iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jan Claesen

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Every year, new graduate students in research labs are confronted by the Totem of Molbio that is "Captain Eppie". Captain Eppie was a promotional item given away with the purchase of Eppendorf centrifuges, but his mismatched eyes, primal energy & faint supernatural aura have led many to ask: WHY?

618627

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

... ... ... ... ... a) on its own? b) from a grant proposal with prelim data that was uploaded by someone working on this? Who's to say? 🤷‍♂️ www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

anthropic.com

Claude discovers a novel enzyme system

In early results from our new life sciences research lab, Claude agents found an enzyme system whose function is still unknown.

2123

Reposted by Jan Claesen

NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 23/09/2026

Taylor Swift dropping her new song “Cleveland!” on Friday, but still no word on when she plans to release our other 62 service-area cities’ title tracks.

818628

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Grateful to all our former postdocs who helped build our group through their science, leadership and dedication. So proud of your accomplishments and the mark you left on me and the team! 🙏 As circumstances brought us a postdoc-less lab, their contributions feel all the more meaningful. 🥲 #NPAW2026

static.klipy.com

Tom Hanks Thanks

ALT: Tom Hanks Thanks

140

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Doudna Lab @doudna-lab.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Out now in Science: Two papers from our lab reveal VIPR, an RNA-guided DNA-targeting system in bacteriophages, providing clues to the origins of CRISPR www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats to Peter Yoon, @kenjmloi.bsky.social @terryzzy.bsky.social, T.Docter & team

science.org

A noncontiguous code for RNA-guided DNA recognition at the origin of CRISPR-Cas

CRISPR-Cas provides RNA-mediated adaptive immunity, but how its first RNA-guided effector arose is unclear. In this study, we report the discovery of Viral Interference Programmable Repeat (VIPR) syst...

217570

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 19/09/2026

In a recent PNAS QnA, Michael J. Fox and Deborah W. Brooks discuss their work supporting research on Parkinson’s disease. Fox’s foundation now surpasses the National Institutes of Health in supporting research on this disease. Read more: ow.ly/uqSO50ZPcoK

0133

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Pat Schloss @patschloss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Let me get this straight. There's a title. There's a commentary article. There's an abstract. There's a set of bullet point highlights. There's a graphical abstract. AND YOU STILL THINK I NEED YOUR AI AGENT TO SUMMARIZE THE ARTICLE FOR ME?

06921

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · 16/09/2026

Authors!🚨 While you scramble for scarce $ 🤔 “Springer Nature reports revenue growth of 6.2%..and adjusted operating profit growth of 7.7%. They reported even more stunning submission growth of 30% and published article growth of 13%.” Publishing in society journals helps YOU not them👇🏻. Pass it on.

static.klipy.com

Man Lying on a Pile of Money

ALT: Man Lying on a Pile of Money

410371

Reposted by Jan Claesen

JL Weissman @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

My lab is hiring two(!) postdocs interested in (1) building trait prediction models capable of resolving complex microbial traits from genomes and metagenomes, and/or (2) building mathematical models of microbial community dynamics www.microbialgamut.com/mGAMUT_postd...

microbialgamut.com

23644

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Ioanna Chatzigiannidou @ioannachatzig.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Inflammaging does not present at the same levels in all individuals. Here, we showed that gut #microbiota composition can explain a lot of the inter-individual differences, both in inflammatory biomarkers, and future disease incidents. #MicroSky 📄Read the full article below: shorturl.at/Cwd3V

nature.com

Gut microbiota composition outperforms chronological age in predicting systemic inflammation and incident disease risk - Nature Communications

Here, characterizing 1,199 adults, the authors find that gut bacteria patterns predict inflammation and future disease risk better than age, with an identified microbiota type showing signs of “inflam...

161

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I fail to understand the hype... 🤔 My very first phone folded just as well!

130

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Sure I'll review your 10 chapter book - hope it's not all AI written like your email 15 days turnaround - yeah that seems appropriate, wasn't planning anything else anyways 50% discount on the fees I'd pay for a journal I'd likely never consider - now you're just too kind

static.klipy.com

Working Busy: Frantic Multitasking

ALT: Working Busy: Frantic Multitasking

063

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Don't do it! That app likely wants access to your camera and microphone!

