Shirli Cohen
@microshirli.bsky.social
PhD candidate in the Doran Lab @ CU AMC | fungal pathogens in polymicrobial communities | maternal-fetal health | she/her
Preprint alert! I’m excited to share my work identifying and characterizing the impact of fungal-bacterial nutrient sharing in the vaginal tract 🦠
A fungal pathobiont promotes Streptococcus agalactiae vaginal persistence and pathogenesis through physical and metabolic interactions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.07.674778v1
September 25, 2025 at 3:46 AM
Preprint alert! I’m excited to share my work identifying and characterizing the impact of fungal-bacterial nutrient sharing in the vaginal tract 🦠
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
✨ Exciting News ✨I am thrilled to share that I have accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (IDM), at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health!
September 3, 2025 at 3:48 PM
✨ Exciting News ✨I am thrilled to share that I have accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (IDM), at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health!
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝘂𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗠𝗥
Staphylococcus aureus evolves antibiotic resistance rapidly in diabetic mice, as hyperglycemia aids the expansion and takeover of resistant mutants
VISA strains have a large fitness defect in control mice but not in diabetic mice
➡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Staphylococcus aureus evolves antibiotic resistance rapidly in diabetic mice, as hyperglycemia aids the expansion and takeover of resistant mutants
VISA strains have a large fitness defect in control mice but not in diabetic mice
➡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Diabetes potentiates the emergence and expansion of antibiotic resistance
Diabetic infections are a reservoir for the emergence and proliferation of antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus.
www.science.org
February 13, 2025 at 5:09 AM
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝘂𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗠𝗥
Staphylococcus aureus evolves antibiotic resistance rapidly in diabetic mice, as hyperglycemia aids the expansion and takeover of resistant mutants
VISA strains have a large fitness defect in control mice but not in diabetic mice
➡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Staphylococcus aureus evolves antibiotic resistance rapidly in diabetic mice, as hyperglycemia aids the expansion and takeover of resistant mutants
VISA strains have a large fitness defect in control mice but not in diabetic mice
➡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Spots are filling up for the 2025 Microbial Adhesion and Signal Transduction GRC and GRS! Apply to join us July 19-25 at Salve Regina University! It’s going to be a great meeting with amazing science and people! Please re-post!! #MAST
February 8, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Spots are filling up for the 2025 Microbial Adhesion and Signal Transduction GRC and GRS! Apply to join us July 19-25 at Salve Regina University! It’s going to be a great meeting with amazing science and people! Please re-post!! #MAST
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Applications are open for the 2025 GRS/GRC on Staphylococcal Diseases! Make sure to get your abstracts submitted for the potential to present your work in beautiful Barcelona! www.grc.org/staphylococc...
January 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Applications are open for the 2025 GRS/GRC on Staphylococcal Diseases! Make sure to get your abstracts submitted for the potential to present your work in beautiful Barcelona! www.grc.org/staphylococc...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Our paper out @Nature: CARD domains mediate anti-phage defense in bacterial gasdermin systems
CARDs are essential for caspase recruitment during human inflammasome activation. We now find them in bacterial immune systems
Congrats Tana Wein! Thank you Kranzusch lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
CARDs are essential for caspase recruitment during human inflammasome activation. We now find them in bacterial immune systems
Congrats Tana Wein! Thank you Kranzusch lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
January 30, 2025 at 3:40 AM
Our paper out @Nature: CARD domains mediate anti-phage defense in bacterial gasdermin systems
CARDs are essential for caspase recruitment during human inflammasome activation. We now find them in bacterial immune systems
Congrats Tana Wein! Thank you Kranzusch lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
CARDs are essential for caspase recruitment during human inflammasome activation. We now find them in bacterial immune systems
Congrats Tana Wein! Thank you Kranzusch lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Research supplements to support URM mentees are set to expire today. I met the person who developed this mechanism, Clifton Poodry, at an NSF meeting last fall; he is so inspiring. This supplement has funded thousands of mentees including myself. Devasted to see it canceled, and with no notice.
