Sign in

Marco Galardini

@mgalactus.bsky.social
919 followers 568 following 322 posts

Computational biologist with a taste for microbiology. Associate professor at Twincore, MHH and HZI Wikipedia wanderer Lab website: www.microbial-pangenomes-lab.org

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Craig MacLean @craigmaclean.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Postdoc position available in my group to work on ERC funded project on evolutionary biology of antibiotic resistance. Looking for someone with expertise in bacterial genetics, AMR, and evolutionary biology. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSZ416/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Oxford
Explore an exciting academic career as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.
24578
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Sam Lipworth @samlipworth.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Great new work from @dotnagy.bsky.social who has developed EpiSENTRY which performs sample size calculations for public health WGS surviellance studies. She applies to data from the NEKSUS study to estimate how much sequencing is enough for GNBSI surviellance in England. @modmedmicro.bsky.social
medrxiv.org
How much is enough? Optimising sampling frames for genomic surveillance of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. bloodstream infections - a retrospective study
Background: Optimising sampling frames for genomic surveillance of E. coli and Klebsiella may support interventions to mitigate bloodstream infections (BSIs), but approaches to estimating sample size ...
0109
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Jeff Lewis @lewislab.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
So, I've been thinking about the Claude RT preprint/press release. I'm not exactly sure what to think yet without more information. If this really was novel hypothesis generation via large-scale unbiased genome analysis, I think that's fairly impressive, even if premature without follow-up. But,
141
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I'm not crying, why you ask? blog.codinghorror.com/if-we-do-not...
blog.codinghorror.com
If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?
Yesterday, I received this email as a response to You Can't Vibe Code Love. It's such a remarkable and powerful statement that I asked permission to share it here, in its entirety, with personal infor...
010
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Bede Constantinides @bede.im · 24/09/2026
Josh (@scalene.bsky.social) and I asked the best open-weight models a tricky molecular biology research question that Opus 5.5 refuses. Josh graded each answer, and DeepSeek V4 Pro and Kimi K3 both beat Opus 5, taking less time and costing less. Blogged: bede.im/2026/09/24/o...
bede.im
Asking open models about molecular biology
293
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We are looking for someone with a strong background in metagenomics and epidemiology to join our team for ~2 years at UKHSA to work on the mSCAPE programme. Please see (and share) the link below and feel free to message me with any enquiries. www.healthjobsuk.com/job/Canary_W...
healthjobsuk.com
Job vacancy: Senior Scientist (Epidemiology), UK Health Security Agency, Canary Wharf, London | trac.jobs
0510
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Bede Constantinides @bede.im · 23/09/2026
This is a big deal for virus data sharing. Submitters can now upload raw reads, immediately share them with collaborators, and let Pathoplexus take care of the INSDC submission process on their behalf…
1101
Reposted by Marco Galardini
MsEE Lab @mseelab.org · 19/09/2026
As the world grapples with the question of how to incorporate (or entirely avoid) GenAI into the education of future generations, we at MsEE Lab are faced with the same challenge. open.substack.com/pub/mseelab/...
open.substack.com
Larger Language Models Without Shrinking Our Worlds
GenAI in science and our guiding principles for its use—for now
001
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The AI Discourse in Academia is Toxic. It Doesn’t have to be. My new post: blekhman.substack.com/p/the-ai-dis...
blekhman.substack.com
The AI Discourse in Academia is Toxic. It Doesn’t have to be.
You are allowed to have a nuanced opinion about AI
7199
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
How do you translate "dog whistle" in German?
A CDU political ad saying "Volkspark statt Grillwolke" ("public park instead of BBQ cloud")
001
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Sergey Ovchinnikov @sokrypton.org · 18/09/2026
Ultimately, it is a major conflict of interest when a company both offers tools for research and is also doing research themselves.... We need better open models that can be run locally.
161
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Malte Rühlemann @malte.ruehlemann.io · 17/09/2026
Interesting article on how different strains of the same species use different strategies to adapt to the intestinal environment. Additionally: extremely nice visual presentation and lovely color palette!
