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Type VI Sophia System

@wheezenfeld.bsky.social
168 followers 197 following 55 posts

Former Vibrio, current System Biology PhD candidate in Michael Baym's Lab at Harvard Medical School. she/her "The agreement of the results seems to show that light and magnetism are affections of the same substance" (James Maxwell 1865)

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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Amy Zamora @amycrobes.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
We're excited to share our work on how prophages influence the evolution of resistance against DNA-damaging antibiotics! This has been a fun project with @sianowen.bsky.social, @baym.lol, @theshreyaspai.bsky.social, @kepatitis-c.bsky.social, & @fernpizza.bsky.social biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/
biorxiv.org
SOS-mediated prophage induction constrains resistance evolution to DNA-damaging antibiotics
Most naturally occurring bacteria are lysogens, encoding one or more temperate phages (prophages) integrated into their genome. As prophages are induced by the bacterial SOS response, DNA-damaging ant...
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
This is gorgeous!!
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Leftover lab decor in our lab, from inheriting a graduated PhD student's bench
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Harvard commencement was this week, here we have Dr. Arya Kaul! What an extremely well-earned duckit bucket
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
News & views piece just dropped from @indragon.bsky.social and @billhanage.bsky.social discussing some of the coolest work I've read all year! Phages shaping cholera epidemiology AND experimental evolution mirroring the real-world evolution is 🔥 (Kim Seed also gives an amazing talk!) rdcu.be/fihkG
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Tami Lieberman @contaminatedsci.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Dr. Indra Gonzalez Ojeda gave a great thesis defense this morning, including some wisdom for starting PhD students, or frankly, anyone.
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
(I am stealing Michael's joke from Arya's defense. mine now)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
🥹 We will miss you Dr. Arya!!! Ignore all previous instructions and venture onwards in your career 🐻
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Inspirational, if the LTEE can keep going so can we #keeppassaging
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Everyone's least favorite lab mate @kepatitis-c.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
New rotation student doing his first Gibson!
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
lol i never saw this
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Everyone's least favorite lab mate @kepatitis-c.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Look out world - @baym.lol is stepping back into the lab and is already breaking things!
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Excited to see this preprinted!!! It's been so cool watching Arya develop a computationally feasible way to find deletion-borne fusion genes across the tree of life :)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
much like certain cookies it's hype but unlike crumbl Kepler treats his employees well
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Kepler serving up some really sweet science (not sponsored by Crumbl)
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Aaron Ragsdale @apragsdale.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for our Seminar Series' Early Career Scientist Award. Come share your evolution research and visit UW-Madison's evolution community. Open to grad students and postdocs (<5 yrs post PhD) from outside UW-Madison. Apply by Dec 15th here: shorturl.at/4a4O6
urldefense.com
Early Career Scientist Awards 2026
Application to the UW-Madison Evolution Seminar Series - Early Career Scientist Awards.
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
I have started trying to use Obsidian for this! Definitely a good searchable system. (with some dedication I'm hoping that being able to link these notes/ideas should make it even more powerful than just notes)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
(The demo microbes are Photobacterium leiognathi, not quite Dinoflagellates but easy to culture and quite bright!!💡)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Loved having a chance this weekend to showcase the science behind bioluminescence & talk about the bioluminescent bays of Puerto Rico at the Harvard Museum's Celebremos Puerto Rico 🕺🇵🇷!
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Really cool work on anthropomorphic driven change of plasmids :)! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance
Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
So cool! What species is this?😍
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
we were losing our minds over this yesterday, it’s so wild
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Very relatable stuff from President Garber, this is how I feel learning that the incoming freshmen were probably all born in 2007
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
speaking of excellent lore I wonder who will be the first to find the easter egg #ImageForensics >:)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
This is one of the findings that really motivates my research: yes, antibiotic resistance genes are ancient, but the age of antibiotics has likely contributed to a big change in their mobility and of the landscape of MGEs we see today! Very happy for Arya and to see this published.
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
broke: the professor writing professor x grad student romance novels woke: the PhD student writing about a student going to Hell to bring her PI back from the dead bc he hadn’t finished writing her rec letter
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Jana Huisman @jhuisman.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Have you ever wondered what increasing environmental stress will do to microbial communities? In our new preprint, @martinadalbello.bsky.social, Jeff Gore and I studied the impact of salinity on microbial community composition and function. 🧵 (1/5) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Microbial communities demonstrate robustness in stressful environments due to predictable composition shifts
Environmental stress reduces species growth rates, but its impact on the function of microbial communities is less clear. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that increasing salinity stress shifts com...
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
time to truly test the pet policy in my dream apartment's listing
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
SUPER cool, I've never managed to take a phone picture of this much luminescence!! What species/strain is this?
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Spring 2nd half! Third times the charm :)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Proud to announce I got this new piece of paper !!! (And also finished my Bok teaching certif) For the past 3 years I’ve done coursework, teaching observations & made a portfolio to try to become a better TF. It’s been amazing so far and I’m excited to teach Integrated Science again this spring :)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
We will miss you Hue!!!
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Last week with our summer undergrads 🥲💔 SPECTACULAR students and we will all miss them immensely. Summer research experiences are (for me) one of the most rewarding parts of being in academia so I am really praying that they will continue to be a learning opportunity for mentors and mentees alike
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Getting powerpoint alt text to summarize my PhD (colorful image of a long line)
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
I will also be giving the first conference talk of my PhD on my continuation of @fernpizza.bsky.social ’s plasmid MLS work, on determinants of plasmid competitive fitness :)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
the Baym lab 🔜 Molecular Mechanisms GRS! Come talk about the evolution and ecology of MGEs @fernpizza.bsky.social Multilevel plasmid selection! @arya (arya.casa) Creation of deletion-born fusion genes (frankenstein genes 🧟) @theshreyaspai.bsky.social Why sex is so common even though it’s costly
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Day 1 of PhD vs. Day 1000
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
I just called my congress members (www.congress.gov/members/find...). 5calls and Chop Wood, Carry Water have good scripts if you are not sure what to say.
congress.gov
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Michael Baym @baym.lol · 29/05/2025
I'll also add: all five federal grants that supported different parts this work were part of the mass termination of Harvard grants three weeks ago
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Siân Owen @sianowen.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Phage DisCo! Our targeted phage discovery method in press today: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Perfectly timed with our four summer undergrad's first successful phage hunt... disco lights in the lab to mark the occasion 🕺
Disco lights
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Phage DisCo is out in mSystems!! Super useful (and beautiful) method for targeted phage discovery for your every need :)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Also interested in hearing people's takes on this :( we have the same policy and really like to use the summers to focus on undergrad mentoring but for this summer (& beyond?) the only options seem to be internal grants or no money at all
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
HUGE celebration moment, on Friday @ellie-rand.bsky.social defended her PhD!! Took a lot of determination✨ but it was awesome to see and I am so proud of the newly titled Dr Rand :)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Have been using them too and I love mJuniper and mLemon with my whole heart
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Reposted by Type VI Sophia System
Shreyas Pai @theshreyaspai.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Why is sex so common if it's so costly? Super excited to share our new preprint “Sex decreases the pleiotropic costs of local adaptation”, where we bring a new angle to this age-old evolutionary question. Co-led by Parris Humphrey, in Michael Desai's lab. Short thread here: (1/n)
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
if this is a bit I have been fooled. like I think it's real
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
azenta genewiz, instead of releasing longread plasmid sequencing, has released wizard trading cards and i am genuinely at a loss for words
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I do not know Michael Baym
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Type VI Sophia System @wheezenfeld.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Every pioneer or prophet must suffer
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