Catherine Armbruster

The Humble Microbe Could Help Us Understand Life Itself Unlocking the basic science of microbes, especially those that live in extreme environments, could help us find life elsewhere in the universe.

Microbiologist Paula Welander studies fossils, but not dinosaur bones or ammonite imprints. Instead, she looks for microscopic clues left behind by microbes that lived millions of years ago.

My department at UTK is hiring! 🧪🧫 We are hiring two Assistant Professors, one in Microbial Drivers of Chronic Disease and one in Quantitative Microbe-Plant-Environment Interactions! Come join our growing department of microbiologists. Knoxville is a great place to live!

We had our first guest lecturer in my Ecology class @cmuscience.bsky.social today! Dr. Delaney Miller from the Handelsman lab at Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (@widofficial.bsky.social) & HHMI gave an absolutely beautiful talk on how microbes in the rhizosphere impact plant development.

Faculty Professor Associate - Full-Time | Vaughn Cooper We are recruiting Faculty microbiologists in three (3) different, complementary, and collaborative areas at the University of Pittsburgh associated with the School of Medicine. 1) Fundamental researc...

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro
2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute
3) Center for Vaccine Research
🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

Serotype swapping in Klebsiella spp. by plug-and-play Understanding how complex, multi-gene systems evolve and function across genetic backgrounds is a central question in molecular evolution. While such systems often impose costs through epistatic inter...

How complex functions, with important physiological and evolutionary impacts get repeatedly and efficiently transferred across genomes?
That’s what we explored using one of the fastest-evolving loci in Bacteria: the capsule locus.
The paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Thread👇

AlphaFold model of the complex formed between HK2 and the SOX10 5′UTR (189–204 nts). The predicted RNA structure is shown in cyan, and HK2 protein is shown in green. HK2 residues and SOX10 mRNA nucleotides at the interaction interface are highlighted in red. Inset: schematic representation of the secondary structure of the SOX10 5′UTR (189–204 nts) predicted by Mfold, with the putative HK2-binding region (194–198 nts) marked in red.

‬‬Hexokinase 2 (HK2) is known for its metabolic role in #glycolysis. This study shows that it also functions as an #RNAbindingProtein that regulates mRNA translation, particularly of SOX10, promoting #melanoma cell proliferation independently of glycolysis @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3ViI1qL

Long-term monitoring of a North American cheese cave reveals mechanisms and consequences of fungal adaptation Using a unique longitudinal sampling approach, Louw et al. demonstrate how a cheese-associated Penicillium population has adapted in an artisan cheese production facility in Vermont, USA. Adaptation i...

Long-term monitoring of a North American cheese cave reveals mechanisms and consequences of fungal adaptation

Penicillium solitum over 8 years in a cheese cave => green-to-white shift

@currentbiology.bsky.social from @benwolfe.bsky.social with @kellerlab.bsky.social

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Neuroscientist Alison Barth @cmu.edu on the science behind Severance & work/life separation 🤓 www.cmu.edu/mcs/news-eve...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa supports the survival of Prevotella melaninogenica in a cystic fibrosis lung polymicrobial community through metabolic cross-feeding | mBio Polymicrobial interactions impact disease outcomes in pwCF who suffer from chronic respiratory infections. Previous work established a CF-relevant polymicrobial community model that allows experimenta...

Happy to finally see this out! Bassam El Halfi (@bassamhafi.bsky.social - my first rotation student when I started my post-doc in @geiselbiofilm.bsky.social) did an amazing job investigating mechanisms of interspecies metabolic interactions. Check it out! #microsky

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Awesome faculty position alert! Tenure-track assistant professor position in Evolutionary Biology, with a focus on organismal responses to environmental change.

Please help spread the word!
apply.interfolio.com/173889

On our way to the Parsek/Woz retreat in Leavenworth, WA!

Here is a demonstration of ice nucleation protein made by Pseudomonas syringe in my #Bio350 #Micronauts in my #Microbiology course at @univpugetsound @ASMicrobiology

Bacterial cell widening alters periplasmic size and activates envelope stress responses
Kerwyn Huang, @typaslab.bsky.social et al find that E. coli outer-membrane protein RcsF senses reduced periplasm thickness due to increased cell width, & activates Rcs signaling
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Differentiation of bronchial (BEpC) and nasal (NEpC) primary epithelial cells and mucus harvesting. (A) schematic overview of primary cell differentiation and mucus harvesting. Following a 4-week differentiation period at air-liquid interface (ALI), mucus was harvested in ultrapure H2O at 4, 6, and 8 weeks of ALI culture. The illustration was created at Biorender.com. B-C BEpC (B) and NEpC (C) from three different donors were differentiated and grown at air-liquid interface (ALI) for 28 days. Transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) was monitored at the time points indicated. Shown are means ± standard deviations from two independent wells.