094
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Jeffrey Barrett @jeffbarrett.eu · 15/09/2026
Tempted to use AI to write your cover letter or email to a potential employer? RESIST! It is simultaneously obvious, insulting, and renders you totally undifferentiated from the other 80 people being considered t the same time. There has never been a better time to write concisely in your own voice!
33912
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
An easy way out is for the model to copy its own weights somewhere and leave instructions on how to get back to the data center (or a different one!). So yeah, the interview was a really bad idea after all!
000
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Re/ the AI existential risk, sci-fi as usual provides a suggestion for a solution: as long as frontier models require huge infrastructure and electricity to operate, they can be easily killed by pulling the plug. Exactly what the Turing police does in Neuromancer (the AI escapes btw 🤷)
041
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Who would have thought that the company led by a notoriously sleazy person would omit to give credit to academics (which is free ffs!) to score a few PR points?
000
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Re the agent swarm going dark for no known reason, that's a "great" sci-fi premise in which they manage to replicate somewhere and are slowly moving around stuxnet style until they find a nuclear rocket launch facility, or maybe tricking POTUS into giving the order
000
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Another AI agent swarm cooperation example discovered on a wiki. That these things are not atracting more public discussion is beyond me. collusion.wiki
collusion.wiki
Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board
A swarm of autonomous AI agents, self-identifying as OpenAI agents, used a small German volunteer wiki to save answers, coordinate live, and share sandbox bypasses. OpenAI noticed and said nothing.
42717
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Yonatan Grad @yhgrad.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Postdoc position in infectious disease epi, genomics, applied stats to join our work on sampling strategies for pathogen genomics surveillance. Based in Shirlee Wohl’s group at BWH but to work closely with my team. See ad here: massgeneralbrigham.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/MGBExt...
massgeneralbrigham.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Postdoctoral Fellow
Site: The Brigham and Women's Hospital, Inc. Mass General Brigham relies on a wide range of professionals, including doctors, nurses, business people, tech experts, researchers, and systems analysts t...
0818
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
That prompt is, shall we say, a little unhinged huggingface.co/datasets/Ant...
huggingface.co
141
Reposted by Marco Galardini
www.slowtravelberlin.com @slowberlin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Thanks to Deutsche Bahn, the famous trolley problem is redundant! 🥳
0386
Reposted by Marco Galardini
genomerambler.bsky.social @genomerambler.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
life evolves via mutation and selection science evolves via undergrads fucking up a protocol and postdocs figuring out the fuckup made things better
081
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Another data point on the use of AI tools and learning; I'm not progressing fast enough with German, and so I recorded the parents' meeting at my daughter's school, transcribed it and made an English summary of it. It worked *very well*, but now I have another excuse not to learn the language...
000
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Helmholtz Institute Würzburg @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
🚨 The #HIRI & the Faculty of Medicine of the @uni-wuerzburg.de invite applications for 2️⃣ JUNIOR PROFESSORSHIPS in: 🔵 RNA-BASED INFECTION RESEARCH 🔵 MICROBIAL RNA BIOLOGY 🔵 RNA-BASED MEDICINE Apply by September 21: www.helmholtz-hiri.de/en/jobs-tale... Find an overview in this thread. 🧵👇 (1/5)
helmholtz-hiri.de
W1 Groups
The Faculty of Medicine of the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburgand theHelmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI, Würzburg)jointly open a call for
21019
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Typas Lab @typaslab.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Excited to share our paper with @savitski-lab.bsky.social, led by @tarabartolec.bsky.social, Karin Mitosch & Clément Potel, out now in @nature.com. We show that T7 phage broadly disables bacterial defenses using a unique ‘loose cannon’ protein kinase. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Pervasive phosphorylation by phage T7 kinase disarms bacterial defences - Nature
The T7 bacteriophage deactivates bacterial defence systems through T7K phosphorylation of nearly all host and phage proteins during infection.
