🇨🇦 Marc Strous

Nice work, completed under nearly impossible circumstances: www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/14...

An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine Multiple genetic codes developed during the evolution of eukaryotes and bacteria, yet no alternative genetic code is known for archaea. We used proteomics to confirm our prediction that certain archae...

New paper out: An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Doing a PhD with Emily would be super awesome! you should apply.

GlobDB: a comprehensive species-dereplicated microbial genome resource AbstractMotivation. Over the past years, substantial numbers of microbial species’ genomes have been deposited outside of conventional INSDC databases.Resu

Our paper describing the GlobDB is now published in @bioinfoadv.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/bioa...

The GlobDB is the largest species dereplicated genome database currently available, containing 306,260 species representatives.
More information on globdb.org 1/5
🖥️🧬🦠

Once again, Alberta’s UCP Government plans to suspend Charter Rights of Albertans.

First to attack teachers’ rights, now trans youth.

The Justice Minister proudly said his voice is the final voice on this matter.

It is not. The voice of the people is the final voice.

Plz RT

#abpoli #ableg #yyc

This is what's at stake.

The UCP is not only dodging its responsibility to explain how Bill 9 is in any way proportionate or justifiable in a free and democratic society.

They are putting children at far greater risk of suicide.

Today, government introduced Bill 9 legislation invoking the notwithstanding clause to override a court ruling that protects youth access to gender-affirming care. This places government between a patient and their physician, undermining clinical autonomy. www.albertadoctors.org/news/publica...

Opinion: As a physician, I see how gender-affirming care benefits youth Alberta’s moves to restrict treatment are based in ignorance and misinformation

“My own experience prescribing puberty blockers has demonstrated enormous psycho-social benefits in youth who feel a quiet desperation watching their bodies change in ways they can’t control […] A puberty blocker provides them with a pause […] with no effects on fertility, and is 100% reversible.”

The application deadline for these has been extended (due to them being open an unreasonably short time initially, not b/c we got too few applications). Dust off your CV, friends. 🧪⚒️

Should also say i thougt all the other findings were interesting and convincing, nice work!

Also, although many current eukaryotes need a high ATP production rate to maintain their expanded genomes, FECA/LECA likely not yet needed that, as it's genome may still have been relatively small, like current Archaea and many current protists or fungi. Just my 2 cts

@archaeal.bsky.social, I have reservations about the conclusions of this paper because of muddling kinetic and stoichiometric aspects. Yes micropcompartments can boost rates but that will never affect energy yields as suggested, so cannot compensate for not using O2.

I wanted to offer my thoughts, as a climate scientist, on the widely discussed memo published by Bill Gates in late October 2025. While I actually do agree with some of the specific points made therein regarding the urgent global need to accelerate efforts to reduce global poverty and improve human Thoughts from a climate scientist on the Bill Gates climate memo

I just recorded a short video--essentially an updated version of my social media threads--on the Bill Gates climate memo. Despite agreeing with some points therein, I still think its framing is fundamentally flawed and thus also its key conclusions.

Ocean warming threatens the viability of 60% of Antarctic ice shelves - Nature The viability of Antarctic ice shelves under low rates and high rates of global warming is modelled to estimate when it will become unfeasible for the ice shelves to maintain their present-day shape.

🌊🧊🇦🇶
I am happy and proud to present our #platformist team effort out in @nature.com!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We examine if, when, and why #Antarctic #ice shelves will no longer be viable, at the latest, due to changes in #atmosphere and #ocean conditions.
A little 🧵 for the experts...
1/7

