In 2026, our university handed out a staggering set of accomplishments in education and accreditation 🥂

⏺ 1,000,000 total undergraduate degrees
⏺ 100 years of PhDs
⏺ 1st PhD in microbiome sciences

Congrats @pennstateuniv.bsky.social 🎓

www.psu.edu/news/researc...

🌲 Our new review preprint examines pine wilt disease as a #holobiont disorder and proposes microbiome assembly as a potential management target.

Read it on EcoEvoRxiv: doi.org/10.32942/X23...

New this week from Matters Microbial, Dr. Monica Medina, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, joins the quality quorum to discuss how organisms are made up of myriad other organisms—the holobiont concept.
@markowenmartin.bsky.social

JOB: The @psumbiome.bsky.social mission is to accelerate microbiome science by bringing curiosity and creativity to the vital next steps of the field. This mission requires fast paced execution; and we celebrate meaningful work from self-starters.

psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_St...

Rosalind Franklin had it in photograph 49, two images before the famous 51: “She recognized it, suggested a helical structure and used it to calculate…the length of each turn in the spiral…and the number of bases “per turn of helix (if there is a helix)””
www.science.org/content/arti...

Capturing perspectives from both the host and microbiome is sorely need for studying interactions in the holobiont. Here's a multiset correlation and factor analysis approach to integrate and analyze five layers of holo-omic data across 800,000+ features.

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Transplant experiments in deep-sea vesicomyid clam holobionts? Impressive. A new @science.org Advances study finds tiered molecular adaptations and resilience. Symbionts shift metabolic pathways while hosts regulate lysosomal dynamics to adapt to environmental stress

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

bioengineer.org/microbes-may...

Adding value to the microbiome field, @pennstateuniv.bsky.social graduated the 1st PhD in the microbiome sciences…with 30 more @psumbiome.bsky.social students now in the curriculum. The mission is accredit and identify microbiome science PhDs - front and center. 🎓 www.psu.edu/news/researc...

Excited to see our work out in @pnas.org!

We asked how mobile genetic elements generate functional diversity in symbionts and found a plasmid that protects aphids from lethal pathogens, helping to explain variation in defence across natural aphid populations.

See @ben-parker.bsky.social thread👇

We updated our lab values (moellerlab.org/values/) and our lab membership (moellerlab.org/members/) for the year. It's sad but joyful to say "goodbye" as lab members head off on new adventures. But we're looking for new friends! Get in touch to join us as a technician or as a postdoc!

Hats off to hosts Chris Hayes, Becky Vega Thurber (picture above), @mixotrophe.bsky.social and colleagues.

Thank you Santa Barbarans for the glimmering science and homegrown hospitality! Your thinking caps in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology are as top notch as the beaches and sunshine. @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social

Great seminar today at #UCSB by @symbionticism.bsky.social discussing 100+ years of work on #Wolbachia! An impressive animal -> microbe -> virus interaction!

Another Matters Microbial hosted by @markowenmartin.bsky.social features one of our own, Jasna Kovac!

This episode dives into the interactions between Listeria and other microbes and how these relationships can influence its survival.

▶️ Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A1b...