Pranas Grigaitis

PhD position: AI-driven bioprocess modelling for circular bioproduction

@univie.ac.at | Cluster of Excellence: Circular Bioengineering

Focus: Simulation. Optimization. Data-driven biotech

Apply here
careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/s...

Leidse hoogleraar in nieuwe podcast over zelfdodingsgedachten Wist je dat ongeveer 25% van de mensen ooit aan zelfdoding heeft gedacht? In een nieuwe podcast van de Universiteit van Nederland vertelt hoogleraar Renske Gilissen over inzichten en praktische handva...

Renske Gilissen is gespecialiseerd in #suïcidepreventie Met haar onderzoek en onderwijs richt zij zich op preventiemaatregelen.

I might be biased about whether they are *the* best, but they are truly amazing.

We demand answers.
- on behalf of my pet ants

The book chapter (1st as the last author 😎) is finally "officially" out: doi.org/10.1007/978-...
Thanks to the team! (DM for the pdf if you need one)

Mitochondrial ribosome content as a proxy for respiration https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.20.700566v1

... and helped us to reason the metabolic phenotypes and behaviors the NCY P. kluyveri employs. I will make a point for the potential role of reconstructing GEMs in large-scale studies searching for “new biochemistry” in NCYs and beyond.

As a case study, we will consider the recently published GEM for an industrially-relevant NCY Pichia kluyveri, used for the production of alcohol-free beverages, such as alcohol-free beer. I will show how P. kluyveri GEM enabled a comprehensive analysis of physiological and -omics data...

In my talk, I will briefly reflect on the evolution of yeast
metabolic modeling in the last 20 years from the first GEM of Saccharomyces cerevisiae published in 2003. I will discuss how the vast amount of knowledge, encoded in the GEM of S. cerevisiae, can be transferred to other yeasts.

See the full abstract book here: zenodo.org/records/1801...

Upon their kind invitation from my lovely colleagues from Uni Verona, I am delighted to join the speakers' list of the online symposium:

📌 Mining Non-Conventional Yeasts (NCY) Biodiversity
📅 February 17, 2026

Details and registration: www.dbt.univr.it?ent=seminari...

In remembrance of Peer Bork  | EMBL EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General.

This is such hard news to process. Such an amazing scientist and inspiration for so many of us.
www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

Congrats! Please pass by Karlsruhe for a coffee at some point when the hurdles of moving are well behind you ;)

Logo and QR of the Bring Your Own Fluid seminar series, presented by the Social Transfer Network

🧃☕️ BYOF Seminar | Fri Oct 24 @ 10 am EDT🥛🍹
Bring-Your-Own-Fluid + enjoy 7 min talks about social fluids:

🦈 Viviparity & matrotrophy • Daniel Hughes
🐦 Crop milk • Victoria Farrar
🦂 Sexual stings • Yuqi Reitsema-Wang

Email hello@socialtransfer.net for the Zoom link! 🔗

@socialtransfernet.bsky.social

Another round of selfish self-promotion: please join us for the best bridging event to your Halloween party if you are nearby Amsterdam on that day (mandatory music reference: youtu.be/vFwYJYl5GUQ?...)

Metabolic interplay drives population cycles in a cross-feeding microbial community - Nature Communications Here the authors leverage a crossfeeding, engineered microbial community to demonstrate that strain abundance cycles are robust across environmental conditions. They pair this with a nonlinear dynamic model to elucidate population cycles.

Metabolic interplay drives population cycles in a cross-feeding microbial community

@natcomms.nature.com from @oventurelli2.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm going to be advertising for a few positions in my group in the next couple of months for a big project on synthetic microbial communities.

I would love to hear from you if you are interested and I'd also appreciate if everyone could share this far and wide!

What, where, when?
📅 October 31st, 2025 | 12:00 – 18:00
📍 Auditorium, O2 building, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
🎟️ Free, register here (before 1st Oct with a talk title; 15th Oct regular): forms.office.com/e/qCrRcXhsyA

We’ll explore these questions (and more!) together at the AIMMS Symposium “Modeling metabolism: successes, challenges, and prospects”

With talks by:
✨ Djordje Bajić (TUD)
✨ Meike Wortel (UvA)
✨ Ursula Kummer (Uni Heidelberg)
✨ María Suárez Diez (WUR)
🔷 selected early-career researcher talks.

Metabolic modeling has advanced over decades, built on the dedication and behind-the-scenes work of countless researchers. But some big questions remain:

💡 What are the biggest challenges ahead?
🚀 What is the next frontier in modeling metabolism?

🔬 Recent breakthroughs in understanding metabolism, and applying this knowledge, have only been possible thanks to the creative blending of multiple disciplines. Among them, mathematical modeling has become a cornerstone for many successful interdisciplinary studies in the life sciences.

Metabolic modeling aficionados in the Netherlands (and close to border), attention please! (promo thread)

There’s a leak - and a conceptual artist - at the Max Planck 👌

Embracing computational models in their research feels like crossing the Rubicon for many people, although it should not be so. That was my red thread while overseeing the writing of this manuscript. Modeling is an essential ingredient for the next grand advance(s) of the 21st century biology!

This text (in another format) will become a chapter in the Euglenozoa book of the Methods in Molecular Biology series soon (details TBD). The copyediting and other formalities are pending; in the meantime, I am very happy to share the manuscript version of the chapter.

We (me and Jurgen Haanstra from the Vrije Universiteit, and colleagues from Uni Sao Paulo in Brazil) spelt some wisdom out on how experimental data becomes some zeros and ones in genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) - focusing on organisms that exhibit metabolically distinct life stages.

It's a common wisdom that the whole genome is not expressed at the same time. Is trying to make a map of the 'entirety' of the metabolic potential (aka genome-scale model) useless, and potentially reckless? It's only an intermediate stop. Especially for unicellular parasites. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Good ideas come from having lots of experience. And experience comes from having lots of bad ideas.

@berasymbionts.bsky.social speaking about socially transferred materials and her amazing beetles and fungal symbiont transfer opening the @socialtransfernet.bsky.social symposium at #ESEB2025

Postdoctoral researcher: avian microbiomes and reproduction We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our team working on avian reproductive microbiomes at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in the group of Dr. Melissah Rowe. The postd...

3.5-year #Postdoc position on avian microbiomes and reproduction @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social @niooknaw.bsky.social on a fully-funded ERC project focused on understanding the significance of reproductive microbiomes for host biology and fitness. Reach out for more info!

nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...