Tapan Goel

Quantitative Biology postdocs (x3) available at University of Maryland, College Park. Best consideration date is March 13, to start in summer 2026. Please share and consider joining us!

umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...

Please join us for a @smtpb.bsky.social panel discussion about publishing theory in biology w/ @joshuasweitz.bsky.social (Co-Chief Editor of J Theor Biol), Mark Lewis (Advising Editor for J Math Biol & Bull Math Biol), and me (Theor Pop Biol)

13 Feb 2026 9:00AM–10:00AM PST

smtpb.org/event-6520871

Really excited to share our work on the risk and interpretation of 'breakthrough infections' amidst declines in vaccination rates and a sustained infectious disease outbreaks.

Screenshot from GRC portal confirming microbial population biology meeting June 27, 2027 in Andover, New Hampshire.

It’s officially happening folks! The Microbial Population Biology Gordon Research Conference is back in Andover, New Hampshire starting June 27th of 2027!
See you there!!

@wcratcliff.bsky.social @ksbakes.bsky.social @surtlab.bsky.social

#microsky #mevosky

Viruses aren’t all bad: In the ocean, some help fuel the food web – a new study shows how Marine viruses attack cells, but the material that spills out helps fuels marine life around the world.

New with @tn-marine-micro.bsky.social, exploring how viral-mediated infection and lysis can fuel the marine food web:

theconversation.com/viruses-aren...

Why I don't like arguments and debates I keep a perennial list of topics that had made me think, “ooh, that would make a good post.” The present one has sat there for years, but I never was inspired to flesh it out until now, prompted by a...

For a different perspective on using debates as a form of student engagement from Terry McGlynn's excellent blog:
scienceforeveryone.science/why-i-dont-l...

Congratulations!!! Excited to have you here at UMD!

Looking forward to an amazing week of science with old friends and new!

Thanks for getting the group going! Looking forward to meeting some old friends and some new ones this coming week!

Huge thanks to @joshuasweitz.bsky.social and @beckettstephen.bsky.social , and the weitzgroup for their guidance and support! (14/14)

This work was supported by the Simons Foundation, the Chaires Blaise Pascal program and funding from Montgomery County, Maryland and The University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State, a formal collaboration between the UMCP and UMBC. (13/14)

Check out our paper here: academic.oup.com/ve/article/1... and the associated code here: zenodo.org/records/1478... (12/14)

Moreover, temperate strategies help mitigate local extinction in fluctuating environments, maintaining a high survival probability across cycles, unlike viruses that only pass horizontally or vertically. (11/14)

On the other hand, temperate strategies persist when there are conflicting selection pressures on the short- and long-term since they balance short-term host exploitation and long-term lysogen maintenance, while obligate lytic strategies may go extinct. (10/14)

As a result, obligate lytic virus persist and are evolutionarily stable. (9/14)

We can independently control the short- and long-term selection pressures by changing the number of hosts added and by changing the filtrate, respectively, e.g., when lots of hosts are added and only free viruses are passaged, lysis is favored in the short- and long-term. (8/14)

This framework is based on the serial passage experiments typically done in virology and mimics “boom-bust” dynamics in marine environments. (7/14)

To do so, we simulated an experiment: Susceptible hosts inoculated with viruses during a growth phase. Next, a fraction of the viruses and lysogens from the culture are used to inoculate a fresh batch of hosts (filtration phase). These steps are repeated over and over. (6/14)

We tried to extend these results to the long-term, incorporating environmental fluctuations and analyzing how those fluctuations drive the evolution of temperate viral strategies. (5/14)

Population level models suggest that temperate strategies excel when host availability is low and viral mortality is high. But these models only account for short-term dynamics. (4/14)

First off, lysogeny presents an interesting conundrum: the process of integrating a virus into a cellular genome and replicated with the host can be slower than lysis and seems to yield fewer offspring! Yet, temperate viruses persist in many environments. (3/14)

Takeaway: we showed that being temperate can evolve under conflicting short-term and long-term selection pressures, and that it provides insurance against environmental stochasticity. Read on for more details: (2/14)

The paper is inspired by a 40-year-old question in virus/phage ecology: “Why be temperate?” (as Bruce Levin & Frank Stewart put it), or “Why do virus sometimes kill their host (lysis) and sometimes integrate with their hosts to form lysogens.”(1/14)

🚀Excited to share our new paper out in
@Virus_Evo
: ‘Eco-evolutionary dynamics of temperate phages in periodic environments’. Co-authored by
@beckettstephen.bsky.social
and
@joshuasweitz.bsky.social
!

Full article: tinyurl.com/yeyv76tp

A thread 🧵

I'm presenting a poster. Looking forward to seeing you!!😊

Are you coming to the GRC in Andover?

SCIMaP - Impacts of Federal Cuts to Science and Medical Research Developed by an interdisciplinary research team, this website shows how funding cuts reduce economic activity and employment nationwide

scienceimpacts.org

It was so much fun to meet up with aquatic viral ecology colleagues in the area and learn about all the amazing science everyone is doing! Thanks to @beckettstephen.bsky.social for leading the organizing effort and to all the attendees. Looking forward to more meetings and collaborations!

Thanks for hosting @vishuguttal.bsky.social :). It was great to be back and share work that I've been doing with @beckettstephen.bsky.social and @joshuasweitz.bsky.social.