We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it.
A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !
I am looking for a PhD student to join my new Socio-Eco-Evo group, hosted in Katie Peichel's Evolutionary Ecology Division @ University of Bern. We're offering a fully funded 4-year position, studying social plasticity and behavioral adaptation among stickleback in Greenland. Please share around!
A new preprint with Matthew Schmitt, @kiseokmicro.bsky.social and Vincenzo Vitelli makes a huge step forward in learning functional groups of components in complex biological systems. It's dimension reduction that speaks to biological function. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Similar tumors can often respond very differently to immunotherapy. Why? A simple mathematical model reveals the possibility of two alternative evolutionary strategies, dictated by mutational loads www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
New research from #BiologyLetters: Higher genetic variance of prey defense promotes fluctuation-dependent species coexistence royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... | #Ecology #Evolution
Go check out our new preprint about the loss of distyly in multiple Linum species 👇🌸 Many thanks to all co-authors!!
Is loss of distyly always associated with high selfing rates? And what are the genomic consequences? Read more about this in our new preprint on repeated loss of distyly in Linum, led by @zopos.bsky.social and @panazerv.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
"Virulence is a context-dependent strategy, not a fixed trait"🦠🧫
📢Check out our latest Micro Briefing highlighting the exciting commentary from Dr Damien F. Meyer at Cirad & INRAE_France, published in Microbial Outlooks.
Read the full paper here🔗 https://doi.org/10.1099/mout.0.00001
The final part of the story: "The arduous path to obligate asexuality in Daphnia" is out in #ProcB 🥳 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article.... 1. Instead of comparing long-established asexuals to sexuals, we generated new asexual lineages to observe the transition in action.
New post-doctoral research position in my phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in @otagomicroimmuno.bsky.social at @universityofotago.bsky.social New Zealand. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link in the comments.
iDiv and @uni-jena.de are recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher (f/m/d) in Trait-Based Community Ecology and Modelling.
Highlights:
🔺Full-time (100%, 40 h/week) with the option to reduce to 80%
🔺Fixed-term for 2 years
🔺Salary up to E13 TV‑L
📆 Apply by: 29 March 2026
www.idiv.de/career/job-o...
Many organisms, including humans, reshape their environments in ways that influence the conditions faced by future generations. We ask whether this can favour biological variation with @irisprigent.bsky.social in our new paper. Thanks to @dee-unil.bsky.social @snsf.ch
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
VACANCY - We’re searching for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the newly appointed group of Dr @hassansalem.bsky.social, to explore the developmental biology of host-microbe symbiosis
www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...
Deadline - 25 March 2026
Salary - £37,500 - £45,350
Contract - 3 years, full-time
"Simulations of your gut may predict which probiotics will stick" www.sciencenews.org/article/prob...
Great reporting on our recent @plosbiology.org paper by @norabradford.bsky.social in Science News 📰
@isbscience.org
With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268
We are offering a fully funded two-year postdoctoral position focused on sex chromosome evolution and speciation in the *Jaera albifrons* species complex. Please find the advertisement attached. We welcome applications from interested candidates. Join us :-)
Like bacteria, phages use sRNAs to regulate gene expression! Out today in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social, @mvelascogomariz.bsky.social and I highlight a recent RIL-seq study from the @saharmelamed.bsky.social lab that looked into posttranscriptional regulation of lambda!
tinyurl.com/lambda-RIL-seq
➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔
🧵👇
Well it turns out if you know something about the distributions of x and y, you *can* (sometimes) separately estimate their population means.
We explored some biological applications of this idea here:
doi.org/10.1007/s115...
New preprint out on bioRxiv!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread?
Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵
📢 Opportunity to apply for a PhD fellowship to join our group and work on MGE-MGE interactions and phage defence systems!
@mmsb-lyon.bsky.social
See informations about eligibility and research project on this web page: graduate-plus.fr/immunology-v...
Contact me if you are interested !
#Emergence seminar, next session:
Evolutionary transitions in individuality: one concept, two criteria? - by Johannes Martens (CNRS,SND)
March 27, 11am (Brussels time)
On-line attendance possible (just pm me and I'll give you a link).
#philsci #philsky #philbio
Our very own Rajalekshmi N. Sarma is on the line-up! 🎤 Women Science Show (Science Comes to Town) — Thu, 5 March 2026, 7.00 pm, STUDIO Filmtheater, Kiel. Six 10-minute talks from early-career women researchers. Free entry — bring friends & family 😊
Play isn’t only fun… it’s preparation for danger! Our new paper by @DharanishR in @royalsociety.org shows how protected juvenile environments boost #learning of risky behaviours via a protected early life period across some species. 🦂🦁 tinyurl.com/3w45xvz9 @cctb-wue.bsky.social @uni-wuerzburg.de
The free-running property of circadian clocks is needed to tolerate changing photoperiods
Synechococcus elongatus
@currentbiology.bsky.social from Michael Rust
www.cell.com/current-biol...
#Chronomicrobiology #ChronoSky
seminar announcement with photos of speakers and talk titles
The integration of speciation seminar series is restarting, with the first session coming up on *Tuesday March 3rd @ 5pm CET*, featuring two talks by @naturalselection.bsky.social and @andreaestandia.bsky.social + career Q&A with @markravinet.bsky.social as part of the ECR in Speciation theme.
📢 Funded PhD in molecular microbiology & phage biology
How do bacterial stress responses control prophage activation and horizontal gene transfer?
Join us at St Andrews to dissect Clp protease–mediated regulation in Staphylococcus aureus.
Apply:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
