Ayush Valecha

We are excited to release our first official article, "Physics and Biology - A Stable Marriage?" where @akshitg.bsky.social talks about his research, his journey in academia, and insights into theoretical biology. Read it using the link below!
@milanvijay.bsky.social @arhan-vora.bsky.social

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots

“if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist’s fault... It’s their signature on the diagnosis.

This is...an “accountability sink”. The radiologist’s job is not really to oversee the AI’s work, it is to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes."

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Thrilled to share our work in @natcomms.nature.com!

Thankful for a great collaboration ☺️

Grateful for the support of the @humboldt-foundation.de and the @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social

More details below.

Excited to share our grad student Maxine Pruvot’s (@maxinepruvot.bsky.social) first PhD preprint: 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴

🔗 Full text: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.12.705374v1

How specific are heritable symbioses?

And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species?

We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com!

1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

On this fabulous day celebrating André Citroën's birthday 🥖🚗, I’m happy to share my main paper from my postdoc in @jrpenades.bsky.social Lab.
If you want to hear about how plasmid evolution is driven by mobile genetic elements, please come and read this preprint!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

the evolutionary and ecological consequences of cooperation

the evolutionary and ecological consequences of cooperation

Huge thanks to @asn-amnat.bsky.social for inviting our review on the evolutionary and ecological consequences of cooperation. @annadewar.bsky.social @asgriffin.bsky.social @lauriebelch.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

We understand a great deal about how and why cooperation evolves, but what about its long-term consequences?

Great to see our new review on this out now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social!

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

Wrapping up a productive week: very glad to have contributed to this review on how spatial structure shapes microbial ecology and evolution, led by @marcelbaecker.bsky.social, @bedutilh.bsky.social, @bramvandijk.bsky.social and many others. doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Expert opinion

Research briefings in @nature.com about our latest study of the gut microbiome of infants in nurseries!

This work was a true multidisciplinary team effort and a testament to how science can be particularly impactful when built alongside the community. — @livi-ricci.bsky.social and
Nicola Segata

Limits to the evolution of metabolic dependency in spatially structured microbial communities In microbial communities, evolutionary processes can lead to loss of biosynthetic pathways, creating metabolic dependencies. The Black Queen Hypothesi…

Excited to share our new paper led by Divvya Ramesh: Limits to the evolution of metabolic dependency in spatially structured microbial communities 🧫
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In #GENETICS, @hildeschneemann.bsky.social and John Welch introduce a simple fitness landscape model to predict hybrid fitness with arbitrary ploidy and an arbitrary number of hybridizing lineages using data from #maize and rye. buff.ly/E24fZsM

Spatial structure: Shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities Abstract. Most microbes grow in spatially structured communities, and this profoundly shapes their ecology and evolution. At the microscale, short interact

Spatial structure: Shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities

@femsjournals.bsky.social Microbiology Review by @marcelbaecker.bsky.social et al
from @bedutilh.bsky.social @bramvandijk.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/femsre/advan...

If Bad Bunny can cover the history of Puerto Rico, colonialism, transatlantic slavery, hemispheric consciousness, as well as contemporary life and politics in under 14 minutes, you can do your 15- or 20-minute conference presentation with time to spare.

Talk alert!

Third talk in the series "Applications of Network Science"!

Featuring Guim Aguadé-Gorgorió, a Post-Doctoral fellow at ISEM.

Guim will be covering minimal models of co-existence in complex ecology!

🗓️ Feb 9, 2026 | ⏱️ 8:30 PM IST

Join at: northeastern.zoom.us/j/9832742702...

Diagram of the consumer-resource vaginal microbiota model. The authors track the dynamics of two vaginal microbiota types (CST I and CST IV associated bacteria; C1 and C4) and the shared (Rs) and private resource (Rp) utilised by the two communities. The arrows among compartments represent density-dependent interactions including resource-mediated bacterial growth; lactic-acid-mediated density regulation (self-regulation and antagonism); resource supply; sialic acid cleaving; and background clearance of microbes and resources. The representative species and, or molecules for each model component are listed. The corresponding mathematical model based on ordinary differential equations is detailed in the Methods section of the paper.

