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Michael Baym

@baym.lol
11K followers 1.3K following 1.5K posts

Associate Prof @HarvardMed. Microbial evolution, antibiotic resistance, mobile genetic elements, algorithms, phages, molecular biotech, etc. Find me under “floating dumpster fire”

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Reposted by Michael Baym
Jesse Shapiro @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social · 7h
Glyphosate-based herbicide exposure triggers genetic adaptation but not diversity collapse within bacterioplankton species (reposting with the article title and a gratuitous glam shot of the lake these bugs called home until we rudely plopped them into experimental ponds...)
Screenshot of the article title: Glyphosate-based herbicide exposure triggers genetic adaptation but not diversity collapse within bacterioplankton speciesPhoto of a beautiful blue sky with some clouds reflected in a lake. The surrounding hills are dappled with red and gold fall foliage.

Photo credit: Akhil Kholwadwala
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 4h
Application review for the GRC in Microbial Population Biology will start October 15th! Please apply before then if you are keen on coming. www.grc.org/microbial-po...
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Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · 7h
Indeed. I got an offer for a TT faculty position while in grad school. Almost everyone told me to do a postdoc. I did not listen. Best decision I ever made. I was ready & landed an R01 a year later & published my highest impact paper a year after that #academia
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 10h
Omigod, this is the most heartwarming story possible! Backpack (bear 89) is the son of the 2019 winner of Fat Bear Week, Holly (bear 435). In 2007, he injured his foot & a practice of riding on momma's Holly's back had a new meaning: he was mobility-restricted while it healed. So Holly moved him.
From DISCVR blog's Facebook page, a momma bear & a yearling cub on her back in the shallow water.  I think the background has been swapped out, and I can't rule out some AI use there?  God, Facebook has become the social media for AI slop : (

