PaulGM

A meme is born: “FHG thinks we have a chance” #AcademicChatter #PhdChat www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Laboratory Technician - 2Blades Group A Laboratory Technician position is available to join the 2Blades Group at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich

📣 VACANCY: Lab Technician in the 2Blades group with @kamiljwitek.bsky.social

Join the team to work on developing resistance traits in soybean 🌱

Apply online, deadline 15 March 2026

www.tsl.ac.uk/working-at-t...

#PlantSciJobs #PlantScience #STEMJobs

🚨3 Lectureships in Biology 🚨

Come join us in Bristol @bristolbiosci.bsky.social!

We are looking for new collegues working across a broad spectum of topics in biology, including ecology & environmental change. Get in touch if you have Qs!

Apply here by 8 March: www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Meet the Dracula ant Myopopone castanea, the only extant species in its genus. Like other ants in the subfamily Amblyoponinae, the workers pierce the larvae with their mandibles and drink the oozing hemolymph. Hence the name “Dracula ant”. Danum Valley, Sabah.

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Hundreds of staff leave Edinburgh University amid cuts drive According to the university, 345 of these departures were the result of a targeted voluntary severance (VS) scheme run by the institution in 2025.

Missing from the coverage of redundancies at Edinburgh: this was done in such a haphazard, uncoordinated way, there are now core teams who have gone from 5 people to 1 with no change in workload or pressure and huge loss in knowledge of institutional process. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2576321...

RETRACTED: Integrative phylogenomics positions sponges at the root of the animal tree Determining whether sponges or ctenophores root the animal tree has important implications for understanding early animal evolution. Here, we examined support for these competing hypotheses by constru...

This is a beautiful case of how real science happens & serious scientists work. Kudos to both set of authors: “This has been a humbling experience, but one that speaks to the self-correcting nature of the scientific endeavor.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The paradox of immune systems conservation between prokaryotes and eukaryotes - Nature Reviews Microbiology The widespread prokaryotic immune systems, in particular restriction–modification, CRISPR–Cas and defensive toxin–antitoxin systems, are absent in eukaryotes, whereas relatively rare ones, such as Arg...

Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social and Eugene Koonin discuss one of most interesting questions in the field connecting bacterial and animal immunity!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Beetle is locked in to an eternal dance ― with an ant Evolution has trapped a species of beetle in an inescapable symbiosis with the aggressive velvety tree ant.

Evolution has trapped a species of beetle in an inescapable symbiosis with the aggressive velvety tree ant.

go.nature.com/3Oa7vpM

Amazing findings in geometry-based immune activation! Two bacterial defence systems detect phage-encoded ring oligomers, assemble high-order molecular complexes, and trigger abortive infection.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

Wow. This is devastating.

www.science.org/content/arti...

The Sainsbury Laboratory is delighted to announce that it has received $2 million in funding as part of Google.org's $20 million AI for Science Fund to support organizations focused on cutting-edge AI for science research.
@kamounlab.bsky.social @amiralito.bsky.social

www.tsl.ac.uk/news/the-sai...

Do you have experience in bioinformatics and are looking for a new challenge? To immerse yourself in a group and institute doing highly diverse research?

Then come and join our group !

GitHub - ebiggers/libdeflate: Heavily optimized library for DEFLATE/zlib/gzip compression and decompression Heavily optimized library for DEFLATE/zlib/gzip compression and decompression - ebiggers/libdeflate

🗜️⚡ If you use gzip/gunzip a lot in your pipelines, switch to the faster"libdeflate" versions instead! They use modern CPU capabilities to achieve a 2-3x speedup.

libdeflate is in conda, and "libdeflate-gzip" and "libdeflate-gunzip" are drop-in replacements. #unix

github.com/ebiggers/lib...

A forlorn landscape of layered rocks in the foreground, with hills fading into the background haze. At upper top right, a small crescent moon, and a bright star.

Open up this picture fully.

Then look at the surface of Mars.

Then look up to the top right.

Spot Mars' moon Phobos high in the sky.

Then notice the bright spot beside Phobos.

That's Earth.

Vacancy graphic showing a microbial microscopy image on a computer. The text reads "Bursting Bugs Summer Internship. To generate microscopy videos of bacteria bursting in response to administering antibiotics. Salary: £3,270 total. Contract length: 5 weeks. Apply by 5 January 2026."