Discovery and Heterologous Expression of the Soil Metagenome-Derived Lasso Peptide Metanodin with an Unprecedented Ring Structure Culture-independent metagenomic approaches have proven to be effective tools for identifying previously hidden biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) encoding novel natural products with potential medical relevance. However, producing these compounds remains challenging as metagenomic BGCs often originate from organisms phylogenetically distant from available heterologous hosts. Lasso peptides, a subclass of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide (RiPP) natural products, exhibit diverse bioactivities, yet no lasso peptide has previously been discovered directly from a metagenome. Here, we report the discovery and heterologous expression of the first soil metagenome-derived lasso peptide. Expression of its biosynthetic gene cluster in Escherichia coli, followed by mass spectrometry analysis, strongly supported the predicted amino acid sequence and lasso structure of the peptide. Notably, this lasso peptide is the first to feature asparagine as the ring-forming residue at position one. Taxonomic analysis of the corresponding BGC identified an uncultivated member of the Steroidobacterales family (Gammaproteobacteria) as the closest known relative of the potential native host. These findings underscore the potential of metagenomic genome mining to reveal structurally novel RiPPs and to expand our understanding of the natural diversity of lasso peptides.

Happy to share our newest manuscript about the discovery and hererologous expression of metanodin, a new lassopeptide with unprecedented structural features directly from soil metagenomes. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....
#secmet #lassopeptides #syntheticbiology

#microsky #mevosky @spp2389.bsky.social

A PhD position is available in my lab to work on:

Emergence and self-organisation of bacterial metabolism in consortia of cross-feeding bacteria.

Please RT

Deadline: 12.11.25

More infos 👇
shorturl.at/rAKAT

When nutrients turn toxic: how metals shape microbial coexistence

We're advertising a PhD at the intersection of mathematical ecology, metallobiology, and microbiology to study the impact of metals on microbial communities with @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social @kateduncan.bsky.social and Denis Patterson. Come join us in lovely Durham!

iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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!

Wow

Direct single-molecule detection and super-resolution imaging with a low-cost portable smartphone-based microscope - Nature Communications Loretan and colleagues present a low-cost smartphone-based microscope capable of detecting single-molecule fluorescence. This approach opens doors to personalised and widely distributed applications in diagnostics, biosensing, and science education.

Direct single-molecule detection and super-resolution imaging with a low-cost portable smartphone-based microscope www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

The ISC - your new home at UMass Boston?

The view of Boston Harbor from front of campus

Heeeeey #Microbial #Ecology folk! My department has a job opening for a tenure track Microbial Ecologist! Feel free to DM me with questions. Come join our awesome supportive whip-smart & kind crew in the Biology Department of @umassboston.bsky.social! employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us...

Global constraint principle for microbial growth laws | PNAS Understanding complex living systems requires identifying universal phenomenological laws that are independent of species and molecular-biological ...

Global constraint principle for microbial growth laws www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs

Opportunities matching 'earth' Search 4 Careers available at University of Calgary.

🚨FOUR tenure track positions in my dept @ucalgary.bsky.social @ucalgaryscience.bsky.social in applied & computational geophysics, subsurface geochemistry, sedimentary geology, and sustainable soil science. careers.ucalgary.ca/search/jobs?...

(please reskeet widely!) #academicsky 🧪⚒️🇨🇦

7. How to write consistently boring scientific literature.

“Hell – is sitting on a hot stone reading your own scientific publications”
Erik Ursin, fish biologist

Thanks @fattebertj.bsky.social

Open Access
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

My lab is attempting ancestral reconstruction of some very large trees using ALEml (amalgamated likelihood). Does anyone know if a multithreaded implementation of ALE is available somewhere? Our HPC is unhappy with us running a single thread for >24h on the bigmem node...

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data - Nature Microbiology In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

2 Postdoc vacancies: Microbial dormancy in the cryosphere
@erc.europa.eu #ERC_SIESTA
📢 PLEASE RT

Experimental:
🧬 Single cell microbial activity measurements, flow cytometry, omics, biogeochem

Modelling:
🖥️ Bioenergetics, thermodynamics, ecological, biogeochem

☀️ Marseille, France
‼️ Apply by 30 Sept

BONCAT-Live for isolation and cultivation of active environmental bacteria journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 - Nature Methods Graphics processing unit-accelerated MMseqs2 offers tremendous speedups for homology retrieval from metagenomic databases, query-centered multiple sequence alignment generation for structure predictio...

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs