Ben Roller
banner
benroller.bsky.social
Ben Roller
@benroller.bsky.social
Postdoc, UniWien DOME/CMESS
Watching individual bacteria grow and starve
he/him
Reposted by Ben Roller
Longstanding collaboration with Scott Manalis where we have developed technology to measure single cell growth rates of bacteria in native seawater with some very surprising results.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 11, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Ben Roller
📢 Big day for archaeal microbiology!

Today, we jointly shed light on the mysterious world of archaeal extracellular vesicles from human gut archaea - published in @natcomms.nature.com ‬ in parallel with our precious colleagues around @mkrupovic.bsky.social 🇦🇹🤝🇫🇷.
June 3, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Ben Roller
On the importance of maintaining professional distance in research labs: how much harm in academia (maybe) comes from seemingly good intentions.

Recorded spontaneously today in Ishikawa, during a hike, since this has been on my mind.

Let me know what you think!

#AcademicSky

youtu.be/ppbnxMkgo3Q
Importance of maintaining professional distance in academia: how to avoid harm
YouTube video by Life in academia
youtu.be
May 6, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Reposted by Ben Roller
Ever thought that only tailed phages really matter? Our latest paper reveals that non-Caudoviricetes prophages could be more important than you'd expect. Curious? Read more here: academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Prophages in Vibrio
Abstract. Although tailed bacteriophages (phages) of the class Caudoviricetes are thought to constitute the most abundant and ecologically relevant group o
academic.oup.com
October 23, 2024 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Ben Roller
This is a very good time to be listening to @roseveleth.com's masterpiece podcast, TESTED, about the terrible past and and equally terrible present of sex-testing in sports.

www.tested-podcast.com
TESTED – A surprising history of women’s sports
www.tested-podcast.com
August 1, 2024 at 10:39 PM
Reposted by Ben Roller
I was going to be very British and diffident about the cancer surgery I'm having imminently, but decided in the end to write this in the hope that it might be helpful for others in similar positions.
nautil.us/how-life-rea...
November 7, 2023 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Ben Roller
I am looking for multiple Ph.Ds and Postdocs to work on exciting projects at the interface of quantitative microbial ecology and genomics.

Applicants with experimental, computational, or theory backgrounds are encouraged to apply!

email: shaul.pollak.pasternak@univie.ac.at
October 27, 2023 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Ben Roller
Our new paper is out now in PNAS | Interspecies interactions determine growth dynamics of biopolymer-degrading populations in microbial communities

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#MicroSky
October 26, 2023 at 6:37 PM
Glad to see our paper out after peer review! Bacteria change their mass a lot in batch culture & only achieve their maximum for a short time, even when very dilute. We added new experiments on how fixation impacts mass & with more types of rich media doi.org/10.1128/mbio...
Single-cell mass distributions reveal simple rules for achieving steady-state growth | mBio
Microbiologists have watched clear liquid turn cloudy for over 100 years. While the cloudiness of a culture is proportional to its total biomass, growth rates from optical density measurements are cha...
doi.org
September 6, 2023 at 8:57 PM