January 24, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Research supplements to support URM mentees are set to expire today. I met the person who developed this mechanism, Clifton Poodry, at an NSF meeting last fall; he is so inspiring. This supplement has funded thousands of mentees including myself. Devasted to see it canceled, and with no notice.
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis is on the move—endemic to the SW USA, but with increasing hot, dry conditions its being found farther north! Nice story on it in Science www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagaz...
Science Magazine - Dust devil
In the spring of 2021, shortly after moving from Seattle to Arizona, Marc Evans, a retired broadcast industry lawyer, began tending the vegetable garden in his niece’s backyard.
www.sciencemagazinedigital.org
January 18, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis is on the move—endemic to the SW USA, but with increasing hot, dry conditions its being found farther north! Nice story on it in Science www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagaz...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
You've heard of FMT, have you heard of NMT (nasal microbiota transplantation)? 👃 This brief piece in Trends discusses 2 recent studies exploring NMT to treat chronic respiratory conditions, like rhinosinusitis (CRS).
🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
January 16, 2025 at 6:43 AM
You've heard of FMT, have you heard of NMT (nasal microbiota transplantation)? 👃 This brief piece in Trends discusses 2 recent studies exploring NMT to treat chronic respiratory conditions, like rhinosinusitis (CRS).
🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
More nice research from Annie Curtis’ lab on the circadian rhythm and the
#immunometabolism of macrophages.
#immunosky #mitochondria #inflammasome
Time‐of‐day control of mitochondria regulates NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/...
#immunometabolism of macrophages.
#immunosky #mitochondria #inflammasome
Time‐of‐day control of mitochondria regulates NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/...
Time‐of‐day control of mitochondria regulates NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages
The circadian clock, orchestrated by BMAL1, regulates the expression of Nlrp3 and Il1b in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), causing time-of-day production of pro-IL-1β. Mitochondria exhibit time-....
faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 15, 2025 at 12:31 AM
More nice research from Annie Curtis’ lab on the circadian rhythm and the
#immunometabolism of macrophages.
#immunosky #mitochondria #inflammasome
Time‐of‐day control of mitochondria regulates NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/...
#immunometabolism of macrophages.
#immunosky #mitochondria #inflammasome
Time‐of‐day control of mitochondria regulates NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
After almost a decade (started while I was a postdoc with @nizet.bsky.social and finished by my own stellar students), happy to see this finally out. We found that Tamm-Horsfall protein, the most abundant protein in urine, enhanced NETosis to protect against UTI. insight.jci.org/articles/vie...
JCI Insight -
Tamm-Horsfall protein augments neutrophil NETosis during urinary tract infection
insight.jci.org
January 10, 2025 at 9:28 PM
After almost a decade (started while I was a postdoc with @nizet.bsky.social and finished by my own stellar students), happy to see this finally out. We found that Tamm-Horsfall protein, the most abundant protein in urine, enhanced NETosis to protect against UTI. insight.jci.org/articles/vie...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
40 years ago all of Genbank was published in print form by NAR. The same format today would require over 4 light seconds of shelf space. To a year of progress in 2025.
December 29, 2024 at 9:50 AM
40 years ago all of Genbank was published in print form by NAR. The same format today would require over 4 light seconds of shelf space. To a year of progress in 2025.
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Bizarre and cool
Flies have stolen the gene encoding a toxin from bacteria and deployed it to survive predation by parasitic wasps, which in some flies can turn half of all fly larvae into surrogate wombs for baby wasps
@nkwhiteman.bsky.social lab at UC Berkeley recapitulates this in Drosophila.
Flies have stolen the gene encoding a toxin from bacteria and deployed it to survive predation by parasitic wasps, which in some flies can turn half of all fly larvae into surrogate wombs for baby wasps
@nkwhiteman.bsky.social lab at UC Berkeley recapitulates this in Drosophila.
