Theus

#MicroSky: Eco-friendly win for cabbage. Paraphaeosphaeria minitans (TNAU-CM1) suppressed 78.5% of Sclerotinia growth and matched chemical fungicides in field tests. A strong, sustainable biocontrol option for cabbage head rot. Find more in Ruppavalli et al doi.org/10.1111/1751...

10 websites for drawing scientific figures 👇

#transgenerational transmission of a core #microbiome that protects against downy mildew from soil to #phyllosphere

Fantastic and important study by @jellespooren.bsky.social @rlberendsen.bsky.social
@cornepieterse.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
#plantscience

Adaptation without Dominance in Pseudomonas syringae Pathovars - Microbial Ecology Understanding local adaptation of phytopathogens has significant practical and economic implications. The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas syringae exemplifies this challenge, causing regular epidem...

My PhD work with the inimitable Joy Bergelson looking at local adaptation in a super-cool generalist pathogen that nucleates ice and decimates your favorite crop plant 🌱 👾 🧬 Thrilled to see this out (& reminded by @vscooper.micropopbio.org to celebrate each win)!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Explore how genetics, evolution and ecology intertwine at EMBO Workshop "Evolving together: From genomics to biological interactions" in #Taipei, TW, 24–27 Apr 2026.

Abstract submission/Registration by 20 Jan/28 Feb

https://meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio-interactions
#EMBOEvoGenBio #EMBOevents 🧪

A dot plot with shared genome fraction on the y-axis and average nucleotide diversity on the x axis, depicting a gap around 99.5% ANI.

🧪🧫🖥️🧬🦠A new gap in ANI reveals "natural" intraspecies clusters! A thread on reasons to be happy and reasons to fear this new (must-read!) publication led by Luis M Rodriguez-M and Kostas Konstantinidis in #mBio, always thought-provoking!
1/n

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities Spatial structure naturally emerges in microbial communities, shaping growth, interactions, and evolution, and revealing how microscale processes scale up

Most microbes don't live in shaking flasks; spatial structure shapes how microbes interact and evolve at every scale, as we discuss in our recent review @jeroenmeijer.bsky.social @simonvanvliet.bsky.social @bedutilh.bsky.social @bramvandijk.bsky.social and others
academic.oup.com/femsre/artic... 🧵👇

Inducing novel endosymbioses by implanting bacteria in fungi - Nature A study presents an approach to establish and track a new endosymbiotic partnership by implanting bacteria in a non-host fungus and shows that stable inheritance of the implanted bacteria is possible ...

Vorholt Lab re-created endosymbiosis in the lab: injected bacteria into a fungus and evolved a heritable partnership.

Evolution, fast-forwarded.

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Downy mildew disease-suppressive soils transmit a protective core microbiome to the phyllosphere Abstract. Plants can respond to pathogen attack by assembling disease-suppressive microbiomes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, infection by the obligate foliar do

Downy mildew disease-suppressive soils transmit a protective core microbiome to the phyllosphere

#ISMEJournal by @jellespooren.bsky.social et al from @rlberendsen.bsky.social
@utrechtpmi.bsky.social @cornepieterse.bsky.social @svanwees.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome - Nature AlphaGenome, a deep learning model that inputs 1-Mb DNA sequence to predict functional genomic tracks at single-base resolution across diverse modalities, outperforms existing models in variant effect...

AlphaGenome is out! Input 1 Mb DNA -> predict gene expression, transcription initiation, chromatin accessibility, histone modifications, transcription factor binding, chromatin contact maps, ..., up to single-base-pair resolution! Trained on human and mouse data 🧪🧬🖥️🦠✨
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genetic offset and vulnerability modeling under climate change scenarios: common misinterpretations and violations of evolutionary principles Abstract. Genetic offset models have become a popular component of the landscape genetics toolbox, with over 600 peer-reviewed publications applying these

I'm excited to read this paper: "Genetic offset and vulnerability modeling under climate change scenarios: common misinterpretations and violations of evolutionary principles" doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Predicting instabilities in transient landforms and interconnected ecosystems - Nature Communications The authors introduce a method to assess the stability of periodic (seasonal) systems without the need for complex data pre-processing and show that it can be used to predict the onset of glacier surg...

Predicting tipping points in complex noisy signals is hard, but essential as so many are approached. Annual and natural cycles make it even more challenging, but a new approach looks very promising.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#climatechange #tippingpoints #AMOC #Amazon #glaciers #CSD

Climate Change and Disparities in Extreme Heat Exposure for Socially Vulnerable Areas in the Contiguous United States We assess geographic disparities in heat exposure for more and less socially vulnerable areas in the contiguous United States (CONUS) High-social vulnerability areas are disproportionately expose...

NEW paper in @agu.org Earth's Future: Vulnerable US communities already face an extra ~2 weeks/yr of heat (>95°F/35°C). With 2°C warming, this gap widens to nearly 3 weeks/yr. Climate inequity in the US grows with warming.

doi.org/10.1029/2025...