⏰ Closing soon! We’re looking for a Summer Intern to generate microscopy videos of bacteria bursting in response to administering antibiotics as part of a public education video on the uses of antibiotics and risks of misuse 🔬

🗓️ Apply by 5 January
➡️ buff.ly/YlUQUho

🚨We’re hiring! Please help spread the word!
Our lab at @TheSainsburyLab is recruiting a pre-doctoral intern to work on plant immunity research. Ideal for those who are planning to pursue a PhD and seeking research experience. tatsuyanobori.com

Nautilus Live | Ocean Exploration Trust Explore the ocean with us! We seek out new discoveries while conducting scientific exploration of the seafloor and stream live to the world aboard Exploration Vessel Nautilus.

🧪📍🌊 🦑🍎 Attention students and recent grads! opportunity for #oceanscience interns to sail aboard #EVNautilus next year in a paid position for 3-5 weeks. Whether you’re studying #marinebiology, #geology, or any other type of #oceanography. Learn more and apply by Jan 4 at NautilusLive.org

The Vienna BioCenter Summer School 2026 call is now open for talented undergrads, it's a great opportunity for students who are interested in graduate study in the life sciences. Marco Hein from Max Perutz Labs Vienna is recruiting! Please share
https://training.vbc.ac.at/summer-school/

This is still one of my very most favorite biological videos ever.

Vampyrella lateritia, a predatory amoeba: "OM NOM NOM NOM"

I'm absolutely fascinated by and how single cell organisms can display behaviors like target localization, pursuit, and predation.

Airborne microplastics enter plant leaves and end up in our food Evidence for a previously overlooked route for microplastics to enter crops and reach plant tissues has implications for ecology and human health.

Evidence for a previously overlooked route for microplastics to enter crops and reach plant tissues has implications for ecology and human health

go.nature.com/49fkoH6

Cross-species cloning in ants 🐜
These two males belong to different species—but share the same mother. How? Why?
To celebrate the print release of our last paper in this week’s @nature.com (issue 8084), here’s a thread summarizing the results. Why? Let’s dive in🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ERC-Plus: jackpot science or missed chance to fix academia? My reflections on ERC-Plus, Europe’s newest ultra-competitive research grant and what it tells us about the academic culture we’re…

I just published: ERC-Plus: jackpot science or missed chance to fix academia?

My reflections on ERC-Plus, Europe’s newest ultra-competitive research grant and what it tells us about the academic culture we’re building.

medium.com/p/erc-plus-j...

🔊 APPLY NOW for our #MarMic #MSc/#PhD program!

Come to #Bremen and take an interdisciplinary approach to #marine #microbiology, #molecularbiology, #biochemistry, #evolution and more.

⏳ Open until Feb 28 2026
➡ marmic.mpg.de

#graduatestudents #marinescience #sciencecareer #IMPRS @maxplanck.de

I am very excited to announce that a fully funded PhD position is available in my group.

Topic: Synergistic coevolution in mono-specific and multi-species microbial consortia

Please RT or forward this information to interested candidates.

Deadline: 11.01.26

More info:

shorturl.at/f1TuF

Bath city centre

Pulteney weir in Bath

Bath city centre

Bath cathedral

🎉 There are currently 4 opportunities to join the Holt lab in beautiful Bath! 🎉

If you're interested in protists, parasites, and/or biodiversity then please check out our website:
theholtlab.com/posts/ln5-21...

🚨 Deadlines vary between project.
✉️ Please reach out if you have any questions!

Is it a flagellate? A tiny ball with tentacles? Contamination in my ciliate culture? NEW SUPERGROUP OF EUKARYOTES? Yes to all 4! Meet Solarion - just out in #Nature doi.org/10.1038/s415... Huge congrats to Marek Valt, Cepicka Lab & the star team! Very happy to be part of this project. #ProtistsOnSky

Key processes required for the different stages of fungal carnivory by a nematode-trapping fungus Nutritional deprivation triggers a switch from saprotrophic to predatory lifestyle in soil-dwelling nematode-trapping fungi. This transcriptomic study reveals increased DNA replication, translation, a...

I swear I am not making this up.
The relationships between fungi and bugs are so weird and macabre.
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Know metagenomics and could spare 2 mins? I'm applying for funding to build a visual repository for metagenomic classification data (not sequence data). To support the application, I have a short 2 minute survey and it would be a big help if you could fill it in: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Do a predoc, young grasshoppers!https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/do-a-predoc-young-people-155c32d094a @adnroide