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Grant Nickles

@grantnickles.bsky.social
202 followers 203 following 42 posts

Cyclist, mycologist, music, and hockey 🏳️‍🌈 gnick18.github.io UW-Madison RISE Postdoctoral Fellow in Fungal Interactions Lab

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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
too many months cooped up in the lab separates myself from why I went into biology in the first place. Nature and biodiversity is so incredible and there’s nothing like camping to ground myself in why I chose to be a biologist
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Annie Hatmaker, Ph.D. @annemakerofhats.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
If you weren't at the Cellular and Molecular Fungal Biology Gordon Research Conference, I hope this helps you decide to go next time. It's such a great community! starring @grantnickles.bsky.social cinematography by @emmascales.bsky.social
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Duke University School of Medicine @dukemedschool.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Anna Lehmann, PhD candidate working in the Heitman Lab, found Aspergillus fumigatus can briefly duplicate chromosomes to survive antifungal treatment, then revert without a trace. medschool.duke.edu/news/phd-candida…
medschool.duke.edu
PhD candidate discovers a hidden way that a fungal pathogen may resist treatment
Some fungal pathogens survive antifungal drugs by mutating.
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garimasingh-gs.bsky.social @garimasingh-gs.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
🍄 New study on #fungal #isocyanide synthases (#ICSs)! With @grantnickles.bsky.social @kellerlab.bsky.social (Uni. Wisconsin-Madison) @currentbiology.bsky.social @unipd.bsky.social Thanks all for the great teamwork! doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.… #Lichens #SecondaryMetabolism #biosyntheticGenes #fungi
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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
What is the origin of South Africa's invading #mushrooms? The 'fly agaric' is the famous red-and-white-spotted mushroom of fairy tales. But like all good stories, this fairy tale has a dark twist: the mushroom is invasive on multiple continents, including in Africa. youtu.be/ILLT154Byw0 🧵1/3
youtu.be
What is the origin of South Africa's invading mushrooms?
The 'fly agaric' is the famous red-and-white-spotted mushroom of fairy tales. But like all good stories, this fairy tale has a dark twist: the mushroom is invasive on multiple continents, including…
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The Rokas Lab at Vanderbilt University @rokaslab.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
What an honor and privilege to organize #fungal26 with the one and only Meritxell Riquelme! Thank you fungal community and @genetics-gsa.bsky.social for making this such a great meeting !
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LaBella Lab @lablabella.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
What a way to end #fungal26 We laughed and we cried and we learned so much A great reminder to look back and reflect on the past It can light the way to the future Thank you Nancy Keller for being a light 🕯️ in the field
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Our new paper on the evolution and chemical ecology of the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria; aka the Super Mario mushroom 🍄) in the Global South is out now in New Phytologist. Read the full paper here: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧵 1/5
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Equipped for success: genomes and metabolomes of the European Amanita muscaria are conserved in its novel South African range
Plants and soils have been moved around the world for centuries, but invasive mushrooms receive scant attention. The Amanita muscaria species complex was introduced to South Africa in the context of...
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Do you work with the Aspergillus fumigatus model isolates Af293 or CEA10? If so, we want to collaborate with you! In return for your lab's participation we will sequence your strain for free and provide co-authorship on the final paper. Learn more here: asp-fumi-seq-project-2025.vercel.app
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
(1/x) Yesterday will go down as one of the most monumental of my life.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on the plane? Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of… Flight attendant: The pilots want to know about marine CO₂ removal and its role as a climate solution. Me: AT LAST!
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Marie-Claire Harrison @marie-clairehar.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... new preprint on predicting antifungal drug resistance in yeasts is out!
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Hello friends and colleagues! I'm giving my public defense on May 28th from 10-11am CST. Zoom link: uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99000991657 I'll be talking about the three different first-author papers from my PhD. For sneak previews of those chapters scroll down for the thread! 👇
Flyer showing the title and talk time for my dissertation. Location: MSB 1420. Date: May 28th @10am CST
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Keller Lab @kellerlab.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
New publication with the Huttenlocher Lab! Led by PhD candidate Nayanna Mercado Soto, we used zebrafish to study burn wound infections with Candida albicans & Aspergillus fumigatus, showing the innate immune response is highly conserved across fungal species. #fungi journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org
Larval zebrafish burn wound infection model reveals conserved innate immune responses against diverse pathogenic fungi | mBio
Secondary fungal infections within burn wound injuries are a significant problem that delays wound healing and increases the risk of patient mortality. Currently, little is known about how fungi colon...
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
How it feels being a Wisconsin Susan Crawford voter waiting for the election results
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Dylan Duerre @dylanduerre.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Excited to share that work from my PhD is now available in @natmetabolism.bsky.social! Here, we uncover a link between heme production, BCAA metabolism, and thermogenesis—implicating heme synthesis in #aging, #obesity, and #T2D. Link to paper: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/... A Thread (1/15)
urldefense.com
Haem biosynthesis regulates BCAA catabolism and thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue
Nature Metabolism - Inhibition of haem synthesis is shown to lead to the accumulation of branched-chain amino acids in the brown adipose tissue of mice, which reduces UCP1 levels and impairs...
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
