadline 23/2/26

I wonder if you've considered asking the President to declare that the storm isn't happening? Seems like a promising strategy, and could save people a lot of grief.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! That is just so funny (Scum equalizer) #LUFC

and yes that reading is 17,730 ng/ul. its probably a glob of chromosomal DNA, but i read it again this am and it was ~5000 ng/ul. literally too much DNA for Nanopore!

(PS the protocol from ActinoBase should work fine for pretty much any bacterium, i would think)

for other folks out there, i used this protocol from ActinoBase and it was amazing...(and pretty easy too)
actinobase.org/index.php?ti...

nanodrop spectrum of a very successful DNA extraction

we are on opposite ends of the nanopore spectrum in this regard...

Well, that was nice, wasn't it Leeds fans? Although they just couldn't help but make us suffer a bit at the end...#LUFC

Nanopore sequencing status screen indicating a good run

Ahh, that’s the stuff!

Lots of great vector-borne disease research in our department here at #WSU in Pullman, WA. Come join the team!

Borrelia, Anaplasma, and more!

Veterinary Microbiology & Pathology Dept within the College of Veterinary Medicine.

#lymedisease #microsky #idsky 🧪🦠🧫

Independent, ongoing clade-specific expansions of IS5 elements in Pseudomonas syringae Insertion sequence (IS) elements are transposable regions of DNA present in a majority of bacterial genomes. It is hypothesized that differences in distributions of IS elements across bacterial strain...

Hey y’all,

New paper out from the lab in Microbial Genomics, starting down the rabbit hole of IS elements in Paeudomonas syringae

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

The building blocks of one of the most complex flagellar nanomachines Nature Microbiology, Published online: 03 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02275-wA near-complete model for the complex structure of the Campylobacter jejuni flagellar motor revealed different mechanisms of assembly, activation and stability from the simple ‘classical’ flagellar model. Some of the additional motor structures in C. jejuni are conserved and only found in species of Campylobacterota, whose ancestor likely co-opted type IV pilus components from bacteria in the deep ocean.

Out Now! The building blocks of one of the most complex flagellar nanomachines #MicroSky

Instagram picture by @larrydn7 of Nance in a hat, chain, and with a black t-shirt saying "all my homies hate ICE" with three angry cartoon ducks in between these large words. below that on the shirt in smaller type: "no one is illegal on stolen land immigrants make america great"

Larry Nance Jr., forward for Cleveland Cavs

How a Microbe Tunnels Its Way Through an Insect Gut—It's Weirder Than You Think Some microbes can squeeze through tight spaces by wrapping themselves in their flagellum—the tail-like structure they use to move. Also, how adorable are those little guys?

How a Microbe Tunnels Its Way Through an Insect Gut—It’s Weirder Than You Think gizmodo.com/how-a-microb...

Video: New Video Analysis Reveals Flawed and Fatal Decisions in Shooting of Pretti A frame-by-frame assessment of actions by Alex Pretti and the two officers who fired 10 times shows how lethal force came to be used against a target who didn’t pose a threat.

New Video Analysis Reveals Flawed and Fatal Decisions in Shooting of Pretti www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

💜💜💜💜