Experimental horizontal transfer of phage-derived genes to Drosophila confers innate immunity to parasitoids
Tarnopol et al. recapitulate the horizontal transfer of anti-parasitoid toxins from microbes to insects in D. melanogaster. Immune tissue expression of one toxin gene, fusionB, was sufficient to drive parasitoid resistance in flies via the humoral innate immune pathway.
www.cell.com
December 25, 2024 at 3:24 PM
Bizarre and cool
Flies have stolen the gene encoding a toxin from bacteria and deployed it to survive predation by parasitic wasps, which in some flies can turn half of all fly larvae into surrogate wombs for baby wasps
@nkwhiteman.bsky.social lab at UC Berkeley recapitulates this in Drosophila.
Flies have stolen the gene encoding a toxin from bacteria and deployed it to survive predation by parasitic wasps, which in some flies can turn half of all fly larvae into surrogate wombs for baby wasps
@nkwhiteman.bsky.social lab at UC Berkeley recapitulates this in Drosophila.
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
I’m excited to share our latest study led by @giuliapasquesi.bsky.social out today in @cellpress.bsky.social , uncovering a new way transposons have been repurposed for human interferon signaling! Read on for a thread on cryptic splice variants, decoy receptors, and viruses (1/N) 👇🧵 #TESky 🧪
Regulation of human interferon signaling by transposon exonization
Transposable element exonization can yield functional protein isoforms as seen for primate-specific IFNAR2.
www.cell.com
December 12, 2024 at 6:57 PM
I’m excited to share our latest study led by @giuliapasquesi.bsky.social out today in @cellpress.bsky.social , uncovering a new way transposons have been repurposed for human interferon signaling! Read on for a thread on cryptic splice variants, decoy receptors, and viruses (1/N) 👇🧵 #TESky 🧪
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Early prediction of preeclampsia using the first trimester vaginal microbiome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.01.626267v1
Early prediction of preeclampsia using the first trimester vaginal microbiome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.01.626267v1
Preeclampsia is a severe obstetrical syndrome which contributes to 10-15% of all maternal deaths. Al
www.biorxiv.org
December 3, 2024 at 5:18 AM
Early prediction of preeclampsia using the first trimester vaginal microbiome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.01.626267v1
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Cervical cancer mortality in US women younger than 25 years significantly declined between 2016 and 2021, likely due to the widespread adoption of HPV vaccination.
ja.ma/4i9ghPC
ja.ma/4i9ghPC
November 28, 2024 at 12:37 AM
Cervical cancer mortality in US women younger than 25 years significantly declined between 2016 and 2021, likely due to the widespread adoption of HPV vaccination.
ja.ma/4i9ghPC
ja.ma/4i9ghPC
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Excited to share our latest, "Biofilm dispersal patterns revealed using far-red fluorogenic probes." @plos.bsky.social We developed a cell-labeling strategy using far-red dyes to image dense microbial communities (where fluorescent proteins often do not work well) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
November 26, 2024 at 2:47 PM
Excited to share our latest, "Biofilm dispersal patterns revealed using far-red fluorogenic probes." @plos.bsky.social We developed a cell-labeling strategy using far-red dyes to image dense microbial communities (where fluorescent proteins often do not work well) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Bacterial single-cell RNA sequencing captures biofilm transcriptional heterogeneity and differential responses to immune pressure
-in #NatureCommunications by Lee Korshoj and Tammy Kielian
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
-in #NatureCommunications by Lee Korshoj and Tammy Kielian
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 24, 2024 at 12:40 PM
Bacterial single-cell RNA sequencing captures biofilm transcriptional heterogeneity and differential responses to immune pressure
-in #NatureCommunications by Lee Korshoj and Tammy Kielian
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
-in #NatureCommunications by Lee Korshoj and Tammy Kielian
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Relatedly, I buy my KN-95 masks from @bonafidemasks.bsky.social, and right now you can use coupon code TRUST25 for a 25% discount. No, this is not paid advertisement. I've just used 'em for years and have had great experiences. bonafidemasks.com/powecom-kn95/
Powecom® KN95 - Page 1 - Bona Fide Masks
Like the N95, the FDA Authorized KN95 face masks sold by Bona Fide Masks™ are rated to provide 95% ore greater filtration of particles larger than 0.3 µm in diameter such as bacteria, viruses, dust & ...
