Cecilia G. Flocco

The Microflora Danica atlas of Danish environmental microbiomes - Nature Microflora Danica—an atlas of Danish environmental microbiomes—reveals that although human-disturbed habitats have high alpha diversity, species reoccur, revealing hidden homogeneity.

Microflora Danica: What can you learn from collecting and sequencing 10,000+ samples from a single country? Check out our new paper in @nature.com to find out. Incredible work led by Caitlin Singleton, Thomas B. N. Jensen, and Mads Albertsen from @aau.dk. 🦠🧫🧬
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

SILVA in 2026: a global core biodata resource for rRNA within the DSMZ digital diversity Abstract. Since 2007, the SILVA database (https://www.arb-silva.de/) has served as a comprehensive resource providing quality-checked, aligned, and classif

🧬🖥️SILVA in 2026: a global core biodata resource for rRNA within the DSMZ digital diversity

📑The new publication about the #SILVA database for the #NAR database issue is now online.

👉 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Gorgeous red and green aurorae over a lighted city below.

Gorgeous picture of red and green aurorae over a lighted city below.

I am on my way home to Toronto and the aurorae are absolutely phenomenal.

If you are anywhere in the northern half of the continent, get outside and look up! Or better still, put your camera on a 10 second exposure and point it up.

A scholar examines a postcard in the Harry Ransom Center's reading room. Her photo is framed by a blue square with "FELLOWSHIP APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN" written on each side. That image is positioned in front of a section of the etched windows on the Ransom Center's first floor, which showcase highlights from our collections. More info about the Ransom Center's fellowships: https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/

Do you:
-Love #literature? 📚
-Adore #art? 🎨
-Fancy #film or #photography? 📽️📸
-Thrill to the #theater? 🎭
-Relish #RareBooks? 📖

Apply for @ransomcenter.bsky.social's 2026-27 #fellowships!

Learn more & submit a proposal by Nov. 3: www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/

#Humanities #Research #CFP #CFA 🗃️📜

How AI Agents Will Change the Web as We Know It What happens when AI agents become the primary users of the Internet? Discover the potential benefits and the security risks of this coming digital shift.

How AI Agents Will Change the Web as We Know It spectrum.ieee.org/agentic-web?...

Yesterday I was discussing the intractibility of glioblastoma with a neuroscience colleague--this could be transformative 🧪

Job opening at the DSMZ @leibniz-dsmz.bsky.social
@dsmzd3.bsky.social
#microsky

As someone with Connexin-26 (GJB2) mutations, I've managed to so far study most forms of hearing loss that do NOT involve GJB2.

As a cell biologist, I've managed to study ER-organelle related processes and disorders with minimal connection to hearing loss.

Now this paper drops.

Throwback to my lab stories for a #Halloween-inspired #microbiology snapshot:
Reading hemolysis halos on a blood agar plate produced by a bacterium isolated from a medieval manuscript. 🩸 🧫 📜

Blood agar is used to grow fastidious organisms & to differentiate bacteria based on hemolytic properties.

Birdeye picture of 9 de Julio Avenue in Buenos Aires, Argentina, lined with pink- purple rows of blooming jacarandá trees. Source (en español) https://www.mdzol.com/sociedad/2021/11/3/jacarandas-como-llegaron-buenos-aires-donde-encontrarlos-198414.html

This time of the year, pink and purple hues cut through #BuenosAires city's constructed #landscape -the #jacarandá trees were brought from the north of 🇦🇷 by french architect & paisajist #CarlosThays ca. 1890, & their splendor enjoyed since then. #urban #primavera #spring

This is extended data figure 1, which shows photographs of different families of scleractinians.

Some ancient stony corals were able to survive extreme environmental changes, which suggests that some modern species could possess some resilience to the effects of climate change, according to research in Nature. go.nature.com/4hrpLpi 🌊 🧪

#Microsky -have your say! ✍️

Our paper on the first UV-sensitive rhodopsin channel, the Apusomonad rhodopsin, has been published in PNAS! 🎉
This is a new family distinct from canonical ChRs with a novel transport mechanism🦠—paving the way for future multi-wavelength optogenetics! 🔬
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
#OpenAccess

Canada Post features nature´s recyclers 🇨🇦📯

"Stamps highlight beauty and importance of hashtag #fungi in Canadian #ecosystems"

🔗 www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-c...
#microsky #biodiversity

luckily, there are alternatives to PubMed, see libguides.exeter.ac.uk/c.php?g=7252...

