Ronnie Berntsson

Happy to have been involved with this review, where we besides giving an in-depth review of G+ and G- T4SSs, we also propose a unifying nomenclature that we hope will take off!

MSCA awards €404.3 million to postdoctoral researchers 1610 outstanding postdoctoral researchers were selected for funding among 17,066 applicants.

I’m extremely happy that Taylor Devlin was awarded a Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions postdoctoral fellowship to work with us on the biophysical properties of bacterial adhesion to host factors! Great job Taylor!

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-aw...

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

Dr. Sweet, As you may have noticed, I believe it is important to document that philosophy professors at Texas A&M University are not permitted to teach Plato at their own discretion. To comply with the new censorship requirements, I have replaced the affected module with lectures on free speech and academic freedom. The censored material is marked in red in the attached document. The required text for the new module is: Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato”, The New York Times, January 8, 2026. [Link: Texas A&M Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato Because of Gender Rules - The New York Times] Respectfully, Martin Peterson Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay Jr. Chair Department of Philosophy Texas A&M University www.martinpeterson.org​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Martin Peterson doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Ending the year with a new preprint out from our lab. We show that Type 4 Secretion Systems in Gram-positive bacteria use pili in conjugation. For a full recap, check out the thread from the lead author @josyterbeek.bsky.social here below ⬇️

Hope y’all get a nice end to 2025!

It burns. It burns. My eyes.

Global Warming At 3 °C By 2050? What's Behind The New German Climate Warning German scientists warn global warming is accelerating faster than expected, raising the risk of a 3 °C rise by 2050 and forcing Europe to confront unthinkable adaptation plans. German scientists warn ...

Any climate researchers I know that can corroborate this article? Is this really where we’re going right now?

worldcrunch.com/focus/green-...

Seems the Nordic region is doing quite good...

Did I mention we will announce a new postdoc position within a
month or two? :)

Semantic design of functional de novo genes from a genomic language model - Nature By learning a semantics of gene function based on genomic context, the genomic language model Evo autocompletes DNA prompts to generate novel genes encoding protein and RNA molecules with defined acti...

This is on several levels pretty amazing.

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

CDC in turmoil after agency backpedals on debunking vaccines-autism link The CDC’s website now says health authorities ignored evidence of a potential connection between vaccines and autism, despite dozens of studies showing no link.

Vaccines do not cause autism. We know that the predominant cause of autism is genetics. It is deeply concerning that the CDC is promoting an idea that has been debunked countless times.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

A special thanks goes out to @josyterbeek.bsky.social, who’s been an amazing companion, both in science and general life 🙂, for almost 2 decades now

Today I’m starting a new position as Professor in Molecular Medicine at Umeå University

I’m happy and proud, but also extremely thankful to all people in the group, both current and past members!

Skrattade högt.

Please RT. Post-doc opportunity alert! 💥 closing 10th December.. Come join our team (www.thelowlab.org) at Imperial, London, working on the structure and mechanism of bacterial secretion systems.

For more details and to apply please see

www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

I love AlphaFold—but please include PAE (Predicted Aligned Error) plots for every “interaction.” Pretty PDBs ≠ proof. If the PAE doesn’t show an interface, it ain’t one. Show the plots. Structural biology's reputation is on the line.

Researchers' card game teaches children about microorganisms Hope to spark curiosity about life beneath the water’s surface – with playful game cards.

This is really cool! If you want to get a card game that explains microorganisms - now's your chance!

www.umu.se/en/news/rese...

Seems like a very handy tool!

PDB101: Global Health: Antimicrobial Resistance: About: Bacteria and Antibiotics PDB-101: Training, Outreach, and Education portal of RCSB PDB

Visit PDB-101 to learn more about Antimicrobial Resistance

Exciting to see our protein binder design pipeline BindCraft published in its final form in @Nature ! This has been an amazing collaborative effort with Lennart, Christian, @sokrypton.org, Bruno and many other amazing lab members and collaborators.

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

Ok, då köper jag det! 😀

Det låter ju iofs väldigt gott, men att kvalificera som middag är väl att ta i lite.. 😂

Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...

Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it?

Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Interesting that they could put a number on it. And yes, that's a reindeer seeking shade behind a concrete wall. Not their usual place to hang out...

Cryo-EM ligand building using AlphaFold3-like model and molecular dynamics pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40788932/ #cryoEM

I've only had 8 molecules (of a 67 kDa protein) in the ASU as the maximum. However, are you sure that you have so many molecules? About 5 years ago we solved a structure that had 81% solvent content...

graphical abstract of the article the extended mobility of plasmids

Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

💥 Excited to introduce Bacformer 🦠 - the first foundation model for bacterial genomics. Bacformer represents genomes as sequences of ordered proteins, learning the “grammar” of how genes are arranged, interact and evolve.

Preprint 📝: biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵 1/n

😳😱 not a smart move…🧬🧶

I'm today starting as pro-dean at the medical faculty at @umeauniversitet.bsky.social. Looking forward to exciting years ahead, together with the new dean Katrine Riklund and the others in the faculty leadership!

Finally! ERC is reducing the length of part II of their application form.

'The length of this section is now limited to seven pages for Starting, Consolidator, and Advanced Grant applications and ten pages for Synergy Grant applications'