Souvik Bhattacharyya

a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

A short Bluetorial on plots of NIH application success rates as a function of percentile.

1/20

Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse Hepatitis D-like satellite viruses, known as deltaviruses, have been recently discovered in a wide range of animals. These viruses are thought to expr…

The Trojan Horse is real, and it’s microscopic! 🐴🦠
Our paper is out today in @cellcellpress.bsky.social!
We discovered that deltaviruses physically hide INSIDE helper viruses to sneak into new cells. And to prove it, we had to image them from every angle. 🧵👇

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

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

Excited about a recent paper from Bassam el Hafi, a recently graduated PhD student, & Fabrice Jean Pierre leveraging 4,200 respiratory microbiomes from CF (pre- and post-ETI), and testing one of the hypotheses that arose from this analysis.
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
@asm.org #JBacteriology

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧬💻🧪 (🔓 rdcu.be/e4CYK)

Last year, we proposed a model of plasmid evolution via fusion and fragmentation (via mge mediated recombination) generating mosaics, by studying historical isolates. Excited to see a MASSIVE paper from @jrpenades.bsky.social , @epcrocha.bsky.social expanding on this
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A set of genetic tools for use in Clostridioides difficile and related species The Clostridia are a phylogenetically diverse group of anaerobic, spore-forming bacteria that include species of medical, veterinary and industrial importance. The last two decades have seen major adv...

New paper from us.

If you're interested in genetic manipulation of Clostridia, we have a few new tools for you! 36 new plasmids - all available from @addgene.bsky.social

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

#microsky

New paper from my team detailing a greatly expanded genomic database of Asgard archaea revealing of high energy metabolism those related to eukaryotes! Led by @katyappler.bsky.social lots of help from @jameslingford.bsky.social @valdeanda.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...

AlphaFold Database welcomes community datasets Latest AlphaFold Database update adds high-value datasets for microbial and viral proteins, generated by specialist communities

Delighted to see over 17 million new protein structure predictions from novel proteins in AllTheBacteria are now integrated into the AlphaFold Database at @ebi.embl.org !
Huge work from @gbouras13.bsky.social @oschwengers.bsky.social and friends to generate these.

www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/u...

Fluorescence micrograph. Emma Miller and Alex Merz, unpublished.

🧵 After years out of the field, I and my lab are again working on bacterial type IV pili. We have just posted our first preprints, and I'm excited to share what we have discovered.

This shows Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria infecting a human epithelical cell. Here, you can see the pili in red.

1/

🧵 New preprint! Our 4-lab team evolved Streptococcus pneumoniae in antibiotic-treated mice of varying immune states and discovered something surprising: bacteria rarely evolved resistance. Instead, they found a different way to survive — by rewiring RNA turnover.
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

And save >80% on the cost by pooling 6 or more plasmids into a single sample using our free SAVEMONEY algorithm!

elifesciences.org/articles/88794

colab.research.google.com/github/Masaa...

The LECA had a conventional kinetochore and the kinetoplastid kinetochore is a derived feature – a critical evaluation of Akiyoshi, 2025 Summary:Akiyoshi, 2025 presented a hypothesis with implications for the early evolution of eukaryotes and eukaryotic cell division machinery. In this Correspondence, the authors conclude that this hyp...

Recently, a Hypothesis was posed in @jcellsci.bsky.social in which the root of eukaryotes was placed between kinetoplastids and all other eukaryotes. From this, it was implied that LECA did not have a kinetochore. We argue this is highly unlikely. A 🧵(1/12)

Read our reply here: tinyurl.com/n87myhpr

By 2028, all 4-character PDB IDs will be exhausted.

After that, all new entries will receive extended IDs: 12 characters total, formatted as pdb_ + 8 alphanumeric characters (pdb_1000axyz)

Test it from PDB Beta Archive

Read more: www.wwpdb.org/news/news?ye...

What Mira Nair Taught Zohran Mamdani The mayor’s famous filmmaker mother reveals the origins of his ferocious ambition.

Cannot believe that I got to profile an extraordinary filmmaker, who happens to be the mother of NYC’s new mayor, and think about intersections of art and politics, and how familial love might produce a buffer against the corrosive politics and cynicism of our time. My story about Mira Nair:

A line graph of all NIH awards made in fiscal year 2026 compared to 2021-2025. There is a lag for the first 2 months due to the government shutdown, but the pace (through February 6th) is approaching the historically normal rate.

My weekly update.

Some good(ish) news.

The pace of NIH grantmaking appears to be picking up.

1/4

Space dust reveals rapid evolution after dino-killing asteroid New data detail how tiny forms of life rebounded much more quickly than previously believed

Microscopic marine organisms called forams began to proliferate relatively rapidly after the dino-killing asteroid struck Earth.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/4rywh19

image of the OpenFlexure Microscope on the left. On the right, our adapted live-cell imaging openflexure microscope with cradle to negate vibrations inside an existing incubator

Unleashing live-cell imaging for the masses!
Adapting the OpenFlexure Microscope for Affordable Live-Cell Imaging www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Fits into existing incubators for time-lapse experiments & feeds into existing bioimaging analysis pipelines.
Thanks @wellcometrust.bsky.social funding

Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?

Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

𝘌. 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘪 chromosome replicationists take note 👇

tsutomu katayama's lab tackles one of the last remaining puzzles of DnaB loading by DnaA to 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘊 after opening. for bi-directional replication, 𝘁𝘄𝗼 DnaB helicases have to be loaded (in case you forgot).

thx for pointing this out, wiep 🙏
#MicroSky

New paper out in @pnas.org, and it made the cover! 👁️

We represent plasmids as circles and mutations as dots, resembling an eye, because in this paper we literally 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ plasmids evolve.

‼️Check Paula’s 🧵 and the paper👇

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Photo of 3-versus-3 football game

1/12 Really proud of this paper! We borrowed tools from biology to ask a simple question: does who you play with actually matter in football? (Spoiler: it does, a lot.) 🧬 🤝 ⚽

Paper here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1mUusArnpe...

JB Table of Contents Volume 208, Issue 1 Journal of Bacteriology: Table of Contents Volume 208, Issue 1

The newest issue of JB is out! We have a historical piece on QS, the Jack Kenney award, a variety of minireviews and research articles. Check it out!
journals.asm.org/toc/jb/208/1
@asm.org #JBacteriology

All of these advancement in tech/AI, but try copying text from a pdf to a word file, the formatting problems will show you that some things don't change.

This is how we first teach chirality to our undergrads !

JOB ALERT! 📢 For the scientists who love science communication: we’re hiring at @kurzgesagt.org !🌍 Come join our team, the vibes are impeccable.

✍️ Scriptwriter (Remote) kurzgesagt.org/careers/scri...
🔍 Fact-Checker & Researcher (Munich/Berlin/Remote) kurzgesagt.org/careers/seni...

Dune, the Spice, and harvesting. Timeless story.

Trump administration cannot slash NIH research funding, court rules District Judge Angel Kelley last year blocked the cuts, and on Monday the appeals court agreed.

The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal!

www.reuters.com/world/trump-...

Isiah Whitlock Jr., 71, Scene-Stealing Character Actor in ‘The Wire,’ Dies

Sheeeeiiiit