The #vaginal #microbiome is shaped by bacterial access to specific nutritional resources. This study uses a resource-based model & clinical data to identify key ecological mechanisms underlying #microbiota composition & potential #BacterialVaginosis interventions @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3NY2ssu

Cluster dispersal shapes microbial diversity during community assembly Author summary Microbial communities, such as those living in the gut, play important roles in host health, yet we still do not fully understand how their diversity is established. In many cases, thes...

🦠 How do microbes arrive together, and why does it matter for #microbial #diversity?
👉 Read the paper: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Published in @plos.org Computational Biology

🎉 Congratulations to authors Loïc Marrec & Sonja Lehtinen @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social @sib.swiss

Only 3 more days to get a 20% discount on ISEMPH membership! Use code "EB2026" at checkout. Membership pays for itself if you come to even one meeting in 3 years. Register for the July meeting also, refund is easy if you can't make it after all. https://
isemph.org

Read the accompanying News & Views commentary from Martina Dal Bello 👇

"From death comes diversity" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Free to read: rdcu.be/e2fBU

Excited for the sixth instalment of our meeting on infectious disease dynamics!

We are hiring🚨

We are looking for 2 postdocs and 1 reasearch assistant to work in the ERC project “Tipping dynamics and resilience in adapting ecological systems” at @eawag.bsky.social
Find the description of each position and the link to apply in the thread ⬇️

Chemical inhibition of a bacterial immune system The rise of antibiotic resistance motivates a revived interest in phage therapy. However, bacteria possess dozens of anti-phage immune systems that co…

Chemical inhibition of a bacterial immune system
#bacteria #bacteriophage #microbiology #scienceSky

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

Plasmids, a molecular cornerstone of antimicrobial resistance in the One Health era - Nature Reviews Microbiology In this Review, Castañeda-Barba, Top and Stalder use the One Health framework to synthesize the recent literature on the ecological and evolutionary factors that determine the successful local and glo...

Plasmids, a molecular cornerstone of antimicrobial resistance in the One Health era - www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Plant Pathogens Moonlighting as Beneficial Insect Symbionts Herbivorous insects can shape the epidemiology of disease in plants by vectoring numerous phytopathogens. While the consequences of infection are often well-characterized in the host plant, the extent...

Can plant pathogens boost vector fitness?

Together with @hassansalem.bsky.social, we review how phytopathogens can spread further by moonlighting as insect symbionts 🪲 More on this nifty lifestyle in @annualreviews.bsky.social!

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

New paper out in @pnas.org, and it made the cover! 👁️

We represent plasmids as circles and mutations as dots, resembling an eye, because in this paper we literally 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ plasmids evolve.

‼️Check Paula’s 🧵 and the paper👇

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Predation by soil protists shifts bacterial metabolism from competitive to cooperative interactions Many soil protists are bacterivores, yet how protist predation reshapes bacterial metabolic interactions and functions remains poorly understood. Here…

Predation by soil protists shifts bacterial metabolism from competitive to cooperative interactions

-in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social from Wu Xiong (Qirong Shen)
with Stefan Geisen, Alex Jousset

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

Depiction of a public good game among two players

Yesterday, two papers appeared in @pnas.org, to which I contributed to. Both papers deal with strategic behavior in repeated games. Apart from that, they are quite different. A 🧵
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

📣 *Abstract submission by January 31st*

"Host adaptations to viral infections” International Meeting
May 10th-13th 2026
@cnrs.fr Station Biologique Roscoff, Brittany, France

Register & Join us +amazing international speakers!
#CNRS @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social #IRP

www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/evenement...

Happy to share my solo-authored Perspective "An Interpretation, Survey, and Outlook of Microbial Macroecology"! Making time these last few months to take stock of the patterns us microbial ecologists examine + models we invoke has been invaluable. Feedback welcome!

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Evolutionary transitions and reversions in individuality Abstract. Biological individuality exists in different forms—unicellular, multicellular, colonial, etc.—which have arisen through evolutionary transitions

NEW PAPER with @arvidagren.bsky.social and Manus Patten on evolutionary reversions in individuality now out (as an advance article) at @jevbio.bsky.social (see academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...). Thread below! [1/8]
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