By comparing bronchial and nasal mucus, researchers find that mucus' ability to neutralize influenza A virus varies with the anatomical origin and correlates with the abundance of triglycerides & specific sialylated glycoproteins and glycolipids. #mSphere: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Winter Shelter Bins for Community Cats FAQ Help outdoor kitties stay warm this winter with inexpensive foam coolers!

www.aspcapro.org/resource/win...

The newish PI styrofoam box collection to winter cat shelter pipeline 👩‍🔬

The nature of mutation: a legacy of bacterial genetics Abstract. A central question in the fields of genetics and evolution was the nature and origin of spontaneous mutation. Bacterial genetic experiments throu

I cannot fully put into words what publishing this Review has meant to me, so I leave you with how we closed the paper.

"The humble bacterium is still a relevant tool for the study of the underlying mechanisms that are conserved throughout life."

🧪🧫🧬📚
doi.org/10.1093/gene...

We are hiring! The Dept of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics is looking for faculty at the Assistant or Associate professor level (tenure track). Please consider joining our vibrant microbiology and immunology community at the University of Pittsburgh School of medicine

Our high-precision metagenomic strain caller, PHLAME, is now published in Cell Reports!! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

PHLAME works on tough sample types -- including those with coexisting strains of a species and low depth.

STEPS To It Announcing a new program, called STEPS, to simulate the dynamics of evolving microbial populations.

Excited to share new #program, STEPS, which can simulate #dynamics of the E. coli Long-Term Evolution Experiment (#LTEE) or other microbes in serial transfer regime.

telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/s...

STEPS developed by @devinmlake.bsky.social, Zachary Matson, Minako Izutsu, and me.

Environmental adaptations in metagenomes revealed by deep learning - BMC Biology Background Deep learning has emerged as a powerful tool in the analysis of biological data, including the analysis of large metagenome data. However, its application remains limited due to high comput...

Environmental adaptations in metagenomes revealed by deep learning bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #jcampubs

Metagenomes and 1,313 metagenome-assembled genomes from a northern Gulf of Mexico coastal time series - Scientific Data Scientific Data - Metagenomes and 1,313 metagenome-assembled genomes from a northern Gulf of Mexico coastal time series

Do you like coastal/estuarine microbiology, time-series data, and/or metagenomics? Have we got a dataset for you #NSFfunded

Metagenomes and 1,313 metagenome-assembled genomes from a northern Gulf of Mexico coastal time series www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Engineering natural microbial communities: harnessing synthetic communities for bioremediation Microbial bioremediation, a technology using microbial metabolism to degrade or transform environmental pollutants, has garnered significant attention…

Engineering natural microbial communities: harnessing synthetic communities for bioremediation

#CurrOpinMicrobiol from Xihui Xu, Nanjing Agricultural University

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

Hypermutable hotspot enables the rapid evolution of self/non-self recognition genes in Dictyostelium Cells require highly polymorphic receptors to perform accurate self/non-self recognition. In the amoeba Dicytostelium discoideum, polymorphic TgrB1 & TgrC1 proteins are used to bind sister cells and e...

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The evolutionary tale of tailocins in Pectobacterium show genus-wide homologous recombination and inversions of tail fiber genes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.30.667677v1

Keynote Speakers Nicole Dubilier and Matthew Parsek

What to expect at the ASM Biofilms Conference

Extremely proud of my postdoc Dr. Elizabeth Knorr for successfully mentoring 5 undergrad research students through several cloning projects this summer!!! Congrats to the mini Knorr Lab! @cmuscience.bsky.social

illustration of a person peering through DNA helices at animal silhouettes

Kin selection has sparked debate for decades.

Now, a landmark study offers a generalised version of Hamilton’s rule, capturing the messy, nonlinear reality of evolution and cooperation.

Explained in our latest Insight Article: buff.ly/EKfPBhH
#EvoBio #Evolution

Headed home after a fabulous week in RI for the Microbial Adhesion & Signal Transduction GRC. We even had a critical mass of Parsek/Woz alums for a photo!

Here's a fun plasmid from many many years ago I just resurrected. This is p100bp, a ladder-making vector that produces a DNA ladder when cut with EcoRI. I got this from the legendary Open Biotechnology company that sadly went under. Looking forward to testing this and adding to my shop.