110

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Carli Roush @phagephan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Thrilled to share my first paper out of grad school. We sequenced dental wastewater (yes, the stuff collected during teeth cleaning) and found previously unknown bacteriophages harbored in the human mouth. #phagesky #microsky 🧵 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

journals.asm.org

Dental wastewater reveals a hidden reservoir of oral bacteriophage diversity | Microbiology Spectrum

The human oral cavity contains a diverse microbial community, but the bacteriophages (phages) that infect many oral bacteria remain poorly characterized. This gap limits our understanding of how phage...

25718

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Justine Debelius @jwoodelius.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

How do people combine their 16S human microbiome studies and what do they call them? Check out our scoping review in AJE advances. @ajeadvances.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ajeadvances/... TL;DR: Lots of heterogeneity in methods, analysis, reporting: we need field standards (1/7)

academic.oup.com

In harmony? A scoping review of methods to combine multiple 16S amplicon datasets

Abstract. Robust evidence on relationships between the human microbiome and health is critical for understanding and improving the human condition. However

153

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Masschelein Lab @masscheleinlab.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

📢 We're hiring a postdoc! If you're passionate about microbial biosynthetic pathway elucidation and enzyme discovery we'd love to hear from you! www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

kuleuven.be

Postdoc Microbial Biochemistry: Biosynthetic Enzyme Discovery in Cable Bacteria

Elucidating the biosynthesis of a unique nickel-containing conductive structure for long-range electron transport in cable bacteria

11213

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Jan-Ulrik Dahl (Dahl lab, ISU) @janulrikdahl.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Are you passionate about understanding how bacterial pathogens survive host immune defenses and oxidative stress? My lab @illinoisstateu.bsky.social is looking for a highly driven and scientifically curious PhD student! Information about us can be found here: about.illinoisstate.edu/jdahl1/

141

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Sean Gibbons 🦠💩 @gibbological.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Dear microbiome enthusiasts: I'm excited to be moving my lab to New York University this fall (& the NYU Institute for Engineering Health); with joint-appointment @isbscience.org I'm hiring a postdoc @ NYU to look at diet-driven evolution in the gut: apply.interfolio.com/189980 Please share! 🦠🤓

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

410076

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Today I'm posting a blog about another ridiculous antibody blunder. Dozens of papers in the senescence and ageing field have mistakenly used an antibody for E. coli β-galactosidase when trying to stain for the human protein with the same name. forbetterscience.com/2026/07/21/d...

49146

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Ruth Isenberg, PhD @ruthlessruth15.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Officially Assistant Professor of Biology at @macalestercollege.bsky.social! It's been an exciting first (half) week getting my lab set up with the help of my research students Amy and Ivana. We may even get an experiment in next week!

Three smiling women standing in a research lab.

Three Polaroid photos featuring the same three women in a research lab.

3573

Reposted by Jan Claesen

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

"Spa" refers to a particular town in the Walloon region of Belgium, famous for its mineral baths with supposedly curative properties. During Roman occupation, it was called 'Aquae Spadanae'. Over time, the name came to refer to any place of healing & rejuvenation.

bbc.com

The town that launched a global self-care industry

Long before wellness became a global industry, a small town in eastern Belgium shaped how Europeans thought about health, leisure and water.

69811

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Mark O. Martin @markowenmartin.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Context is important. Especially for microbiologists.

0132

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Rauf Salamzade @raufs.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Microbes that have the greatest genomic potential for secondary metabolism tend to be multicellular. Here, we show that signatures of ancestral BGC expansions within 3 bacterial phyla and 2 fungal lineages coincide with origins of complex multicellularity [1/12] 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Complex multicellularity is linked with expanded specialized metabolite production in microorganisms - Nature Microbiology

The evolutionary emergence of complex multicellularity in bacteria and fungi, such as the ability for mycelial growth, is strongly associated with increased genomic carriage of biosynthetic machinery ...

