Grant Nickles
@grantnickles.bsky.social
Cyclist, mycologist, music, and hockey 🏳️🌈
https://gnick18.github.io/
@NSF GRFP fellow studying fungal evolution and natural products in the Keller Lab
https://gnick18.github.io/
@NSF GRFP fellow studying fungal evolution and natural products in the Keller Lab
Do you work with the Aspergillus fumigatus model isolates Af293 or CEA10? If so, we want to collaborate with you! In return for your lab's participation we will sequence your strain for free and provide co-authorship on the final paper.
Learn more here: asp-fumi-seq-project-2025.vercel.app
Learn more here: asp-fumi-seq-project-2025.vercel.app
November 12, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Do you work with the Aspergillus fumigatus model isolates Af293 or CEA10? If so, we want to collaborate with you! In return for your lab's participation we will sequence your strain for free and provide co-authorship on the final paper.
Learn more here: asp-fumi-seq-project-2025.vercel.app
Learn more here: asp-fumi-seq-project-2025.vercel.app
(1/x) Yesterday will go down as one of the most monumental of my life.
May 29, 2025 at 10:44 PM
(1/x) Yesterday will go down as one of the most monumental of my life.
Reposted by Grant Nickles
Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on the plane?
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of…
Flight attendant: The pilots want to know about marine CO₂ removal and its role as a climate solution.
Me: AT LAST!
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of…
Flight attendant: The pilots want to know about marine CO₂ removal and its role as a climate solution.
Me: AT LAST!
May 22, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on the plane?
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of…
Flight attendant: The pilots want to know about marine CO₂ removal and its role as a climate solution.
Me: AT LAST!
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of…
Flight attendant: The pilots want to know about marine CO₂ removal and its role as a climate solution.
Me: AT LAST!
Reposted by Grant Nickles
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
new preprint on predicting antifungal drug resistance in yeasts is out!
new preprint on predicting antifungal drug resistance in yeasts is out!
May 12, 2025 at 5:49 PM
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
new preprint on predicting antifungal drug resistance in yeasts is out!
new preprint on predicting antifungal drug resistance in yeasts is out!
Hello friends and colleagues! I'm giving my public defense on May 28th from 10-11am CST.
Zoom link: uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99000991657
I'll be talking about the three different first-author papers from my PhD. For sneak previews of those chapters scroll down for the thread! 👇
Zoom link: uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99000991657
I'll be talking about the three different first-author papers from my PhD. For sneak previews of those chapters scroll down for the thread! 👇
May 12, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Hello friends and colleagues! I'm giving my public defense on May 28th from 10-11am CST.
Zoom link: uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99000991657
I'll be talking about the three different first-author papers from my PhD. For sneak previews of those chapters scroll down for the thread! 👇
Zoom link: uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99000991657
I'll be talking about the three different first-author papers from my PhD. For sneak previews of those chapters scroll down for the thread! 👇
Reposted by Grant Nickles
New publication with the Huttenlocher Lab! Led by PhD candidate Nayanna Mercado Soto, we used zebrafish to study burn wound infections with Candida albicans & Aspergillus fumigatus, showing the innate immune response is highly conserved across fungal species. #fungi journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Larval zebrafish burn wound infection model reveals conserved innate immune responses against diverse pathogenic fungi | mBio
Secondary fungal infections within burn wound injuries are a significant problem that
delays wound healing and increases the risk of patient mortality. Currently, little
is known about how fungi colon...
journals.asm.org
April 16, 2025 at 6:40 PM
New publication with the Huttenlocher Lab! Led by PhD candidate Nayanna Mercado Soto, we used zebrafish to study burn wound infections with Candida albicans & Aspergillus fumigatus, showing the innate immune response is highly conserved across fungal species. #fungi journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
How it feels being a Wisconsin Susan Crawford voter waiting for the election results
April 1, 2025 at 3:26 PM
How it feels being a Wisconsin Susan Crawford voter waiting for the election results
Reposted by Grant Nickles
Excited to share that work from my PhD is now available in @natmetabolism.bsky.social! Here, we uncover a link between heme production, BCAA metabolism, and thermogenesis—implicating heme synthesis in #aging, #obesity, and #T2D.
