Joe Lopez

Bloom-forming cyanobacteria have complex interactions with the underlying heterotrophic communities on Lake Okeechobee Congratulations to MMG student and lab manager Paisley Samuel who has published the bulk of her MS thesis in Frontiers in Water for her first primary authored paper “Diversity fluctuations of…

Happy to announce a new Frontiers in Water publication on Lake O cyanoHABs, wrapping up our first project characterizing microbial interactions: lopez-lab.net/2025/10/15/1...

Chromosomal Genome of the Red Sea sponge, Diacarnus erythraeanus, Kelly-Borges & Vacelet, 1995, and its Associated Microbial Metagenomes Published A high quality whole chromosomal genome of the sponge Diacarnus erythraeanus and the metagenomes of its microbial associates have been published from the Photosymbiosis Hub, a component of the Well…

Chromosomal level sponge Diacarnus erythraeanus whole genome published. Congrats to Laura Steindler and the ASG Photosymbiosis hub. lopez-lab.net/2025/08/30/c...

This surprisingly relaxing footage is from SIX MILES under the ocean – and it’s the deepest ecosystem yet discovered

This approach also allows a PI who may not be part of a formal consortium, to showcase an individual species, interface with the public to promote the project’s importance and other biological contexts which all help explain the necessities for sequencing whole genomes.

Check out our new community funding proposal "Adopt an Invertebrate Genome with GIGA". The focus is to help scientists get funds for sequencing invertebrate genomes through crowdsourcing.

Details here if you are interested : www.gigacos.org/index.php/20...

#genome #omics #genomics #invertebrate

Also see the fantastic Sanger blog by Carmen Denman Hume sangerinstitute.blog/2025/07/03/e...

The Aquatic Symbiosis Genome (ASG) Project has now published the first chromosomal-level, whole nuclear genome of the giant barrel sponge, Xestospongia muta, and its accompanying microbial cohort. wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/10-...

New publication has characterized the microbial degradation of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) drinking straws in a coastal marine setting Plastic pollution represents a huge environmental problem, and drinking straws are a major component of such pollution. It is estimated that 8.3 billion plastic straws contaminate the world’s beach…

New publication from our lab. Please tell your local eateries about biodegradable PHA plastic and Phade straws which will be much better for the environment. lopez-lab.net/2025/05/29/n...

Order of amino acid recruitment into the genetic code resolved by last universal common ancestor’s protein domains | PNAS The current “consensus” order in which amino acids were added to the genetic code is based on potentially biased criteria, such as the absence of s...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

World Reef Awareness Day 2025: Bringing corals back to life World Reef Awareness Day 2025 highlights the coral reef crisis and the urgent need for global conservation action.

Be kind to a coral near or far away (by lowering our carbon foootprints) www.earth.com/news/world-r...

Nice image work, and fitting that a delectable Mexican fast food shaped like a female reproductive organ swallows up the orange narcissist.

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

This is an absolute disaster. If we don't stop this, they will turn NSF into a pawn of the Trump administration. There will be no research on climate, biodiversity, or anything that isn't eugenics or AI or how to more efficiently destroy the planet for profit.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

YouTube video by Kiabugboy More Oncocerida from Gotland

Timeline cleanse: do you want to see one of the best fossil animations I have EVER seen?

@kiabugboy.bsky.social you are literally a master of the form. BBC or Discovery (whoever pays more) should hire you immediately 🧪🦑⚒️

Trump is stripping protections from marine protected areas – why that’s a problem for fishing’s future, and for whales, corals and other ocean life America’s marine protected areas help fish populations thrive. Trump’s plan to open them to industrial fishing may ultimately harm the fishing industry itself.

Claims by the Trump administration that marine protected areas are a heavy-handed restriction on the U.S. fishing industry do not hold water.

Science shows these refuges for sea life help local economies and allow fish populations to thrive

By @whysharksmatter.bsky.social

We had a great time at the 2025 meeting of the FL Branch of the American Society for Microbiology (FLASM) at Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft Myers this weekend. One my students was awarded best grad student poster. #FLASM and lopez-lab.net/2025/03/30/m...?

Save the date: Our next GIGA Conference takes place July 5-10, 2026 in the Philippines. More info coming soon, we hope you can join us!

We had a decent stand up for science event in S Florida. Thanks for showing up and all the friendly honks!!

300 years of sclerosponge thermometry shows global warming has exceeded 1.5 °C - Nature Climate Change Understanding temperature change since the pre-industrial period is essential for climate action. This study uses an ocean proxy to better quantify when anthropogenic warming began and estimates that ...

Sponges and better climate change calibration www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Apparently it is World Seagrass Day
A good excuse to remind about this paper from 2024 about how their global distribution and diversity may shift due to climate change

Open access link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#WorldSeagrassDay2025 #WorldSeagassDay #SeagrassDay

The Erasing of American Science How far can the Trump administration bend U.S. research before it breaks?

Getting dangerously close to censorship in science - www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

The pointless destruction of the world's leading scientific and medical research system No one benefits from this

Going down the tubes for no good reasons. stevensalzberg.substack.com/p/the-pointl...

I finished my dissertation in the MD/DC area, and enjoyed going to the capital Mall on special events. I was able to capture the moment serendipitously during a parade on Constitution Ave. I think it sums up our democracy; the words behind the people say "Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty"

I finished my dissertation in the MD/DC area 30 years ago and loved visiting the nation's capital on special events. I took this serendipitous shot during a parade and believe it epitomizes our democracy. Hidden behind the people is "Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty". So true now.

gmgi.org/about/careers/

Scientists globally are racing to save vital health databases taken down amid Trump chaos The mass-archiving effort is in response to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removing some of its web pages.

Save your data and knowledge www.nature.com/articles/d41...

YouTube video by The New York Times How America Helped Stop Covid-19. Just Not in the U.S. | NYT Opinion

I have shown this video routinely to my microbiology classes the past few years. It allows me to enhance Covid-19 lessons. It illustrates some of the constructive things that the CDC and USAID have done in the past, but which we are now actively dismantling. m.youtube.com/watch?v=ukr0...

Bat genomes illuminate adaptations to viral tolerance and disease resistance - Nature A systematic analysis of 115 mammalian genomes, including 10 new bat genomes, reveals prevalent positive selection in immune genes in bats and shows key adaptations in the antiviral gene ISG15 that ai...

High flying immunity? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I had a great time participating in the last third of the Conservation Genomics 2025 course (conservationgenetics.org/congen2025/) held at the Cheetah Conservation Center in Otjiwarongo, Namibia. Thanks to Laurie Marker and CCF for hosting. I’m also happy to help the board plan the next workshop.

A photo of a small shrimp that is covered in black and white stripes with some smaller yellow and grey bands on its legs

This is Gnathophyllum americanum - otherwise known to divers as the Bumblebee Shrimp. Found across the Indo-Pacific, it is quite a small little invert at around 2.5cm maximum size.
#🦑 #🦐 #UnderwaterPhotography

The non-model organism “renaissance” has arrived Meet 10 neuroscientists bringing model diversity back with the funky animals they study.

www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...