Marc Strous | Lightnews

🇨🇦 Marc Strous

@marcstrous.bsky.social

400 followers 90 following 74 posts

Canada Research Chair in Geomicrobiology. Fascinations include alkaline soda lakes and ancient groundwater.

Videos

Marc Straus is an American oncologist, art collector, poet, and writer. He is the author of more than 40 scientific papers on the treatment of various types of cancer. Straus was among the first oncologists to introduce the use of continuous infusion for the delivery of chemotherapy, a practice that has since become standard. .. more

Environmental science 56%

Biology 18%

Posts Replies Media Videos

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · 18h

Should also say i thougt all the other findings were interesting and convincing, nice work!

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · 22h

Also, although many current eukaryotes need a high ATP production rate to maintain their expanded genomes, FECA/LECA likely not yet needed that, as it's genome may still have been relatively small, like current Archaea and many current protists or fungi. Just my 2 cts

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · 22h

@archaeal.bsky.social, I have reservations about the conclusions of this paper because of muddling kinetic and stoichiometric aspects. Yes micropcompartments can boost rates but that will never affect energy yields as suggested, so cannot compensate for not using O2.

Reposted by John Kennedy, A. E. Dessler, Marc Strous

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 7d

I just recorded a short video--essentially an updated version of my social media threads--on the Bill Gates climate memo. Despite agreeing with some points therein, I still think its framing is fundamentally flawed and thus also its key conclusions.

Thoughts from a climate scientist on the Bill Gates climate memo

I wanted to offer my thoughts, as a climate scientist, on the widely discussed memo published by Bill Gates in late October 2025. While I actually do agree with some of the specific points made therein regarding the urgent global need to accelerate efforts to reduce global poverty and improve human

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Katharine Hayhoe, Marc Strous

Clara Burgard @climateclara.bsky.social · 13d

🌊🧊🇦🇶
I am happy and proud to present our #platformist team effort out in @nature.com!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We examine if, when, and why #Antarctic #ice shelves will no longer be viable, at the latest, due to changes in #atmosphere and #ocean conditions.
A little 🧵 for the experts...
1/7

Ocean warming threatens the viability of 60% of Antarctic ice shelves - Nature

The viability of Antarctic ice shelves under low rates and high rates of global warming is modelled to estimate when it will become unfeasible for the ice shelves to maintain their present-day shape.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Marc Strous

Nadine Ziemert @nadineziemert.bsky.social · 14d

Happy to share our newest manuscript about the discovery and hererologous expression of metanodin, a new lassopeptide with unprecedented structural features directly from soil metagenomes. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....
#secmet #lassopeptides #syntheticbiology

Discovery and Heterologous Expression of the Soil Metagenome-Derived Lasso Peptide Metanodin with an Unprecedented Ring Structure

Culture-independent metagenomic approaches have proven to be effective tools for identifying previously hidden biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) encoding novel natural products with potential medical relevance. However, producing these compounds remains challenging as metagenomic BGCs often originate from organisms phylogenetically distant from available heterologous hosts. Lasso peptides, a subclass of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide (RiPP) natural products, exhibit diverse bioactivities, yet no lasso peptide has previously been discovered directly from a metagenome. Here, we report the discovery and heterologous expression of the first soil metagenome-derived lasso peptide. Expression of its biosynthetic gene cluster in Escherichia coli, followed by mass spectrometry analysis, strongly supported the predicted amino acid sequence and lasso structure of the peptide. Notably, this lasso peptide is the first to feature asparagine as the ring-forming residue at position one. Taxonomic analysis of the corresponding BGC identified an uncultivated member of the Steroidobacterales family (Gammaproteobacteria) as the closest known relative of the potential native host. These findings underscore the potential of metagenomic genome mining to reveal structurally novel RiPPs and to expand our understanding of the natural diversity of lasso peptides.

pubs.acs.org

Reposted by Marc Strous

Andrew Krause @blindmath.bsky.social · 14d

We're advertising a PhD at the intersection of mathematical ecology, metallobiology, and microbiology to study the impact of metals on microbial communities with @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social @kateduncan.bsky.social and Denis Patterson. Come join us in lovely Durham!

iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

When nutrients turn toxic: how metals shape microbial coexistence

iapetus.ac.uk

Reposted by Marc Strous

Christian Kost @kostchristian.bsky.social · 14d

#microsky #mevosky @spp2389.bsky.social

A PhD position is available in my lab to work on:

Emergence and self-organisation of bacterial metabolism in consortia of cross-feeding bacteria.

Please RT

Deadline: 12.11.25

More infos 👇
shorturl.at/rAKAT

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · 18d

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision

Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.

www.nature.com

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · Oct 11

Wow

Reposted by Simon Roux, Marc Strous

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Oct 8

Direct single-molecule detection and super-resolution imaging with a low-cost portable smartphone-based microscope www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Direct single-molecule detection and super-resolution imaging with a low-cost portable smartphone-based microscope - Nature Communications

Loretan and colleagues present a low-cost smartphone-based microscope capable of detecting single-molecule fluorescence. This approach opens doors to personalised and widely distributed applications in diagnostics, biosensing, and science education.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Elena Litchman, Marc Strous, Allan Konopka , and 1 more Elena Litchman, Marc Strous, Allan Konopka, Juan Rocha

Jarrett Byrnes @jebyrnes.bsky.social · Oct 7

Heeeeey #Microbial #Ecology folk! My department has a job opening for a tenure track Microbial Ecologist! Feel free to DM me with questions. Come join our awesome supportive whip-smart & kind crew in the Biology Department of @umassboston.bsky.social! employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us...

The ISC - your new home at UMass Boston?

The view of Boston Harbor from front of campus

Reposted by Marc Strous

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Oct 6

Global constraint principle for microbial growth laws www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs

Global constraint principle for microbial growth laws | PNAS

Understanding complex living systems requires identifying universal phenomenological laws that are independent of species and molecular-biological ...

www.pnas.org

Reposted by Andy Baker, Jed O. Kaplan, Marc Strous

Dr Dan Shugar 🇨🇦 @watershedlab.bsky.social · Oct 3

🚨FOUR tenure track positions in my dept @ucalgary.bsky.social @ucalgaryscience.bsky.social in applied & computational geophysics, subsurface geochemistry, sedimentary geology, and sustainable soil science. careers.ucalgary.ca/search/jobs?...

(please reskeet widely!) #academicsky 🧪⚒️🇨🇦

Opportunities matching 'earth'

Search 4 Careers available at University of Calgary.

careers.ucalgary.ca

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · Sep 26

My lab is attempting ancestral reconstruction of some very large trees using ALEml (amalgamated likelihood). Does anyone know if a multithreaded implementation of ALE is available somewhere? Our HPC is unhappy with us running a single thread for >24h on the bigmem node...

Reposted by Marc Strous

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Sep 26

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data - Nature Microbiology

In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Marc Strous

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Sep 23

BONCAT-Live for isolation and cultivation of active environmental bacteria journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

Reposted by Marc Strous

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Sep 19

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 - Nature Methods

Graphics processing unit-accelerated MMseqs2 offers tremendous speedups for homology retrieval from metagenomic databases, query-centered multiple sequence alignment generation for structure predictio...

www.nature.com

Reposted by Marc Strous

Dr. Jennifer Pett-Ridge @jeffinerca.bsky.social · Sep 18

isme-microbes.org/isme-scholar...

Call for Applications – ISME Scholar Mobility Fund – ISME

ISME supports MSc/PhD graduate students and postdocs to develop academically via the Scholar Mobility Fund. Please submit your application by 1 October to study at a host institution abroad.

isme-microbes.org

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · Sep 18

Rings true... we can do better than that. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Equity in science is a beautiful lie — and I’m done pretending

Science isn’t really moving towards equity; institutions are just perfecting the appearance of equity. We need to build an alternative system.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Marc Strous

Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · Sep 13

Here's a GIANT one: C3 photosynthesis using RUBISCO is inefficient, but scientists have designed and run a new and more efficient photosynthetic pathway in Arabidopsis:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/09/new-pathway-engineered-into-plants-lets-them-suck-up-more-co₂/

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · Sep 10

Major step forward in pinning down legal responsibility for climate change: Unravelling the individual contributions of Energy Companies to specific heatwaves: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors - Nature