Link to paper: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
A Thread (1/15)
Link to paper: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
A Thread (1/15)
Haem biosynthesis regulates BCAA catabolism and thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue
Nature Metabolism - Inhibition of haem synthesis is shown to lead to the accumulation of branched-chain amino acids in the brown adipose tissue of mice, which reduces UCP1 levels and impairs...
urldefense.com
March 25, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Excited to share that work from my PhD is now available in @natmetabolism.bsky.social! Here, we uncover a link between heme production, BCAA metabolism, and thermogenesis—implicating heme synthesis in #aging, #obesity, and #T2D.
Link to paper: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
A Thread (1/15)
Link to paper: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
A Thread (1/15)
To the PIs that take the time to find grad students at conferences with posters, you are appreciated!! Hearing someone else get amped about my work reminds me why I do science 🥰
January 7, 2025 at 3:37 AM
To the PIs that take the time to find grad students at conferences with posters, you are appreciated!! Hearing someone else get amped about my work reminds me why I do science 🥰
I’m in San Diego for the SIMB Natural Product Discovery and Development in the Genomic Era conference. Excited to hear about the research going on in other labs and to make new connections :)
January 5, 2025 at 12:46 AM
I’m in San Diego for the SIMB Natural Product Discovery and Development in the Genomic Era conference. Excited to hear about the research going on in other labs and to make new connections :)
Never a doubt in my mind that Charli was taking it this year
December 4, 2024 at 3:55 PM
Never a doubt in my mind that Charli was taking it this year
Reposted by Grant Nickles
Online @cellpress.bsky.social, we reveal a protein shell that helps diatoms fix 20% of global #CO2 🧪🌊🌾🧶🧬🌍
Shimakawa et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Nam et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
@biozentrum.bsky.social press release:
www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...
Read on for more...
1/🧵
Shimakawa et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Nam et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
@biozentrum.bsky.social press release:
www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...
Read on for more...
1/🧵
November 29, 2024 at 3:17 PM
Online @cellpress.bsky.social, we reveal a protein shell that helps diatoms fix 20% of global #CO2 🧪🌊🌾🧶🧬🌍
Shimakawa et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Nam et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
@biozentrum.bsky.social press release:
www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...
Read on for more...
1/🧵
Shimakawa et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Nam et al:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
@biozentrum.bsky.social press release:
www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...
Read on for more...
1/🧵
It’s crazy that 90% of the R&D bioinformatics jobs I’m seeing now require ML and AI development expertise while simultaneously advanced PhDs in biology or data science. If I had to guess only 5-10% of PhD level bioinformaticians actually know how to make advanced ML models.
November 29, 2024 at 5:52 PM
It’s crazy that 90% of the R&D bioinformatics jobs I’m seeing now require ML and AI development expertise while simultaneously advanced PhDs in biology or data science. If I had to guess only 5-10% of PhD level bioinformaticians actually know how to make advanced ML models.
Reposted by Grant Nickles
We did this crazy project where we tried to see if proteins could interact with their mirror image ligand. Seems impossible when proteins need to form 3D structures to interact. But what about if the interaction remains disordered???
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Stereochemistry in the disorder–order continuum of protein interactions - Nature
Studies on protein–protein interactions using proteins containing d- or l-amino acids show that stereoselectivity of binding varies with the degree of disorder within the complex.
www.nature.com
November 27, 2024 at 8:31 PM
We did this crazy project where we tried to see if proteins could interact with their mirror image ligand. Seems impossible when proteins need to form 3D structures to interact. But what about if the interaction remains disordered???
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Grant Nickles
It’s out!! We subjected soils from 30 different locations across Europe to extreme events and found that soil fungal and bacterial communities showed consistent responses that could be predicted from their origin! With @knightjar.bsky.social and many collaborators!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events - Nature
Soils from 30 grasslands across Europe were subjected to 4 contrasting extreme climatic events under drought, flood, freezing and heat conditions, with the results suggesting that soil microbiomes fro...
www.nature.com
November 27, 2024 at 7:47 PM
It’s out!! We subjected soils from 30 different locations across Europe to extreme events and found that soil fungal and bacterial communities showed consistent responses that could be predicted from their origin! With @knightjar.bsky.social and many collaborators!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Grant Nickles
Sure this will be super useful going forward for benchmarking and discovery
'MassSpecGym is the largest publicly available dataset of high-quality labeled MS/MS spectra'
arxiv.org/html/2410.23...
