Monica McCallum

A high-throughput biocatalytic platform for screening isomeric kainoid natural products Shepherd and Ramachandra et al. present a fast, chromatography-free method for resolving isomeric products from engineered enzymes. This platform enables large-scale screening and identifies improved ...

Hey all, excited to share this collab w/
@shaunmckinnie.bsky.social
TL;DR we combined our expertise to develop and validate a MALDI-tims platform for screening the production of isomeric small molecules (~212 Da) directly from E coli colonies in high throughput
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I’m reading abstracts for ABRCMS and seeing over and over again where students comment about what a transformative experience ABRCMS was for their peers and mentors.

We cannot let this conference disappear because what we will lose will be tremendous. Funders, I hope you are listening.

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...

Such a delight to share our work on the evolution of a cheese rind fungus in @currentbiology.bsky.social.

This is the fantastic PhD work of @nicolasleonlouw.bsky.social and resulted from amazing collaborations, a wedding proposal(!), an undergrad course, & more!

🧵

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

Genomic resistance in historical clinical isolates increased in frequency and mobility after the age of antibiotics Antibiotic resistance is frequently observed shortly after the clinical introduction of an antibiotic. Whether and how frequently that resistance occurred before the introduction is harder to determin...

What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years?

Our paper looking at resistance genes from a century of NCTC historical isolates now out in mGen:
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Join me in donating to ABRCMS. For many of us early in our careers (and for many of us now), this is THE conference. Let’s make sure future generations get the same experience.

I was told if each poster judge donated $25, their goal would be quickly met, but I think we can do better! 🙏🏾💪🏾

ZiemertLab The Ziemert lab is interested in the evolution and distribution of bacterial secondary metabolites. These bioactive compounds are especially important in human medicine as the chemical scaffolds are t...

Check out the Ziemert Lab’s new YouTube channel
m.youtube.com/@ZiemertLab
We’ve uploaded short tutorial videos on how to use our tools for genome mining and natural product discovery.
Thanks Semih, @martinaadamek.bsky.social @turgutmesut.bsky.social ! #GenomeMining #SecMet #naturalproducts

Congratulations!!!

1/"I have a presentation tomorrow."
If you've ever collaborated with wet lab scientists as a bioinformatician…
you’ve heard this. And died inside a little.

I appreciate the offers from other scientists to help Harvard (students, labs, etc) through this attack, but what would be most helpful is for you to use your position to contact your elected representatives and make it clear this fight isn't just Harvard, it will affect you, and their districts too

I am thrilled to share after years of work/procrastination that the MassQL manuscript is finally published in @natmethods.nature.com - "A universal language for finding mass spectrometry data patterns". This was an team effort from all co-authors that helped shape MassQL and how it could be used.

Recently, we found out that our R01 funded through PAR-22-241 was withdrawn by NIAID as the NIH no longer prioritizes research programs related to DEI. This has been devastating news for our young research group, and we are now trying to scram together for a path forward 🧵1/12

What excitement, instead of one book I got five.

Excited to explore the science behind Victorian mauve with my students this semester.

A Phosphopantetheinyl Transferase from Dictyobacter vulcani sp. W12 Expands the Combinatorial Biosynthetic Toolkit The value of microbial natural product pathways extends beyond the chemicals they produce, as the enzymes they encode can be harnessed as biocatalysts. Microbial type II polyketide synthases (PKSs) ar...

Preprint alert!! 🎉 Ever struggle to activate a carrier protein? Led by Kenneth Hsu (Haverford '25), the Charkoudian Lab unearthed a novel PPTase from Dictyobacter vulcani 🌋 with remarkable promiscuity (in our case, better than Sfp & AcpS)!

Grateful to be an alum of this phenomenal research team 💗

I HAVE done*

How do I design degenerate primers based on an alignment? Using the Design New Primers operation Geneious Prime can design degenerate primers based on an alignment using the Design New primers tool under the Primers menu. For example, if you want a degen...

I done that with a multiple sequence alignment of representative target sequences and Geneious, but I am sure there are many ways to go about it! help.geneious.com/hc/en-us/art...