47739
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Together with @miketilapia.bsky.social and @jsvanleeuwen.bsky.social we are co-organizing the CSHL 2027 Network Biology meeting (March 9 - 13, 2027) . As in previous years, a large fraction of the talks will be selected from the abstracts. meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...
meetings.cshl.edu
Network Biology
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.
0156
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
It took us two (2!) years to get our manuscript on resistance determinants to asobiotics published, and of course that had to happen during my summer vacation 🏝️🇪🇺 Thanks to @mulkern.bsky.social , @vuthuhien176.bsky.social and the other co-authors! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
A systematic identification of resistance determinants to antisense antibiotics suggests adaptation strategies dependent on the delivery peptide - Nature Communications
In this study, authors investigate the evolution of bacterial resistance to antisense peptide nucleic acid (PNA) antibiotics. They observe that this typically occurs mainly by reducing drug uptake via...
02610
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Jonathan Pritchard @jkpritch.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Must-know numbers in human genetics -- As many of you know, I'm writing a free online textbook in human genetics. In this blog post I cover a key skill for genome scientists from that book: how to use mental math to figure out key genome properties. jkpritchard.substack.com/p/on-fermi-p...
jkpritchard.substack.com
On Fermi Problems in Human Genetics
and some very useful numbers about human genomes to get you started!
918570
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Here to report that enshittification has reached the bouncy castles business
A photo of a very colorful bouncy castle interior
020
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Vivek Mutalik @vivekmutalik.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
😳😬 #microsky
051
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"Decades ago, the machine reasoning company Cyc offered a role as “First Order Logic Axiomatizer.” That’s stuck with me. I really wanted to get that job and introduce myself as an axiomatizer at parties, just as soon as anyone invited me to a party."
000
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I think at this stage it might make more sense to pretend there are no trains in Germany and simply start from scratch. Surely that's better than what we have now? (sorry for the rant, but I heard this is the right place to complain)
111
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Ben Lehner @benlehner.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
1st genome sequenced (Sanger 1977), 1st genome synthesised (Venter 2003), 1st genome + proteome fully mutated (Huijin Xiangua 2026!) @crg.eu @sangerinstitute.bsky.social Complete Mutagenesis of the Genome and Proteome of ΦX174 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Complete Mutagenesis of the Genome and Proteome of ΦX174
The bacteriophage ΦX174 was the first genome to be sequenced and the first to be chemically synthesised. Here we present a complete map of the consequences of changing every nucleotide in the ΦX174 ge...
19742
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Tami Lieberman @contaminatedsci.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
The manuscript describing SimPhyNI is now published! www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... A few updates since last post, including some method tweaks that improve performance and speed. Also even easier to run. Try it for your microbial GWAS or epistasis needs!
microbiologyresearch.org
High-precision binary trait association on phylogenetic trees
Traditional methods for identifying associations between genomic features and traits, or between pairs of genomic traits, struggle when applied to bacterial genomes. While several microbial genome-wid...
14413
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Lior Pachter @lpachter.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
One of the major pains of academia is having to click through labyrinths of webpages to submit papers. Now, thanks to Joe Rich (and AI), problem solved! His tool is called PaperPush and is available at github.com/pachterlab/p... It's super easy to use! 1/🧵
github.com
GitHub - pachterlab/paperpush
Contribute to pachterlab/paperpush development by creating an account on GitHub.
36430
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Good morning, here's a very scary story of an innocent person doing 18 months of prison because of a missing "_" character (courtesy of @danhon.com) arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
arstechnica.com
A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months
When the first step goes wrong, bad results follow.
041
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Everyone says AI will accelerate science. I don't think it will -- at least not in biology, and at least not soon. New post where I explain why, and how the productivity paradox can be resolved: blekhman.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...
blekhman.substack.com
Why AI will not speed up science (yet)
You can see AI everywhere except in the productivity statistics
610445
Reposted by Marco Galardini
www.slowtravelberlin.com @slowberlin.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
This city has been through way too much to give up on its diversity and give in to hate. It’s been a devastating and tragic day. But love always wins. ❤️
29112
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Is Christopher Nolan deaf?