The title of the article, which I link below, is "How Bear 89 earned the name Backpack"
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explore.org @explore.org · 21h
Introducing your ultimate fighter and champion: Bear 89 Backpack 👑 Thanks for joining us for the biggest Fat Bear Week to date.
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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · 22h
I'm holding a press conference tomorrow to announce the inauguration of the era of Super Selection
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Holly is really one of my favorite thinkers in climate and more broadly the science-policy interface. So well deserved!!!!
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Pleuni Pennings @pleunipennings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I am hiring a postdoc! Are you interested to work on population genetics/ drug resistance/ data? Want to work in Montpellier, France? Fastq files don't scare you? PhD required, start date hopefully Nov 1! (end date Sep 30 2028) Please share! abetterscientist.wordpress.com/2026/09/29/p...
abetterscientist.wordpress.com
Postdoc position on drug resistance evolution in Montpellier, France
I have some exciting news (again!). I got money from the region (Occitanie) to hire a postdoc (and later an engineer / technician) to work on drug resistance evolution in malaria (P. faciparum) and…
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Mark O. Martin @markowenmartin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In my Microbiology course at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch NZ, I could not help myself in the mutation lecture from presenting the MEGAplate evolution experiment. Thank you, @baym.lol and @contaminatedsci.bsky.social This video is such a great teaching tool. youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8?...
youtu.be
The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish (Kishony Lab)
YouTube video by Harvard Medical School
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Jesse Shapiro @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Our latest, spearheaded by the truly indefatigable @emderrick.bsky.social in which we search for selective sweeps in nature and genetic targets of selection within a species in the context of a diverse background community @isme-microbes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/isme... 🧵 1/n
doi.org
Validate User
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Kimberly Beatty @beattylab.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Please share: OHSU is hiring an Assistant Prof. in the Dept. of Chemical Physiology & Biochemistry. We are looking for a chemical biologist who will apply novel chemical tools in physiological systems. Apply online: www.ohsu.edu/human-resour... (Job # 2026-41667).
ohsu.edu
OHSU Faculty, Physician and Academic Jobs in Oregon
Find higher education faculty, physician and research jobs and build your academic health career at OHSU in Portland, Oregon.
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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
For the last 34 years I have been on the faculty of the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Biology and have never regretted that decision. This year we are hiring TWO new Assistant Professors in the broad area of Molecular, Cell, Developmental Biology 1/n bio.unc.edu
Front page of the website
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New England Biolabs @nebiolabs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Earlier this month, NEB hosted the 2026 Boston Phage Symposium on our Ipswich campus! We are thrilled to have supported a shared interest in phage research and great talks from four labs from MIT and @harvard.edu !
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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Ruh Roh
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Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · 27/09/2026
How do Burkholderia multivorans bacteria adaptively evolve during infections of the cystic fibrosis airway? A longtime collab and intensive study of 8 patients links bacterial adaptations to disease progression. Our findings also unite prior studies. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Convergent genetic evolution within Burkholderia multivorans chronic infections correlates with lung function decline in cystic fibrosis patients
The patterns and pathways of pathogen adaptation during chronic infections can reveal the gateways microbes must unlock to colonize and persist. In chronic lung infections of cystic fibrosis (CF) pati...
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026
The rationalists and effective altruists all love demanding that you read their actual writing before you judge them, and so I am in fact doing that. if they were as smart as they think they are, they’d have figured out that telling critics to actually read their work is a *terrible* strategy.
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Maitreya Dunham @maitreya.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Exciting news: @uwgenome.bsky.social will be hiring for two tenure-track faculty positions this year, one open rank and one assistant professor. Both are “Genome Sciences” interpreted broadly so we welcome applicants working in a variety of fields and methods. Ad will be out shortly.
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Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · 25/09/2026
FYI to everyone submitting this October NIH cycle You need to re-certify your ScienCV AFTER Sept 26 (tomorrow) for your application or it may not be accepted. Great timing!
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Lord Sedge of Sedgley @lordsedge.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Kate Baker @ksbakes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We have an open Assistant/Associate Professor position in Pathogen Biology at the Department of Genetics - come and join us! 🦠 🧫 🧬https://www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assistantassociate-professor-in-pathogen-genetics-pc51175
cam.ac.uk
Assistant/Associate Professor in Pathogen Genetics
Applications are invited for an Assistant or Associate Professorship in Pathogen Genetics to be held in the Department of Genetics. We are searching for a talented individual with a track record of fu...
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 25/09/2026
Meanwhile I see this and dream of parking so cheap and plentiful near work that all it costs is a Nobel Prize
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Ben de Bivort @debivort.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hello friends, the Harvard Life Science departments have banded together to hire a new colleague working at the intersection of Life Sciences and AI. Could be primarily an experimentalist, or could be primarily a compute/theorist. academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16773
academicpositions.harvard.edu
Tenure-Track Professor in Life Science and AI
The Life Sciences Departments in Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences seek to recruit a tenure-track professor whose research is at the interface of AI and life sciences, from methodological developme...
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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is the sort of thing Universities do when they plan to throw their profs under the bus at the first sign of trouble. “You promised it wouldn’t violate any EO but Vought says it does so you lied and are fired!”
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Ryan North @ryannorth.ca · 23/09/2026
Pompeii is a UNESCO world heritage site not because it was remarkable in its prime, but because it survived to our era untouched: one moment, preserved for all time. But future generations won't know what OUR world was like unless we do the same. This is why we MUST bury Toronto with a volcano
Picture of the streets of Pompeii, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompei_-_panoramio_(26).jpg. Taken by Tanya Dedyukhina, used under CC
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Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We're hiring an Assistant or Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology in my department at the university of Houston @uh-ecoevo.bsky.social Come be my colleague careers.uh.edu/jobs/assista...
careers.uh.edu
Assistant or Associate Professor - Evolutionary Biology - Houston, Texas, United States
Department: Biology and Biochemistry Salary: Commensurate with experience Description: The Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston seeks to hire an evolutionary biolog...
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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Around 4:30, I heard Jon Lorsch had approval to turn the system back on. Not clear who gave that approval. Given the impending end of the fiscal year and the many delays this year, the few hour pause could matter. Reminded me of this stunt from July 2025: www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/t...
statnews.com
Trump administration reverses course, lifts pause on NIH grant awards
The order applies to the entirety of new and, possibly, ongoing research grant dollars that go to universities and academic medical centers.
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Olivier Borkowski @oborkowski.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Engineering Persistent and Rewritable Genetic Memory in Bacteria through Multiscale Plasmid Competition doi.org/10.64898/202...
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 22/09/2026
When part of a university is named after a living donor
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John Smillie @johnsmillie42.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Okay, so, Nobel Prize for whomever figures out how to run this horrifying experiment in reverse, where penicillium mold and its cousins are forced to come up with increasingly effective antiobiotics.
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Petra Levin @redrockcity.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
4 years (!) in the making, in this review Jade Wang and I detail the fundamental processes underlying growth, the cell autonomous nature of homeostatic control, and the contribution of stochasticity to both. TL;DR Bacteria are more like teenagers than you think. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Bacterial growth rate in populations and single cells - Nature Microbiology
In this Perspective, Levin and Wang give a brief history of bacterial growth rate and discuss how it is connected to nutrient availability and macromolecule synthesis, with a focus on (p)ppGpp as a ce...
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 20/09/2026
Whelp, here we go again “Trump is moving to put political appointees in charge of billions of dollars in federal health research grants in another attempt to cut Harvard’s funding”
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Akos Nyerges @akosnyerges.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Proud and excited to share our first preprint 🚀 in which we • create a high-fitness firewalled organism, • that stably colonizes the mouse gut for >100 days, • resists all tested phages in the gut, • and blocks horizontal gene transfer. + A new method: Chimera genomes to tailor existing synthetic
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Bernard Kim @bernardkim.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Princeton EEB is running a very broad faculty search at the Assistant Professor level. Please consider applying to join us! This is a wonderful, collaborative, cohesive department with diverse interests and amazing colleagues. apply.interfolio.com/193474
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Dmitri Petrov @petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
We are searching for an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology! Looking for colleagues asking fundamental questions relating to evolutionary processes and drivers of evolutionary patterns. If you think it is you, please do apply! And please repost. facultypositions.stanford.edu/jobs/assista...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology - Stanford University, California, United States
The Department of Biology at Stanford University seeks applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology. A successful candidate will conduct research that asks fundamental que...
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Betsy Hirsch, PharmD (TLOAS) @ebhirsch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Had the best cheer 📣 squad with very clever signs during my half marathon yesterday! Hope others enjoyed them too!🎉 Thanks to @melaniernicol.bsky.social and @draphilbrick.bsky.social for the support! #IDsky #UTIsky #medsky #pharmsky
Three women at a half marathon with a sign that reads “Run like you’ve got Cyclospora”

