Pia Sen

Breath of the Earth by Chelsi — The earth respires like a slumbering giant.

Breath of the Earth

by Chelsi — The earth respires like a slumbering giant.

The defense islands in bacteria and archaea paper (Makarova et al. 2011)!

Hi everyone, I am preparing a lecture and was thinking of the milestone papers in the field of bacterial immunity.

I was curious which ones would you include ?

Thanks!

Yet another awesome single-phage paper from Ido Golding's lab #phagesky

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Worth a read and something I was thinking about this morning!

Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor - Nature Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from other Asgar...

At long last! Check out the link to our publication in @nature.com to learn more. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
12/12

Excited to share a preprint of work from my postdoc with @paulturnerlab.bsky.social exploring how prophages can impact host thermal ecology and evolution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor Nature - Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from...

Open access to article rdcu.be/e4A70

Love hearing about the ongoing work! @archaeal.bsky.social @katyappler.bsky.social

I am super happy and honored to see some of my movies making it into the NYT. I hope everybody enjoys watching them go as much as I do!

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...

Congrats Katy!! This is amazing!!

Beyond thrilled to share that our study has been published!
This project encompasses years of work, including my thesis research on Asgard archaea in the @archaeal.bsky.social lab at @utmsi.bsky.social and
@texasscience.bsky.social!!!
#MicroSky #ArchaeaSky 1/12

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

On this International Women and Girls in STEM day I’m grateful for the incredible mentors who have shown me that it’s okay to take up space and be confident in science 🧫

Bacteria chromosomes contain Genomic Islands that provide virulence, antibiotic resistance, MGE-defence,... They transfer between cells, but the mechanism of most remains elusive.

Here we explore the conjugative capacity of these mysterious Genomic Islands.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Co-occurrence of diverse defense systems shapes complex microbe-virus relationships in deep-sea cold seeps | Nature Communications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-68174-6

Subsurface Life on Earth as a Key to Unlock Extraterrestrial Mysteries This paper discusses current research on subsurface microbiology. Exploring Earth's deep and extreme subsurface environments provides critical insights into life's limits and adaptability. Subsurface...

🌏 Happy 🔭 New 🧪 Year 🦠 2026 ✨

If you feel like an easy read about subsurface microbiomes and astrobiology:

Here is an opinion I wrote with @emvidal.bsky.social @geobiomaggie.bsky.social @drbradbrad.bsky.social and Melody Lindsay

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Environment and physiology shape antiphage system expression Bacteria and archaea encode on average ten antiphage systems. Quorum sensing, cellular, or transcription factors can regulate specific systems (CRISPR-Cas, CBASS). Yet, a systematic assessment of anti...

Bacterial genomes encode a rich repertoire of antiphage systems, but we still know surprisingly little about when these systems are actually expressed.

In this preprint, Lucas Paoli et al, ask what shapes antiphage systems expression in native contexts.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Diverse bacterial pattern recognition receptors sense the conserved phage proteome Recognition of foreign molecules inside cells is critical for immunity in all domains of life. Proteins of the STAND NTPase superfamily, including eukaryotic nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain ...

A systematic analysis of STAND NTPases and their associated sensor domains in bacterial immunity 🤯 Mind-blowing work !

Last year I spent Christmas in the field so it’s super special to be spending Christmas this year in the 512 ❤️ Austin is always gonna be home.

Congrats Dr.Kubota!! Your talk was fantastic 🥹

A poster with branding for the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre fo Virus Research, labelled 'Virus Snowflakes.' The poster shows snowflake-like virus designs and song lyrics reading: On the twelfth day of Christmas, a virus gave to me, Twelve fights worth winning, Eleven Christmas dinners, Ten lunar landers, Nine childhood vaccines, Eight tools for teaching, Seven dogs a-barking, Six wasps a-laying, FIIIIVE TIIINY RIIIIIIINGS, Four vaccine platforms, Three genome segments, Two twinned capsids, and A world that is too small to see

Feeling festive?
Why not deck the halls with @cvrinfo.bsky.social's papercraft #VirusSnowflakes and celebrate the science of viruses and the fight against viral diseases.
Download for free: cvr-engagement.co.uk/virus-snowfl...
#scicomm #sciart #decorations

Y'all the latest episode of the #Kilauea #eruption just went CRAZY. It looks like pressure built up enough to explode out the ground around the two existing vents (first few seconds), leading to a massive surge in lava fountaining.🌋🤯

USGS Live stream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiyt...

Microbial metabolisms in a 2.5-km-deep ecosystem created by hydraulic fracturing in shales - Nature Microbiology Sub-surface microbial communities support methanogenesis via methylamine cycling and can persist by fermenting hydraulic fracture injection fluids. Microbial sulfide production contributes to reservoi...

For highly abundant taxa, sub-sampling reads like @robinrohwer.bsky.social suggested can work wonders. You can also look at doi.org/10.1038/nmic... for inspiration:
"highly abundant genomes (>400×) often failed to assemble [...] subassemblies [...] using 10 and 8% of the reads, respectively. "

#PhageSky "Pflichtletüre" for all phageophiles

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/...

Some fantastic sessions being planned for ASM Microbe 2026, including "Long-term Dynamics of Environmental Microbiomes", and "Eco-evolutionary Dynamics of Phages and Their Roles in Horizontal Gene Transfer". Get your abstract(s) ready, and join us June 4–7, 2026 in D.C. ! asm.org/events/asm-m...

Scalable and systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy with vConTACT3 Viruses are key players in diverse ecosystems, but studying their impacts is technically and taxonomically challenging. Taxonomic complexities derive from undersampling, diverse DNA and RNA genomes wi...

🚨vConTACT3 preprint live!🚨(Peer Review soon...!)

vConTACT3 delivers a unified, scalable, and transparent framework for genome-based virus taxonomy — helping translate big viral data into systematic classification.

🔗 Read the preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Improvements details below 👇