Climate change made 213 historical heatwaves reported over 2000–2023 more likely and more intense, to which each of the 180 carbon majors (fossil fuel and cement producers) substantially contributed.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Marc Strous

James Bradley @drbradbrad.bsky.social · Sep 10

2 Postdoc vacancies: Microbial dormancy in the cryosphere
@erc.europa.eu #ERC_SIESTA
📢 PLEASE RT

Experimental:
🧬 Single cell microbial activity measurements, flow cytometry, omics, biogeochem

Modelling:
🖥️ Bioenergetics, thermodynamics, ecological, biogeochem

☀️ Marseille, France
‼️ Apply by 30 Sept

Reposted by Marc Strous

Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · Sep 4

Do you mentor scientific writing, or use written assignments in the science courses you teach? Do you find mentoring/teaching writing hard, or time consuming? (Because it is!) Our new book can help, and it's getting close to being in your hands.

Owls, blurbs, and a cover – oh my! “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” is getting close

We (that’s Bethann Garramon Merkle and I) are getting very excited about our new book, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach. Over the last few months, we’ve be…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

Reposted by Vı́ctor de Lorenzo, George A. O’Toole, Marc Strous , and 1 more Vı́ctor de Lorenzo, George A. O’Toole, Marc Strous, Kiran Raosaheb Patil

Tanmay Bharat @tbharat-lab.bsky.social · Aug 31

Sub-cellular chemical mapping in bacteria using correlated cryogenic electron and mass spectrometry imaging

Congrats Hannah Ochner and authors on this important paper! Strong collaboration with @kiranrpatil.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
@mrclmb.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social

🇨🇦 Marc Strous @marcstrous.bsky.social · Aug 28

Can someone recommend a good current textbook on protist biology and ecology?

Reposted by Marc Strous

Science News @scinews.bsky.social · Aug 27

🎯How did life get multicellular?

Five simple organisms could have the answer

"Single-celled species that often stick together in colonies have researchers rethinking the origin of animals."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How did life get multicellular? Five simple organisms could have the answer

Single-celled species that often stick together in colonies have researchers rethinking the origin of animals.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Marc Strous

Jon Mifsud @jonathonmifsud.bsky.social · Aug 25

There’s been a bunch of new approaches looking at deep viral evolutionary history. We’ve put together a mini review highlighting some recent advancements in structural phylogenetics and time-dependent rate models and what they could do for the field 🦠
🔗 journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....

Recent advances in the inference of deep viral evolutionary history | Journal of Virology

Phylogenetic studies examining the origins, emergence, and spread of viruses have arguably been one of the most active and successful areas of evolutionary biology and form the bedrock of the flourishing field of genomic epidemiology. This, in part, reflects the ability of viruses, particularly those with RNA genomes, to evolve at rates much greater than their cellular counterparts (1). The rapid rate at which viruses evolve and accumulate mutations enables evolutionary signals to be identified through comparative genomics at short timescales relevant for outbreak investigation and response. The integration of phylogenetics and epidemiology, known as phylodynamics, has become a vital tool in response to numerous viral outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics, including Ebola (2), Zika (3), and, more recently, COVID-19 (4) and mpox (5).

journals.asm.org

Reposted by Marc Strous

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Aug 25

Redox conduction facilitates direct interspecies electron transport in anaerobic methanotrophic consortia www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

Redox conduction facilitates direct interspecies electron transport in anaerobic methanotrophic consortia

Methane-consuming microbial partners use redox conductors to pass electrons.

www.science.org

Reposted by Marc Strous, Zen Faulkes, Hisham Zerriffi , and 1 more Marc Strous, Zen Faulkes, Hisham Zerriffi, Frédéric Delsuc

Andrew Roger @andrewjroger.bsky.social · Aug 25

I gave a symposium talk at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology 2025 (#eseb2025) meeting last week and this was my title slide showcasing how I was speaking as an independent scientist because @dalhousieu.bsky.social @dalhousie.bsky.social has locked us out.

Light upyour news

Sign in to Lightnews

Sign up to start reading

Connect Bluesky

Connect with Bluesky

Light up
your news