'MassSpecGym is the largest publicly available dataset of high-quality labeled MS/MS spectra'
arxiv.org/html/2410.23...
MassSpecGym: A benchmark for the discovery and identification of molecules
arxiv.org
November 25, 2024 at 10:29 AM
Sure this will be super useful going forward for benchmarking and discovery
'MassSpecGym is the largest publicly available dataset of high-quality labeled MS/MS spectra'
arxiv.org/html/2410.23...
'MassSpecGym is the largest publicly available dataset of high-quality labeled MS/MS spectra'
arxiv.org/html/2410.23...
Reposted by Grant Nickles
If you are new to 🦋 and are interested in microbial natural products - here’s some starter packs to help connect us go.bsky.app/72NeGsT and go.bsky.app/4xnRN52 - there’s also one set up by @danudwary.secondarymetabolism.com here
go.bsky.app/Q9svkYf
go.bsky.app/Q9svkYf
November 20, 2024 at 9:40 PM
If you are new to 🦋 and are interested in microbial natural products - here’s some starter packs to help connect us go.bsky.app/72NeGsT and go.bsky.app/4xnRN52 - there’s also one set up by @danudwary.secondarymetabolism.com here
go.bsky.app/Q9svkYf
go.bsky.app/Q9svkYf
Hi 🦋!
My name is Grant Nickles, 5th year PhD student studying fungal natural products in the Keller lab @ UW-Madison. More specifically, I've been developing genome mining strategies to investigate poorly characterized non-canonical fungal pathways. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
My name is Grant Nickles, 5th year PhD student studying fungal natural products in the Keller lab @ UW-Madison. More specifically, I've been developing genome mining strategies to investigate poorly characterized non-canonical fungal pathways. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
Mining for a new class of fungal natural products: the evolution, diversity, and distribution of isocyanide synthase biosynthetic gene clusters
Abstract. The products of non-canonical isocyanide synthase (ICS) biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) mediate pathogenesis, microbial competition, and metal-
academic.oup.com
November 19, 2024 at 5:00 PM
Hi 🦋!
My name is Grant Nickles, 5th year PhD student studying fungal natural products in the Keller lab @ UW-Madison. More specifically, I've been developing genome mining strategies to investigate poorly characterized non-canonical fungal pathways. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
My name is Grant Nickles, 5th year PhD student studying fungal natural products in the Keller lab @ UW-Madison. More specifically, I've been developing genome mining strategies to investigate poorly characterized non-canonical fungal pathways. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
Reposted by Grant Nickles
If you've ever wondered why most new housing in America looks like the image on the left, rather than being more interesting and architecturally diverse like the building on the right, I have one explanation: single stair building codes 🧵
November 15, 2024 at 5:11 PM
If you've ever wondered why most new housing in America looks like the image on the left, rather than being more interesting and architecturally diverse like the building on the right, I have one explanation: single stair building codes 🧵
48% is SO high 😭. God I don’t envy climate and public health scientists over the next 4 years. They’re science policies strongest soldiers
Good news, everyone, the recent Pew poll has resolved this longstanding debate once and for all. 🧪
November 15, 2024 at 2:38 PM
48% is SO high 😭. God I don’t envy climate and public health scientists over the next 4 years. They’re science policies strongest soldiers
Reposted by Grant Nickles
There are natural products, and there are natural-ish products:
Natural-Ish Product Motifs
www.science.org
November 15, 2024 at 12:46 AM
There are natural products, and there are natural-ish products:
Imposter syndrome making me too nervous to ask to be added to a science starter pack as just a smol grad student
a small gray and white kitten is sitting on a pink blanket with a speech bubble .
ALT: a small gray and white kitten is sitting on a pink blanket with a speech bubble .
media.tenor.com
November 15, 2024 at 3:06 AM
Imposter syndrome making me too nervous to ask to be added to a science starter pack as just a smol grad student
Reposted by Grant Nickles
what I’m all about (dog and 🏳️🌈 )
November 14, 2024 at 2:50 AM
what I’m all about (dog and 🏳️🌈 )