@jenncoughlan.bsky.social here's couple more fresh ones while we wait for the scope to take full Z-stacks

Ovaries and stigma of Mimulus plants, stained with Aniline blue.
Max Z projections from just widefield fluorescence images! 💙🔬🤩

#microscopy with Henry Arenas-Castro @jenncoughlan.bsky.social lab

Going for the mini plushie at @asm.org #ASMicrobe 🦠🔬

Know Your Worth: Salary Data that Defends Your Value
@asm.org ASM Studio
#ASMicrobe #ASMicrobe2025
asm.org/articles/sal...

ASM studio, the best part (IMO) of the #ASMicrobe meeting @asm.org
#ASMicrobe2025

*High-school level summary article*
Wrote a piece describing our recent paper @paulturnerlab.bsky.social to a high-school educated audience. #phagesky #microsky

Reach out if you want to do the same for your recent paper. It's super fun!

www.journaloflifesciences.org/archives/156...

Our latest preprint just dropped @paulturnerlab.bsky.social

We evolved bacteria on swim plates, against a phage that attacks through the flagellum. Motility trades off AND trades up(!!) with phage-resistance!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My mehndi (henna tattoo) at close cousin's wedding.
I asked the tattoo-artist to draw the podovirus where the genome is cousin's wedding logo.
#phagesky

We measured the mean Dwell Time for phage T4 interacting with seven E. coli strains, each with mutations in T4-receptors. 🧬 We also ran the classic adsorption assay—and guess what? The mean Dwell Time correlated beautifully with the adsorption rate constant! 📈✨

We obtained thousands of trajectories from minutes of experiments.
The time a virus stays in view under the microscope (trajectory duration) reflects how long it closely interacts with host cells (Dwell Time). 🕒 We observed massive variability in these interactions—each virus behaves differently!

We decided to look at individual viruses under the microscope🔬. After labeling them with a fluorescent dye 🎨 and introducing them to glass slides with immobilized bacteria, we recorded their interactions 🎥. Using MATLAB-based particle tracking, we traced the trajectories of single viruses. 📊

And after all that work, the old method gives us just one thing: a model-based estimate of the adsorption rate constant. It’s an average from millions of viruses and cells, meaning it completely misses the unique behaviors of individual viruses!

At each step, even small perturbations from manual error can throw off the results. Hence it’s tricky to get consistent, reproducible data.

The old adsorption assay is performed in tubes/flasks 🧪: viruses are mixed with bacteria and free (un-attached) viruses are counted at different time-points. This process involves a LOT of manual steps.

We developed a microscopy-based technique🔬 to measure attachment of viruses #phages to host cells. 🦠

The paper was posted online today:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#phagesky #microsky

🦠🧫