It is possible to design and order so-called "degenerate primers" for amplifying highly similar genes from a variety of sources. That might be the sort of thing you're looking for?

A whopping 26 study sections are not meeting today: AI, BDE, BTEN, CMAD, CMBG, CPSS, DHMI, EDIT, GVE, HBPP, IHD, ISD, MAI, MCTC, MFSR, NMBH, NPAS, ODCS, ODHS, PN, SMN, SSPB, THI, VID, ZRG1 F02A D 20, ZRG1 MCST U 55*

Deletion of core septin gene aspB in Aspergillus fumigatus results in fungicidal activity of caspofungin Septins are a family of GTP-binding proteins found in many eukaryotic lineages. Although highly conserved throughout many eukaryotes, their functions vary across species. In Aspergillus fumigatus, the...

🚨 new preprint 🚨
Here we report that deleting the Septin aspB results in cidal activity of the static anti cell wall drug Caspofungin. This wasn’t only in vitro as 🐭 infected with the mutant and treated had 70% survival compared to 30% of the wild-type 1/2

My linocut portrait of pharmaceutical chemist Alice Ball, a young Black woman in a lab coat, printed in indigo. Below her is the chemical reaction for Ball’s Process in violet. Above and around her is a branch of chalmoogra with green leaves and yellow fruit.

For #BlackHistoryMonth pharmaceutical #chemist Alice Ball (1892-1916) who developed 1st effective treatment for leprosy. 🧪🐡👩🏾‍🔬 #histsci Though her life was cut tragically short, her research saved 1000s from exile & painful, ineffective lifelong treatment for leprosy, & she was a trailblazer for 🧵

Chemical inhibition of a bacterial immune system https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.20.638879v1

Specificity and Stereoselectivity of Cryptic Sulfotransferases Sulfotransferases (STs) are ubiquitous enzymes found in all living organisms. These enzymes convert amines to sulfamates, and alcohols to sulfates, on a wide variety of biologically relevant molecules...

Super stoked to share this pre-print covering our work on some sulfotransferase enzymes with surprising stereoselectivity!

doi.org/10.26434/che...

Thanks Bill! I am curious to see if we'll someday find cryptic sulfations standing in for cryptic halogenations in some biosyntheses...

Specificity and Stereoselectivity of Cryptic Sulfotransferases Sulfotransferases (STs) are ubiquitous enzymes found in all living organisms. These enzymes convert amines to sulfamates, and alcohols to sulfates, on a wide variety of biologically relevant molecules...

Super stoked to share this pre-print covering our work on some sulfotransferase enzymes with surprising stereoselectivity!

doi.org/10.26434/che...

Has the ACS put out a statement or done anything (apart from great reporting in C&EN) in response to the current state of *gestures at everything*? Really questioning what my membership dues are going towards if they won't play ball here, given the huge implications for chemists nationwide.

Mass spectral molecular networking of living microbial colonies | PNAS Integrating the governing chemistry with the genomics and phenotypes of microbial colonies has been a “holy grail” in microbiology. This work descr...

Here are the papers covering those tools. Classical MN www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... FBMN www.nature.com/articles/s41... IIMN www.nature.com/articles/s41... FBMN-stats chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... gnps dashboard www.nature.com/articles/s41... modifinder pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... 3/4

Happy New Year 🎉 Our collab with Strittmatter lab TU Munich shows the power of #massspec to see #bacteria in #tissues
233 bacterial species were mined for markers at different phylogenetic levels. Watch out for those taxon-specifc markers (TSMs) in your #spatialmetabolomics

tinyurl.com/yza6t32w

Hydralazine inhibits cysteamine dioxygenase to treat preeclampsia and senesce glioblastoma The vasodilator hydralazine (HYZ) has been used clinically for ∼ 70 years and remains on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines as a therapy for preeclampsia. Despite its longstan...

Interesting biorxiv from Megan Matthews lab on Hydralazine inhibiting cysteamine dioxygenase to treat preeclampsia and senesce glioblastoma. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Marine Natural Products/Marine Biotechnology - Assistant Professor University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

Come be my colleague! We’re hiring an assistant professor in marine natural products and marine biotechnology at SIO - check out this link to learn more: apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04101