Duncan Kountz

Evolutionary bioenergetics of sporulation | PNAS Energy is required for the expression and maintenance of complex traits. In many habitats, however, free energy available to support biosynthesis i...

Evolutionary bioenergetics of sporulation

"energetic cost of sporulation in units of ATP by integrating time-resolved genome, transcriptome, and proteome profiles"
#Bsubtilis #MicroSky

#PNAS by @ckarakoc.bsky.social @shoestrapped.bsky.social @jaytlennon.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Does anyone know a good commercial source of rumen fluid in Europe (Germany in particular)? Maybe I just need to start cultivating a relationship with farmers...

Delineation of the Active Site of MtgB, a Cobalamin-dependent Glycine Betaine Methyltransferase The MttB superfamily member MtgB catalyzes the methylation of a cognate corrinoid protein with glycine betaine and representatives have been described…

From Joe Krzycki's, Bing Hao's and @djferguson.bsky.social 's labs:

Delineation of the Active Site of MtgB, a Cobalamin-dependent Glycine Betaine Methyltransferase

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

*heftig

My Duolingo lesson yesterday was “describe the weather” and life has given me an opportunity to practice

Das wetter ist sehr schlecht. Es schneit hefting und ich bin kalt

Or the fact they appear to all be full of solidified lb agar?

I mean only kind of. He’s very generous with his time for lots of young scientists. Just a all-around great guy

Rolf fricking Thauer

One of the perks of living in Marburg is that you can email Rolf Thauer and be like “remember me? want to get coffee?” and he’s just like “yes” and suggests a place that like 300 ft from your appartment

Fantastic team effort of several groups in the SPP2002 @dfg.de and a brilliant PhD - Eva Herdering in the Kiel team @schmitzstreitslab.bsky.social

Frontiers | Methanogenesis from tetramethylammonium and choline in Methanococcoides methylutens Q3c requires a nonpyrrolysine monomethylamine methyltransferase homolog Methanogenesis is a key biological process contributing to both global climate change and renewable energy via methane. Methylotrophic methanogenesis is an i...

A newly identified quaternary amine:corrinoid methyltransferase (for tetramethylammonium) in Methanococcoides. Surprisingly, this one isn't a trimethylamine methyltransferase family member!

www.frontiersin.org/journals/mic...

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.

Extirpation

Watch this video if you want to cry over overwhelming decency rather than over rage about what some are trying to turn our country into.

So important. What they say is not the story. That is never the story. What happened is the story. Write what happened.

Administration

Partly this is because ICE has become senselessly and ostentatiously brutal. as an institution. Partly, it is because no reform will remove the memory of these days from the public consciousness. But above all else credible reform is impossible because ICE has become a political arm of the Trump…

In the past, I wasn’t one of the people who said we should abolish ICE. Now, I am. There does need to be an organization that is responsible for things like immigration, interdiction of counterfeit currency operations, etc, but ICE is rotten and needs extirpataton

Post from Pete Buttigieg that reads: If there was ever a moment for libertarians and conservatives to step up and join the rest of us, we’re in it. Americans have to unite and stop this descent from a freedom-loving nation into the kind of place where masked, militarized government agents are sent to politically noncompliant areas to roam the streets, terrorize civilians, and deploy violence with impunity.

A masked ICE officials with a 5 year old child

This guy went to work today, put a mask on, kidnapped a 5 year old child, and then used him as bait so both he and his father could be sent behind bars

A five-year-old boy seized on his way home in Minnesota and now locked up in Texas. His family didn't know where he was for 24 hours.

Video Analysis of ICE Shooting Sheds Light on Contested Moments

Important work here from the NYT. Ross wasn’t run over. He dropped his cell phone, which he had shifted to his left hand to draw his weapon. And then he shot and killed a person with the gun in his right hand.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/v...

In remembrance of Peer Bork  | EMBL EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General.

Very sad to hear about the passing of Peer Bork, one of true giants of computational biology

www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

Although my last name is clearly to the most obvious sign right now that I’m not German

I currently live in this twilight zone where Germans can tell that I have German ancestry from my last name, but also from my last name, I’m clearly not German

Basically! I suspect that as soon as you get a carbon-centered radical you get a series of stochastic rearrangements, fragmentations, and probably further oxidation

The degradation pathway seems to be very complicated. A uv vis trace following hplc of the degradation products is just chaotic. I could not identify a single (or even a small set) or products that it degrades into

(would could wash several times with acetone/water and stop getting flavoaffinins off, then wash once more with acetone/water+a little bit of NaOH and get a ton more off)

Thanks! We could never see that proton via NMR, regardless of the solvent, so probably pretty low. Interestingly, the flavoaffinins seem to bind more strongly to cellulose in at lower pHs. I could only get them off the cellulose with alkaline acetone/water