To the PIs that take the time to find grad students at conferences with posters, you are appreciated!! Hearing someone else get amped about my work reminds me why I do science 🥰
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
I’m in San Diego for the SIMB Natural Product Discovery and Development in the Genomic Era conference. Excited to hear about the research going on in other labs and to make new connections :)
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Never a doubt in my mind that Charli was taking it this year
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 29/11/2024
Online @cellpress.bsky.social, we reveal a protein shell that helps diatoms fix 20% of global #CO2 🧪🌊🌾🧶🧬🌍 Shimakawa et al: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Nam et al: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... @biozentrum.bsky.social press release: www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/... Read on for more... 1/🧵
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
It’s crazy that 90% of the R&D bioinformatics jobs I’m seeing now require ML and AI development expertise while simultaneously advanced PhDs in biology or data science. If I had to guess only 5-10% of PhD level bioinformaticians actually know how to make advanced ML models.
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estella newcombe @estellaan.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
We did this crazy project where we tried to see if proteins could interact with their mirror image ligand. Seems impossible when proteins need to form 3D structures to interact. But what about if the interaction remains disordered??? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Stereochemistry in the disorder–order continuum of protein interactions - Nature
Studies on protein–protein interactions using proteins containing d- or l-amino acids show that stereoselectivity of binding varies with the degree of disorder within the complex.
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Franciska de Vries 🟥 @frantecol.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
It’s out!! We subjected soils from 30 different locations across Europe to extreme events and found that soil fungal and bacterial communities showed consistent responses that could be predicted from their origin! With @knightjar.bsky.social and many collaborators! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events - Nature
Soils from 30 grasslands across Europe were subjected to 4 contrasting extreme climatic events under drought, flood, freezing and heat conditions, with the results suggesting that soil microbiomes fro...
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Sam Williams @samwill.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Sure this will be super useful going forward for benchmarking and discovery 'MassSpecGym is the largest publicly available dataset of high-quality labeled MS/MS spectra' arxiv.org/html/2410.23...
arxiv.org
MassSpecGym: A benchmark for the discovery and identification of molecules
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Dr Katherine Duncan @kateduncan.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
If you are new to 🦋 and are interested in microbial natural products - here’s some starter packs to help connect us go.bsky.app/72NeGsT and go.bsky.app/4xnRN52 - there’s also one set up by @danudwary.secondarymetabolism.com here go.bsky.app/Q9svkYf
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Hi 🦋! My name is Grant Nickles, 5th year PhD student studying fungal natural products in the Keller lab @ UW-Madison. More specifically, I've been developing genome mining strategies to investigate poorly characterized non-canonical fungal pathways. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
academic.oup.com
Mining for a new class of fungal natural products: the evolution, diversity, and distribution of isocyanide synthase biosynthetic gene clusters
Abstract. The products of non-canonical isocyanide synthase (ICS) biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) mediate pathogenesis, microbial competition, and metal-
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Hayden Clarkin @thetransitguy.com · 15/11/2024
If you've ever wondered why most new housing in America looks like the image on the left, rather than being more interesting and architecturally diverse like the building on the right, I have one explanation: single stair building codes 🧵
A mid-rise apartment building with a mix of brick and beige siding located on a busy street corner. The building has retail stores, including a CVS Pharmacy, on the ground level and residential units above. It features large windows, balconies, and several towers extending upward. Snow is visible on the ground, and cars are stopped at an intersection under a clear blue sky.
A mid-rise residential building with a unique curved brick facade and modern architectural design. The structure features large windows, decorative balconies, and greenery on the rooftop and balconies. Surrounded by trees and set in an urban environment, the building contrasts with the more rectangular neighboring structures under a partly cloudy sky.
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Pretending I have my year in review with these monthly stats.fm summaries. Charlie is taking my top artist of 2024 I fear
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
48% is SO high 😭. God I don’t envy climate and public health scientists over the next 4 years. They’re science policies strongest soldiers
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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
There are natural products, and there are natural-ish products:
science.org
Natural-Ish Product Motifs
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Imposter syndrome making me too nervous to ask to be added to a science starter pack as just a smol grad student
media.tenor.com
a small gray and white kitten is sitting on a pink blanket with a speech bubble .
ALT: a small gray and white kitten is sitting on a pink blanket with a speech bubble .
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tannertan36 @tannertan36.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
what I’m all about (dog and 🏳️‍🌈 )
Sweat tour fit
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Tyler on Film 🎞️ @tyler.bsky.social · 07/11/2024
remember: this app has no ads ✨
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 31/10/2024
Had the opportunity to share my science on fungal natural products in a statewide communications competition. Congrats to all of the other fantastic finalists! Grateful to take home the 2nd place prize 😄. You can view my winning submission here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uwx...
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Grant Nickles @grantnickles.bsky.social · 24/09/2024
0/3 on industry job applications, it’s a tough time to be a fungal natural product scientist but I’m smiling through the pain. Maybe this is my sign to post doc *sigh*
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