Three women with signs that say “Run like you’ve got Cyclospora” and “Run like a gram-negative bacteria from meropenem”

Two neon signs that say “Run like you’ve got Cyclospora” and “You’ve got more resistance than E. coli”A woman with a race bib posing in front of trees
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Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is so bad
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The Onion @theonion.com · 16/09/2026
Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation
Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation
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Philippe Batut @philippebatut.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
🧬🔬 Why are enhancers transcribed and how does that impact gene regulation? I’m really excited to share our new paper in @science.org showing that noncoding RNAs control the timing of gene activation in embryos. With Mike Levine #ScienceResearch @columbiamed.bsky.social A few highlights below... 🧵👇
science.org
Noncoding transcription controls the developmental dynamics of long-range gene regulation
The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely ...
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Lopes_Lab @lopeslab.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Thrilled to share a new important study from the lab, published today in @nature.com, showing how cohesin mediates efficient replication fork plasticity and stress response, using its loop extrusion activity to promote 3D contacts on replicating DNA: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Cohesin reshapes replication fork contacts to aid fork slowing and reversal - Nature
Cohesin-mediated loop extrusion limits sister-fork coupling and tethers nearby replication forks under replication stress, promoting fork reversal and slowing fork progression to safeguard genome...
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 15/09/2026
I hit apply so fast
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
1/17 Submissions are now open for the 2027 Microbial Population Biology GRC! We expect this meeting to be extraordinarily oversubscribed. If you want to come, time is of the essence--apply ASAP! June 27–July 2 • Andover, NH www.grc.org/microbial-po...
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 13/09/2026
This is spectacular
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Matt Henderson @matthen.com · 13/09/2026
Approximating the Lorenz attractor with a chaotic leaky water wheel. The orange dot is the centre of mass of the water. It traces (a projection of) the familiar attractor as the wheel spins seemingly randomly left and right.
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Nancy Baym @nancybaym.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
My brother‘s greatest hit. If you haven’t seen it, watch it now. It’s incredible. And yeah I’m the internet scholar and he’s the one who went viral. He earned it.
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ROCKY MOUNTAIN VIEWS @rockymountviews.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
It is predicted that there will be a 40° temperature change between 7 am and 2 pm, 51°F to 91°F. Welcome to Colorado.
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 13/09/2026
Ten years ago Tami, Roy, and I released a movie we made of antibiotic resistance evolving in real time. I thought maybe a couple thousand people tops would see it. I couldn't have imagined it would be seen millions of times, and be taught from middle school through the graduate level worldwide
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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 12/09/2026
“If AI is going to transform science, science cannot afford to lower its standards just to make AI look transformative.”
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Paul Hoskisson 🧫 🦠🐸 @paulhoskisson.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Really important from @ellinoralseth.bsky.social & @brownlab.bsky.social - a framework for defense as an evolved adaptation, in a world where ‘defense’ & ‘immune’ are often used to mean anti-infection The bacterial immune system: identifying evolved defense adaptations www.cell.com/trends/micro...
cell.com
The bacterial immune system: identifying evolved defense adaptations
Recent years have witnessed a rapid expansion in bacterial defense mechanisms. Alongside established defenses against molecular parasites, hundreds of novel mechanisms are being described annually, co...
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Mart Krupovic @mkrupovic.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Why did some #viruses evolve to be #giants while others did not? Our perspective piece on this topic with Eugene Koonin. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Why did some viruses evolve to be giants while others did not? | PNAS
Viruses are ubiquitous mobile genetic elements that are obligate symbionts of cellular life forms and replicate exclusively within host cells. The ...
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