bonafidemasks.com
November 18, 2024 at 3:49 AM
Relatedly, I buy my KN-95 masks from @bonafidemasks.bsky.social, and right now you can use coupon code TRUST25 for a 25% discount. No, this is not paid advertisement. I've just used 'em for years and have had great experiences. bonafidemasks.com/powecom-kn95/
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
go.bsky.app/2bqX3T7 - please send me your @bsky.app handles to include in this growing community.
November 17, 2024 at 10:05 PM
go.bsky.app/2bqX3T7 - please send me your @bsky.app handles to include in this growing community.
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
SO EXCITED to share our recent work on dietary zinc deficiency worsening Acinetobacter baumannii pneumonia, out today with @natureportfolio.bsky.social!! Surprisingly, this is due at least in part to the allergic-type cytokine IL-13. SharedIt link: rdcu.be/d0h4h Eat your zinc rich foods! 🦪🫘🧀🥩🥜
Dietary zinc deficiency promotes Acinetobacter baumannii lung infection via IL-13 in mice
Nature Microbiology - Increased IL-13 drives increased bacterial dissemination and mortality following Acinetobacter baumannii lung infection of zinc-deficient mice and can be countered by...
rdcu.be
November 15, 2024 at 4:46 PM
SO EXCITED to share our recent work on dietary zinc deficiency worsening Acinetobacter baumannii pneumonia, out today with @natureportfolio.bsky.social!! Surprisingly, this is due at least in part to the allergic-type cytokine IL-13. SharedIt link: rdcu.be/d0h4h Eat your zinc rich foods! 🦪🫘🧀🥩🥜
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
Hello Blueskis. Here is a starter pack of General Microbiology. It's a small list currently. Please feel free to self-nominate and I will add you.
go.bsky.app/QgSQHJ9
go.bsky.app/QgSQHJ9
November 12, 2024 at 9:33 PM
Hello Blueskis. Here is a starter pack of General Microbiology. It's a small list currently. Please feel free to self-nominate and I will add you.
go.bsky.app/QgSQHJ9
go.bsky.app/QgSQHJ9
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
To celebrate all these new arrivals on BlueSky, did you see this recent preprint on the role of amyloïd in anti-phage defense?
Molecular characterization of amyloid as signal transduction in E. coli phage defense, with super cool links wt fungi controlled cell death!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Molecular characterization of amyloid as signal transduction in E. coli phage defense, with super cool links wt fungi controlled cell death!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Amyloid signaling in antiphage defense
Immune regulated cell death (RCD) is a defense strategy common to different domains of life involving purposeful sacrifice of infected cells. In animals and fungi, functional amyloids play a role in t...
www.biorxiv.org
November 13, 2024 at 5:04 PM
To celebrate all these new arrivals on BlueSky, did you see this recent preprint on the role of amyloïd in anti-phage defense?
Molecular characterization of amyloid as signal transduction in E. coli phage defense, with super cool links wt fungi controlled cell death!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Molecular characterization of amyloid as signal transduction in E. coli phage defense, with super cool links wt fungi controlled cell death!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Shirli Cohen
The Medical Mycology Trainee Seminar Series is back! Our next seminar is November 14th at 4 pm GMT (5 pm Central Europe Time, 11 am Eastern Standard, 8 am Pacific Standard, 12 am in China). 1/12
November 12, 2024 at 6:57 AM
The Medical Mycology Trainee Seminar Series is back! Our next seminar is November 14th at 4 pm GMT (5 pm Central Europe Time, 11 am Eastern Standard, 8 am Pacific Standard, 12 am in China). 1/12