iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Nora Pyenson

Asher Leeks @asherleeks.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Come work with @viromehunter.bsky.social and myself at UBC! We have a postdoctoral position available for someone with an interest in bioinformatics and genomics, using sociovirology to understand disease dynamics in plant viruses. Advert: ppvlab.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2026/0...

ppvlab.sites.olt.ubc.ca

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Reposted by Nora Pyenson

Jakob T Rostøl @jakob-tr.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Like a prophage being awakened from its slumber, the phage field has seen a lot of renewed activity during the last decade. Check out our new @natrevmicro.nature.com review on the temperate phage life cycle here to stay up-to-date 🧫🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Revisiting the life cycle of temperate phages - Nature Reviews Microbiology

The life cycle of temperate bacteriophages involves lytic or lysogenic cycles and has historically served as a model for studying genetic regulation. This Review provides an updated overview of these ...

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Kotaro Chihara @kochihara.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Happy to share our new work on how phages escape bacterial immunity. We show that a phage homing endonuclease drives segmental amplification of anti-defense genes, pointing to a versatile and rapid mode of adaptation. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PhageSky #MicroSky

nature.com

Phage homing endonuclease amplifies anti-defense genes to evade bacterial immunity - Nature Communications

Phages employ diverse counter-defense strategies to overcome bacterial immune systems. Here, the authors reveal that the phage homing nuclease SegB facilitates immune evasion by promoting the segmenta...

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Reposted by Nora Pyenson

Ashleigh Griffin @asgriffin.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

How to study adaptation in organisms that we can’t see, living in environments that we can’t visit? Some thoughts in our perspective piece out today in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @biology.ox.ac.uk @stuwest.bsky.social

pnas.org

Studying adaptation at the invisible scale | PNAS

In order to understand adaptation by natural selection, it is necessary to observe organisms in their natural habitat. For this reason, the field o...

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Cathy Hernandez @cathyhernandez.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Excited to share a preprint of work from my postdoc with @paulturnerlab.bsky.social exploring how prophages can impact host thermal ecology and evolution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Nora Pyenson

Simon Roux @simrouxvirus.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

We (with Clement Coclet, not on Bsky) had the chance to work on a broad "state of viromics" review. We tried to use this to give an overview of how the field changed over the last ~ 15 years, and also what we think are some of the major remaining challenges. Full-text access at -> rdcu.be/excHt

rdcu.be

Viromics approaches for the study of viral diversity and ecology in microbiomes

Nature Reviews Genetics - In this Review, Roux and Coclet outline current viromics approaches and discuss how they have contributed to our growing understanding of viral genomic diversity, focusing...

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Check out the official Phage Names in Table S1, like Escherichia phage MiataMamis, that were inspired by loved ones and colleagues, and will soon be immortalized in the National Library of Medicine. 📜

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I’m lucky to have had lots of help with my big postdoc project and a special thanks to @asanchezlab.bsky.social , Kevin Foster, @paulturnerlab.bsky.social, Jonas Schluter, @jgoldford.bsky.social, Odera Nweke, and @asherleeks.bsky.social.

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

And lastly, our study highlights how phages can live as social organisms. Just like organisms in the macroscopic world, these tiny bits of life find ways to coexist 🫂. (8/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Our work shows how ecological “niches” are almost endlessly divisible. Even under strict laboratory conditions, the E.coli population had heterogeneity that phage species could rely on. (7/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

This study shifts how we think about phage diversity in nature. Phages don’t just rely on host genotypic diversity for coexistence. They use diversity in host phenotypes—similar to how viruses infect different tissues in a human made of genetically identical cells. (6/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

The E. coli culture wasn’t really a single resource, it’s more like a buffet 🥗 of different cellular phenotypes. Different phage species preferred slow 🥬 or fast 🍅 growing cells which enabled their coexistence. (5/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

We mapped how each species interacted with their neighbor and found that most species didn’t love sharing their host population ⚔️. So how did they coexist despite this hostility? (4/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Coexistence wasn’t random or short-lived, but was stable even when we tried to drive different species towards extinction 🦖 (ie. negative frequency dependent selection). (3/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

We grew diverse phage species on a clonal (non-evolving) E. coli population and expected one species to beat out all others. Instead we found the opposite: multiple species coexisted in every single community. (2/8)

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Nora Pyenson @norapyenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

We asked: Can different phage species (bacterial viruses) coexist on a shared resource 🍝 (a genetically identical E. coli population)? The answer was overwhelmingly yes. (1/8)

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Rachel M. Wheatley @rachelmwheatley.bsky.social · 19/03/2024

Is a healthy microbiome one that is rich in phages? Excited to share this work⁦‪‬⁩ where we apply ecological theory on the role of parasites in ecosystems & explore whether viromes can be used as signatures of microbiome health 🦠

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Asher Leeks @asherleeks.bsky.social · 08/02/2024

One week left to apply to the Social Lives of Viruses 2024! 50-person meeting on viral sociality, from virology to evolution, in Puerto Rico this June. All welcome; free accommodation and registration. Apply here: forms.gle/SvgCix9Njr8r... #SocialViruses #ViroSky #MicroSky #EvoSky

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Noah Houpt @noahhoupt.bsky.social · 16/10/2023

So excited to share that my paper with Rees Kassen in American Naturalist is officially typeset and available on the AmNat website! Please check out our exploration of how ecological interactions emerge de novo as populations diversify. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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