Ella Sieradzki

rdrp.io The official website of the RdRp Summit.

Interested in RNA virus discovery? You can still register for the RdRp summit and attend remotely!
We'll have some really nice talks and cutting edge discussions on best practices and new directions in the field.
rdrp.io
#phagesky #virosky #bioinformatics

EXCITING NEWS🥳! @isme-microbes.bsky.social is now sponsoring 3 travels grants worth EUR 500 each to support early career researchers presenting at the #RdRpSummit2025.
Abstract submissions & registrations are still open!✍️
More info at RdRp.io

Calls for papers from FEMS Microbiology Ecology FEMS Microbiology Ecology, publishing leading research in the microbial ecology community, publishes a variety of thematic issues covering a diverse range of to

Calls for papers from FEMS Microbiology Ecology: Thematic Issue on Ecology of Soil Microorganisms

Editors:
@pbaldrian.bsky.social
@jennihultman.bsky.social
Petr Kohout
Minna Männistö
@tainapennanen.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/femsec/pages...

Submission deadline: 28 November 2025

Will you be at ViBiom? I’ll be there in May 🙂

All this to say, the journey isn't linear. Not even close. It also can't be separated from our private lives. Sometimes life is overwhelming, and all you can do is keep your head above the water and accept help.
You will reap the rewards eventually. The end.

So it was with great joy that when I won the grant, I brought it here with me.
I won't pretend that everything is easy. The transition to faculty is daunting and scary, but my colleagues and friends here are supportive and motivating.
I'm so excited to start mentoring my very own PhD student. 11/n

That's when Aarhus University @au.dk came into the picture. I interviewed with the department of agroecology and flew over for a visit. I've never felt so welcome in academia. Moreover, I felt safe for the first time in months. I was offered a position before my ERC grant interview. 10/n

Throughout all of this I was applying for tenure track jobs. I had some interviews, but no offers. I had made it into the interview stage of the ERC, but in March 2024 I was almost resigned to finding some remote big data job and settling down in a small village in Bretagne. 9/n

Many think that life in Israel went on as usual in 2023 and 2024. Let me tell you, it did not. Even my family in Tel Aviv, arguably one of the safer areas, went in and out of the bomb shelter. I can't even imagine what it was like for those living even slightly farther north or south. 8/n

The ERC kindly extended the deadline by 2 weeks, so I managed the writing and admin by the deadline.
My second year in France was far from productive or happy, but I was blessed with good friends who supported me while I tried to be there for my family in Tel Aviv. 7/n

I felt like my world was collapsing around me. Nothing and nowhere felt safe anymore. Even going to work was terrifying.
A couple of weeks later, with a looming deadline and shattered confidence, I went to England to stay with my cousin. It was there that I felt safe enough to be able to focus. 6/n

worked on setting up preliminary lab experiments and finishing backlog papers.
A few months later, I decided to apply for an ERC starting grant application. It was a long writing process, but I made good headway. The deadline was supposed to be November 1st, 2023. Then came October 7th. 5/n

A couple of months later, when we thought the worst was over, my dad was diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease. It's been almost 3 years since the initial diagnosis and only recently did the doctors find a medication that gives him some relief.
I decided to keep pushing anyway, and... 4/n

I got to France in the super hot summer of 2022, received an equally warm welcome from my hosts and lab members, and was so excited for the next two years.
A month into my stay my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately it was caught early, and I was happy to at least be able to fly home. 3/n

Many thanks to my colleagues and co-authors: Gary Trubl, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Erin Nuccio, Steve Blazewicz, and especially my hosts in France Graeme Nicol and Christina Hazard.

Funded by European Commission Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship DIVOBIS.

This road wasn't easy.

RNA phages are phosphate limited, and possibly as implicated as their DNA counterparts in soil microbiome dynamics following soil wetup (first rain after the dry season).

Out today in SBB!
doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

@soilmicrobes.bsky.social
1/n

Phosphate amendment drives bloom of RNA viruses after soil wet-up Soil rewetting after a dry period results in a surge of activity and succession in both microbial and DNA virus communities. Less is known about the r…

Our paper is out and is open access!

Phosphate amendment drives bloom of RNA viruses after soil wet-up.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@sieravirus.bsky.social @jeffinerca.bsky.social @graemenicol.bsky.social @christinahazard.bsky.social

Basin-scale dynamics and enrichment-enabled genomics of marine nitrifiers: seasonality, niches, interactions, and genomic uniqueness Nitrification occurs widely from the deep sea to animal holobionts, but the eco-evolutionary forces shaping the niches and dynamics of the lineages of the chemoautotrophic bacteria and archaea respons...

Marine nitrifies are incredibly important for the global nitrogen cycle.
Tangentially, I met Sookie at #ISME2024 and we had lots of fun testing out South African food and cocktails.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TiME · This is My Earth We buy lands rich in biodiversity and hand them over to local communities and NGOs to protect. You can vote and decide which land to save.

A beautiful initiative: crowdfunding to purchase and protect biodiversity hotspots worldwide via local NGOs. I'm so in!
this-is-my-earth.org

Going to #ViBioM2025 ? Interested in discovery of RNA viruses? Consider joining us 2 days early (May 11-12) in Lisbon for the 2025 RdRp summit @rdrpsummit.bsky.social ! Program and abstract submission will be available soon.
We'll talk advances in methodology from isolation to bioinformatics.

MOAR DOG NAU

Using stable isotope probing in the lab and wondering how it compares to reality in the field? Look no further. Bottom line: microcosms are more prone to opportunists, but aren't a horrible approximation. Considering labor/price differences I'd say they're acceptable
journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Distribution of alternative routes for completing denitrification in microbial genomes and metagenomes of global biomes Diverse microorganisms can execute one or more steps in denitrification, during which nitrate or nitrite is successively reduced into nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, and ultimately dinitrogen. Many of th...

Definitely saw this in mediterranean grassland via metatranscriptomics
www.biorxiv.org/node/4329066...

Wetting dry soil rapidly stimulates microbial activity and has important consequences for biogeochemical cycling. In our paper out today, we show that part of that response can be explained by how bacterial genomes are written (i.e. codon usage, nucleotide freq., genome size)
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

👋 Hi antiphage defense community, we are soon releasing an update of DefenseFinder.

We are doing our best to include all the great discoveries from the community, but with so much going on we might miss things.

Please answer wt preprints/papers with new systems or mail/git them to us. 🙏

I would allot a certain amount per student per year. Within reason, I think it should be paid for by the PI. I also paid my own and in retrospect I think it was a mistake. This should be a part of the travel and publication budget.

Soil fungi remain active and invest in storage compounds during drought independent of future climate conditions - Nature Communications How climate change will impact microbial community growth is unclear. Here, the authors use a field experiment with varying global change factors, finding fungal growth more drought-resistant than mic...

Fungi and isotopes alert! Great paper to start off the new year.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#PhD #position #phage please repost! Recruiting a PhD student!

New isolate genomes and global marine metagenomes resolve ecologically relevant units of SAR11 The bacterial order Pelagibacterales (SAR11) is among the most abundant and widely distributed microbial lineages across the global surface ocean, where it forms an integral component of the marine ca...

Cool! SAR11 phylogenomics and so many new (almost) complete genomes! Wish I could see the sup info for how 16S compares between them. Guess I'll have to be patient...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#PhD #position #alert

2 bioinfo PhD positions @ProbstLab @RESIST_CRC
#1 on microbial & epigenetic stress response in rivers
tinyurl.com/bdf8eu5a
#2 on virus-host stress response in rivers
tinyurl.com/43cjd6es (supervision Moraru)

Please share!