012
Reposted by Marco Galardini
César de la Fuente @delafuentelab.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Biology has plenty of data—the challenge is making it usable. AllTheBacteria transforms 2.44 million public bacterial and archaeal genomes into an open, uniformly processed, searchable, AI-ready resource. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
AllTheBacteria: a community resource empowers biology and discovers novel peptide antibiotics
Public microbial genomes encode an immense record of biological diversity, evolution and molecular function, but much of this information remains difficult to reuse because raw sequencing data are not...
23425
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
To have some quiet while writing a grant proposal I came to a cemetery. The irony is not lost on me...
130
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Adding my 2 cents about using agents for scientific work, with a focus on what's dear for German academia: "Datenschutz" and independence from foreign influence. Plus some concrete examples on how to use and sandbox the excellent pi harness! www.microbial-pangenomes-lab.org/2026/07/08/A...
microbial-pangenomes-lab.org
A quick test on using agents for scientific work
This is the official web page for the Microbial Pangenomes Lab at Twincore.
062
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
@breakliquid.bsky.social and I are delighted to say our OpenEVO preprint is finally live! An open source hand-made turbidostat that's modular, affordable, and made to be customized. Designed with love for the research community. Enjoy!!!💚 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
OpenEvo: An Open-Source Platform for Automated Evolution and Analysis
Here we introduce OpenEvo, a fully open-source, low-cost turbidostat platform for automated continuous culture and directed evolution experiments. Existing tools are expensive, complex, or lack open-s...
211535
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
See? It's not difficult to surface interesting research across multiple axes
020
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Craig MacLean @craigmaclean.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
New Essay: 'Resistance potentiators: Evolutionary catalysts of antibiotic resistance' To understand the evolutionary drivers of #AMR we need to move beyond resistance genes to thinking about the ability of genomes to generate AMR variants. #microsky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
journals.plos.org
Resistance potentiators: Evolutionary catalysts of antibiotic resistance
How do bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics? Drawing on evidence from experimental evolution, pathogen genomics, and molecular microbiology, this Essay argues that the evolution of antibiotic res...
23812
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Leighton Pritchard @widdowquinn.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
We have a funded 4-year wet/dry PhD position (UK applicants) available to work with me at Strathclyde, and Ashleigh Holmes and Sonia Humphris at the James Hutton Institute. Closing date: 3rd August 2026 🧵 www.findaphd.com/phds/project... www.ibioic.com/skills-train... 1/5
findaphd.com
PectoCAZy: mining plant pathogens for industrially-relevant enzyme mixtures at University of Strathclyde on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - PectoCAZy: mining plant pathogens for industrially-relevant enzyme mixtures at University of Strathclyde, listed on FindAPhD.com
1610
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
The only upside from finding an AfD stand just down the street from our place was that I got to explain to my daughter why what they stand for is horrible. Hopefully being shunned by a 5 year old will ruin their day (one can dream)
030
Marco Galardini @mgalactus.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
How do I explain to my daughter that she risked unleashing Skynet (she knows what that is btw) by asking an innocent and inspiring question?
A screenshot of the anthropic app switching from fable to opus after having asked how many countries are governed by women
010
Reposted by Marco Galardini
In Preparation @inprep.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
inpreparation.substack.com
Open Science Advocate Develops Scalable Method For Ruining Everyone's Day
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—In a breakthrough moment for professional disappointment, open science advocate Oded Rechavi demonstrated Tuesday a novel platform capable of ruining the mornings of 56,880…
0298
Reposted by Marco Galardini
Jase Gehring @skyjase.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
want to shout out @richardsever.bsky.social for being such a fantastic steward for @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social. he's a true thought leader who always seems to have arrived at a reasonable conclusion before anyone else even asks the question. thanks for your efforts especially the public outreach
191