@dukeenvironment.bsky.social @science.nature.org

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Haplotype comparison of the fully phased chromosome 9 uncovers a variety of evolutionary processes. Top: Explanation of the approach to assign haplotypes to accessory nodes of the pangenome and subsequent visualization: 1. create a pangenome graph and parse its variation; 2. the graph is transformed into a sequence alignment for visualization; 3. the core and unique nodes remain unchanged, while the accessory nodes are recursively assigned to different haplotypes. Middle: Pangenome graph of the phased chromosome 9 created with Minigraph-Cactus and visualized with Bandage. The nodes of the graph are coloured based on the haplotypes assigned in the bottom panel. Bottom: Alignment of haplotypes of chromosome 9 for all phased P. effusa isolates, derived from the pangenome graph in 4 kb windows, as described in the top panel.

#Plant pathogens secrete effectors to establish infections, but resistant crops select for resistance-breaking #pathogens. @mfseidl.bsky.social &co use #pangenome graph analyses of 19 resistance-breaking races of an #oomycete pathogen to identify several effectors @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4qA6nKC

Map of Europe and Africa, part of the Middle East and Asia, showing regions growing drier or wetter with climate change.

Researchers from @ucl.ac.uk analysed + mapped data on which global regions are getting wetter, which drier as the climate changes. We've loaded this map onto our website so you can investigate what's happening in your area via this link:

watershedinvestigations.com/find-out-wha...

The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us what happens when AI automates "normal science"?

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts.
open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

How climate breakdown is putting the world’s food in peril - in maps and charts From floods to droughts, erratic weather patterns are affecting food security, with crop yields projected to fall if changes are not made

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialization of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

#NatMicroPicks

AMR plasmid evolution over a century! ⭕🧬🦠💊

Plasmids from 1917–1954 reveal over a century of evolution shaped by antibiotic industrialization

#MicroSky

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Decreased cytoplasmic crowding via inhibition of ribosome biogenesis can trigger Candida albicans filamentous growth - Nature Microbiology During filamentous growth in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans, a reduction in ribosome concentration leads to a decrease in macromolecular crowding. Inhibition of ribosome biogenesis can tri...

#NewResearch

During filamentous growth in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans, a reduction in ribosome concentration leads to a decrease in macromolecular crowding. Inhibition of ribosome biogenesis can trigger filamentous growth in this pathogen.

#MicroSky 🦠

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

EPA urged to ban spraying of antibiotics on US food crops amid resistance fears — Guardian US Use of 8m pounds of antibiotics and antifungals a year leads to superbugs and damages human health, lawsuit claims

Antibiotics sprayed on crops.
PFAS approved for commerce.
Carcinogens kept on the market.

The EPA isn’t protecting the public. It’s protecting the industries driving both a public-health crisis and an insect apocalypse.
apple.news/AoVwrXNDwTBa...

AI trained on bacterial genomes produces never-before-seen proteins Genes with related functions cluster together, and the AI uses that.

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

#MicroSky

Keystone Pseudomonas species in the wheat phyllosphere microbiome mitigate Fusarium head blight by altering host pH Fusarium graminearum (F. graminearum) pathogen induces wheat phyllosphere alkalinization, promoting the development of Fusarium head blight (FHB). Xu et al. show that host-acidifying Pseudomonas, sele...

🎉 Check out the latest from Qin Gu’s team at Nanjing Agricultural University: “Keystone Pseudomonas species in the wheat phyllosphere” (Cell Host & Microbe) 👉 www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

The Role of Phyllosphere Microbes and Viruses in Biocontrol of Pathogenic Fungi Foliar microbiota employ multiple ecological strategies to inhibit fungal pathogens in the phyllosphere, including resource competition, production of antifungal metabolites, contact-dependent killin....

The Role of Phyllosphere Microbes and Viruses in Biocontrol of Pathogenic Fungi - Bi - 2025 - Microbial Biotechnology - Wiley Online Library enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨 Last chance to register for the One Health Pangenome 25 congress, December 2-5 in Valencia 🇪🇸 Abstract submission deadline October 31st. I'll be talking about high-throughput #single-cell genomics by @atrandi.bsky.social for linking bacteria with #phages
#bioinformatics #congress #microsky 🧬🖥️🦠🧪

Isolation, engineering and ecology of temperate phages from the human gut - Nature Human host-associated cellular products may act as induction agents for bacteriophages.

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

#phagesky #phage #microsky #microbiome

Is a healthy microbiome one that is rich in phages? 🦠 Excited to share our paper out in Lancet Microbe with @bkoskella.bsky.social & @dholtappels.bsky.social where we test whether virome diversity can be used a broad signature of microbiome health 📈

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Our research places the T6SS as a critical factor driving the evolution of complex polymicrobial communities within the plant rhizosphere, providing valuable insights for agricultural applications involving beneficial microbes and plant health management strategies. (11/11)

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics

We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