Warm Autumn palette on Science Campus Braunschweig-Süd 🍂🍁
www.sciencecampus-bs.de/en/
@leibniz-dsmz.bsky.social @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social
@tu-braunschweig.de
@fraunhofer.bsky.social

Comparative genomics of endemic Staphylococcus aureus ST1 in New Zealand | mSphere This study presents a comprehensive genomic analysis of S. aureus ST1, a lineage that is unusually dominant in both bovine and human populations in New Zealand. Leveraging New Zealand’s geographical i...

🚨New paper out!

Why does Staphylococcus aureus ST1 dominate in BOTH people🧑‍⚕️ & cows🐄 in New Zealand… but rarely elsewhere?

Our latest comparative genomics study unpacks this mystery👇

📄 doi.org/10.1128/msph...

@asm.org

#AMR #Genomics #OneHealth

🖥️🧬💻
#AcademicSky
#MicroSky
🧪🧫🦠

And that's how you integrate digital elements into an exhibition. Part of the temporary "China's Dinosaur World" at the Shanghai Natural History Museum, China. Closing this November.

Video source: Shanghai Let's Meet

#MicroSky
𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘪 vs 𝘉𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴

what a cool story! thx ákos for the shoutout 🙏

#hpbio

After 10 years of work, a complete telomere-to-telomere gap-free genome for C. elegans finally exists: it has 106 Mb rather than the textbook 100.3 Mb, and up to 366 additional genes.
genome.cshlp.org/content/35/8...

PhyloNaP: a user-friendly database of Phylogeny for Natural Product-producing enzymes Phylogenetic analysis is widely used to predict enzyme function, yet building annotated and reusable trees is labor-intensive and requires extensive knowledge about the specific enzymes. Existing reso...

Happy to share our newest preprint. PhyloNaP as a user friendly database of phylogeny for enzymes involved in natural product production and as public repository for well curated phylogenetic trees. Happy Tree Building!!!
#phylogeny #secmet #bioinformatics

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Anything but safe: Using VPN can bear immense risks – DW – 09/20/2025 A new study reveals that virtual private network (VPN) connections provide less safety than widely believed. The findings are alarming, especially for users in authoritarian states.

www.dw.com/en/virtual-p...
#privacy #vpn #cybersecurity

Non-model bacteria as platforms for endogenous gene expression in synthetic biology - Nature Reviews Bioengineering Microbial synthetic biology might greatly benefit from the application of non-model organisms, which have been evolutionarily optimized for the production of specific proteins and metabolites. This Review discusses the design and application of endogenous production in non-model organisms.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

#microsky #phagesky #synbio

⬇️point of view matters

Screenshot of the new SILVA website

🖥️ New design for #SILVA

#SILVA 🧬 joined @leibniz-dsmz.bsky.social 🧫 and the @dsmzd3.bsky.social in 2023. This is now also visible on the redesigned website 🖌️, which has been restructured reorganized in a first step towards an improved and modernized #SILVA!

Try it out at www.arb-silva.de

Assistant Professor Plant-Microbe Interactions We seek a creative, collaborative, and visionary plant biologist to establish an internationally recognized research program at the forefront of plant-microbe interactions aimed at understanding how t...

The Department of Biology at Colorado State University is hiring an Assistant Professor in the area of plant-microbe interactions! Please spread the word!

jobs.colostate.edu/postings/165...

Happy International Microorganism Day! 🎉

Today, we are celebrating the tiny powerhouses that have a massive impact on our world. From the bacteria in our gut to the fungi that give us antibiotics, these incredible organisms are essential to life.

Let's make some noise for the microscopic!

📢 PLEASE RT!
❄️ M2 Masters Internship: Metagenomic analysis of microbial cold adaptation in the cryosphere
🧬 Compile & curate ice nucleation & cold-adaptation protein database
🖥️ Build HMM profiles
🦠 Analyze existing metagenomic data using HMMs

☀️ Marseille, France
Apply by 15 Oct

Based on feedback from applicants, reviewers and broader research community, the ERC Scientific Council decided to make changes in the 2026–27 calls for proposal for research funding.

More details from the ERC President 👉 europa.eu/!hP3WWF

What’s your take on this? Tell us! 👇