A. Murat Eren (Meren)

Widespread and intron-rich mirusviruses are predicted to reproduce in nuclei of unicellular eukaryotes - Nature Microbiology Environmental metagenomic explorations show that Mirusviricota lineages lack essential replication and transcription genes and contain spliceosomal introns, suggesting nuclear reproduction.

Check out our latest paper on mirusviruses, one of the most remarkable new groups of protist viruses - extremely diverse, carry lots of spliceosomal introns (including new homing introns) and are at the evolutionary crossroads between tailed phages and herpesviruses! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

a man with long hair and a beard is wearing a fur glove ALT: a man with long hair and a beard is wearing a fur glove

Mundane? MUNDANE?

contig-circularity-report-txt A TXT-type anvi'o artifact. This artifact is typically generated, used, and/or exported by anvi'o (and not provided by the user)..

Here is an example report if you want to see what the output looks like:

anvio.org/help/main/ar...

anvi-report-circularity An anvi'o program. Predict contig circularity from paired-end read alignments in a given BAM file.

Need to predict whether a given contig in your assembly was circular in the environment?

Here is a new program in #anvio ecosystem that will look into your BAM file and use paired-end read mapping data to conservatively assess circularity:

anvio.org/help/main/pr...

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
🖥️🧬🦠

Headshots of Veronika, Jill, and Alanna

Out today in Science Magazine — First author Veronika Kivenson and PIs Jill Banfield (The Banfield Lab) and Alanna Schepartz team up to reveal a new genetic code in #archaea, with implications for #methane and #climate, and #bioengineering! Learn more: https://ow.ly/Kuem50Xurh0

Are you are working with seqeunces? Does diversity matter to you? Well, then you will love #anvio 🥲

.. and we were lucky to receive a generally positive feedback from the attendees (read more of the survey results here: anvio.org/blog/oldenbu...).

We strive to do better, come and be the judge of it yourself!

Just so you know, the previous iteration of the workshop went quite well (see more photos here: anvio.org/blog/oldenbu...)

We have a date for the free-to-attend #anvio workshop and ECR Symposium for 2026, and we look forward to meeting you at the @hifmb.de in Oldenburg, Germany!

Please find more information on the venue, program, and the application form here, and spread the word 😇

anvio.org/workshops/20...

ECR connection: Meet Meren when you need to A means for ECRs to get advice from a senior scientist outside of their support network

Starting this week, I set aside one hour each week to meet ECRs outside my group who want to discuss career development, mentorship, or any non-technical professional questions.

Here is a blog that explains my motivation for this and how to schedule a meeting:

merenlab.org/2025/11/16/E...

Different disciplines have different writing styles already. I would read bullet points, I would read books. And bullet points can make art too.

Perhaps a bigger question is who holds the power to dictate how scientists write, and how they obtained that control.

This paper has been a must! Great collaboration with @mkrupovic.bsky.social and @yifanzhou.bsky.social, a N&V by a legend of halophilic archaea tinyurl.com/yc3dcv72, and one picture of one of our expeditions to Dallol making the cover of the November issue of @natmicrobiol.nature.com

rdcu.be/eLtCH

That's ok though isn't it. We no longer fly the mess of a thing Wright brothers put together, but we still remember and celebrate them for transforming aviation :)

Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples Abstract. Metagenomic sequencing enables the in-depth study of microbes and their functions in humans, animals, and the environment. While sequencing data

Great to see this finally published!

Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples

now out in @narjournal.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

A huge service to the community! Congratulations 🎉

Competitive metagenomic read recruitment explained A tutorial on the nuts and bolts of competitive read recruitment

I wrote a new tutorial on competitive metagenomic read recruitment (and profiling of the results with #anvio), for those of us nerds who would like to get their hands dirty with data:

anvio.org/tutorials/co...

eLife Assessment This important study reports the results of efforts to replicate two phenomena of significant interest to early-career scientists and scientific policymakers: the Matthew effect and the early-career setback effect. Several previous studies of these effects have focused on early-career researchers with grant proposals that fell just below or just above a funding threshold. Those just above the threshold were more likely to be successful when they applied for funding later in the career (an example of the well-known Matthew effect), while those just below were more likely to go on to have stronger publication records (the early-career setback effect). In this study the Matthew effect was found to be robust across funders, and to generalize from those close to the funding threshold to the whole population. The early-career setback effect was not robust across funders and did not generalize to the whole population. The evidence reported is convincing.

Evidence from 14 research funding programmes confirms that early winners tend to keep winning (Matthew effect). But the idea that an early setback makes you stronger later doesn’t replicate widely.
buff.ly/UEtcRd4

As good << As elegant :p

SCIE exists for lazy evaluation panels that lack the expertise to assess scientific impact themselves to 'know' what journal names to look for in people's CVs.

We need more eLifes. We need to flood this industry with creative, independent, non-profit publishing models for science.

Remember that SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded) is owned by Clarivate, a company that sells subscription-based services.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that mainstream science publishing treats this profit-driven corporation as the authority for what counts in research publishing.

Annual Report: 2024 in review In 2024, eLife continued with its efforts to make peer review and publishing better for science and scientists.

Read the annual report from @elife.bsky.social:

elifesciences.org/inside-elife...

I welcome that eLife is no longer indexed by SCIE. And I admire that they have not backed away from their innovative model, which makes me even more motivated to send our best work to eLife.

The position is at the @hifmb.de, and there will be a lot of opportunities to interact and collaborate with groups of diverse background and expertise.

Apply yourself, send it to your colleagues or trainees; I don't know, DO SOMETHING, IT IS A VERY TIMELY AND EXCITING PROJECT :)

Please share this with anyone who may be interested in a post-doc in Germany:

jobs.awi.de/Vacancies/20...

This is quite an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of what is known regarding the molecular basis of the formation and demise of photosymbiotic relationships in marine habitats.

Habitat-specificity in SAR11 is associated with a few genes under high selection Abstract. The order Pelagibacterales (SAR11) is the most abundant group of heterotrophic bacteria in the global surface ocean, where individual sublineages

I'm delighted our paper is out: doi.org/10.1093/isme...
With new SAR11 isolate genomes and time-series metagenomes, we reveal coastal and offshore SAR11 ecotypes, identify associated metabolic traits, and pinpoint selective gene sweeps as a likely evolutionary driver to niche partitioning. 🌊🦠

A hydrothermal vent on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Hot, mineral-rich fluids are distributed throughout the ocean via the dispersion cloud, known as the plume. The photo was taken during the M190 research expedition with the MARUM-QUEST4000 remotely operated vehicle. The arm of the robot holds a temperature lance into the plume to measure the temperature there. Photo: MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen.

A new review study shows the invisible transport pathways for #iron through #hydrothermal plumes.
More on Iron’s Irony here ➡️ www.marum.de/en/Iron-sIro...
@icbm-uol.bsky.social #ConstructorUniversity @geomarkiel.bsky.social @awi.de @marumunibremen.bsky.social

This little clue sent me into a rabbit hole, and only after 15 minutes of reading the original exchange and linked documents from within it I'm afraid I permanently lost a few IQ points...

My first thought was that this probably some AI flop. The authors asked an LLM for help, and this is what they got, and didn't have the resources to triple-check it.

So I asked ChatGPT to see if that's how they messed up this bad .. and now I wish the authors had done the same.

One of the things I find hardest to get used to in science is seeing how scientists can completely mischaracterize approaches developed by others just to justify their own. Here is a fresh example in which the highlighted statements are 100% objectively wrong about what PlasX or MobMess does

You know what is great to know? A weak logic is weak even when it is coated with layers and layers of well-spoken words and beautiful imagery.

Trying to solve struggles of emotion with the power of logic never looks elegant. And that's precisely why there will always be room for genuine art.