16838

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Vienna BioCenter PhD Symposium 2026 @vbc-phd-symposium.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Meet the students organizing the 2026 Vienna BioCenter PhD symposium. Chloé B, Polina D, Maura H, Julia K, Konstantina K, Elisa M, Niccolo DM, Hannah M, Magdalena O, Federico S, Petra S, Agastya S, Kasia S, Moritz W, Felix W, Daniel V With great support from the VBC training team.

0104

Reposted by Jan Claesen

anil oza @aniloza.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Twitter thread from Thomas Dietterich, reading "Attention
@arxiv
authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/
3:03 PM · May 14, 2026
·
66.7K
Views
Relevant
View quotes

Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). 2/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can't trust anything in the paper. 3/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. 4/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
Examples of incontrovertible evidence: hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM ("here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?"; "the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments") end/"

9458111914

Reposted by Jan Claesen

will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

absolutely wild to see people out here saying that it is responsibility of peer reviewers to check for hallucinated references. it is hard enough to persuade people to read articles and provide reviews. expecting them to spend hours cross reffing literature is unreal.

32975151

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Just love getting an invite to review from a journal that desk rejected your own submission a few days prior 🎉🥳

160

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Tae Seok Moon @taeseokmoon.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I came back to the United States, hearing about a very sad news: Craig Venter passed away today. He is a pioneer, successfully sequenced the first Human genome, and tried to create Synthetic Cells. We lost a giant in Science. RIP. @jcvi.org

16025

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · 29/04/2026

Ok this is hilarious 😂 Be the C diff Watch out Cavs! It’s not gonna be pretty!

0327

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Nichole Broderick, PhD @nabroderick.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Excited to announce our new journal from @isme-microbes.bsky.social ISME Host Microbe is live and now accepting submissions. Look forward to receiving your papers! #Microsky 🧫 🦠

Image of the cover of the 1st volume of ISME Host Microbe a new official journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. Cover images shows a plant stomata with bacteria around and entering.

312587

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

I have a gut microbiome joke, but it's actually pretty shit.

1132

Reposted by Jan Claesen

nicoleeavalon.bsky.social @nicoleeavalon.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The MIBiG 5.0 Annotathon is coming soon, and registration is now open! 🧬 Does your research involve biosynthetic gene clusters? Do you love natural product biosynthesis? Do you have an interest in rare & exotic enzymes? We can use your help & expertise. Register here 👉 forms.gle/C1cWcLHtrjT2...

12621

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Ruth Isenberg, PhD @ruthlessruth15.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

A fabulous undergraduate researcher I mentor is graduating this spring and is looking for a job as a lab technician! She's interested in bacterial pathogenesis and is planning to go to grad school after getting more research experience. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is hiring!

185

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Jotham Suez (SuezLab@JHU) @suez.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

It's increasingly clear that commensal viruses play important roles in human health, but how do you study them? Our review "Tools and approaches to study the human gut virome: from the bench to bioinformatics" is out today in mSystems! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @haleybiont.bsky.social

A figure from the paper that provides an overview of available culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches for characterizing the human gut virome. Both culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches should be used to study the gut virome. At the bench, many protocols have been adapted to enrich viruses in a sample and isolate them using a sensitive host. Once a virus is isolated, various assays can be used to characterize how the virus interacts with its bacterial host. On the command line, viral genomes can be predicted and viral taxonomy can be identified within a sample. Once procured, multiple tools can be used to annotate viral genomes for predicted gene content and viral lifestyle and predict bacterial host taxonomy.

32411

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Our new paper, where we use metabolic modeling to show Fusobacterium grows faster in colorectal tumor vs normal tissue microenvironments, and use computational + experimental approach to find specific metabolic pathways driving host-microbiome interactions in cancer www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

2155

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year. That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027. A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications. A short 🧵

nature.com

Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026

Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.

2322258

Reposted by Jan Claesen

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

8644453

Jan Claesen @claesengroup.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Ruin a book with a car: Ford of the rings

030