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weitz-group.bsky.social
Weitz Group
@weitz-group.bsky.social
Our group studies quantitative viral dynamics to investigate how viruses transform human health and the fate of our planet.
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👋 Hello Bluesky! We’re the Weitz Group at the @univofmaryland.bsky.social, led by Prof. @joshuasweitz.bsky.social. We study how viruses shape the fate of cells, populations, and ecosystems—combining theory, data, and a dash of quantitative chaos.

Please, follow us here. 🧪📈🦠 #WeitzGroup
Excited to share our grad student Akash Arani’s (co-first author) recent paper in the ISME Journal! Along with collaborators at @ua.es, we show how episomal virus maintenance enables bacterial recovery and promotes virus–host coexistence in hypersaline environments.

doi.org/10.1093/isme...
Episomal virus maintenance enables bacterial population recovery from infection and promotes virus–bacterial coexistence
Abstract. Viruses are ubiquitous in aquatic environments with total densities of virus-like particles often exceeding 107/ml in surface marine oligotrophic
doi.org
June 5, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Congratulations to @juliepourtois.bsky.social, a postdoc in our group, on her new paper now available as an In Press Preview on JCI! 🥳🥳🥳 Based on her PhD at Stanford, the study shows how new Pseudomonas infections drive Pf phage spread in CF airways.

Read it here: insight.jci.org/articles/vie...
JCI Insight - New Pseudomonas infections drive Pf phage transmission in CF airways
insight.jci.org
May 7, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Akash Arani, a biology grad student in our group, has been accepted to @sfiscience.bsky.social's Complex Systems Summer School! A fantastic opportunity to dive deep into transdisciplinary science—congrats, Akash! 👏
May 7, 2025 at 11:02 PM
@joshuasweitz.bsky.social joins Dr. Teri Markow on the @criticallyspeaking.bsky.social to discuss silent transmission, asymptomatic spread, and what it all means for the future of pandemics. 🎙️

Listen to the episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...
Dr. Joshua Weitz: Asymptomatic COVID-19 Spreaders
Podcast Episode · Critically Speaking · 04/29/2025 · 32m
podcasts.apple.com
May 2, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Exciting news! A paper co-authored by Weitz Group member @mariandm.bsky.social has been selected as the Best Paper in Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology for the 2024 QBioS Award at Georgia Tech. Congrats to Marian! 🥳🥳🥳

Read it in mBio: doi.org/10.1128/mbio...
Accounting for cellular-level variation in lysis: implications for virus–host dynamics | mBio
Quantifying viral traits—including the adsorption rate, burst size, and latent period—is critical to characterize viral infection dynamics and develop predictive models of viral impacts across scales ...
doi.org
May 2, 2025 at 2:15 AM
A new paper co-authored by Weitz Group member @mariandm.bsky.social on latent period heterogeneity is now on bioRxiv! It explores how variation in viral latency shapes virus-host dynamics and introduces a new framework for trait estimation.

Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage life-history traits from population-scale dynamics
Phage-induced lysis of bacteria transforms population dynamics, community structure, and ecosystem functioning. Scaling up infected cell fate to ecosystem-scale impacts requires quantitative estimates...
www.biorxiv.org
May 2, 2025 at 2:15 AM
Reposted by Weitz Group
Delighted to share news that Emma Wachter defended her honor's thesis on 'Assessing mechanisms of non-exponential decay in viral systems' in the Dept. of Biology at UMD as part of her work in @weitz-group.bsky.social.

She is off to Dana Farber for a postbac. Congrats to Emma!
April 29, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Weitz Group
An engaging meetup on matters aquatic viral ecology related... in advance of the international Aquatic Virus Workshop in early May to take place in Banyuls-sur-Mer. Thanks to @beckettstephen.bsky.social, @juliepourtois.bsky.social + @tgoel.bsky.social + all participants for making it possible.
Had a great meeting talking science and discussing avenues for moving frontiers at the Maryland aquatic viral ecology meeting last week. Many thanks to co-organizers @juliepourtois.bsky.social and @tgoel.bsky.social, and to all who participated!
April 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Weitz Group
Had a great meeting talking science and discussing avenues for moving frontiers at the Maryland aquatic viral ecology meeting last week. Many thanks to co-organizers @juliepourtois.bsky.social and @tgoel.bsky.social, and to all who participated!
April 22, 2025 at 2:46 PM
A new paper co-led by Prof. @joshuasweitz.bsky.social reveals how marine microbes avoid direct competition by timing their phosphorus uptake throughout the day.

Check it out here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Diel partitioning in microbial phosphorus acquisition in the Sargasso Sea | PNAS
The daily cycle of photosynthetic primary production at the base of marine food webs is often limited by the availability of scarce nutrients. Micr...
www.pnas.org
April 10, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Reposted by Weitz Group
Bonus link for those interested, another way to look at this same issue is here:

bsky.app/profile/leos...

Reinforcing the key message - CDC's measles page should be updated to dispel the impression that the outbreak is always on the way out, when that's not the case.
Quick update on notification delay correction (nowcast) of measles cases in the US after the new update from the CDC website. The number of cases are still going up.
April 4, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Weitz Group
Visualizing the Impacts of Federal Cuts to Medical Research & Why It Matters

New #substack on collaborative effort with @asinclair.bsky.social and our #SCIMaP team

Website: scienceimpacts.org

Read more here:
open.substack.com/pub/joshuasw...
Visualizing the Impacts of Federal Cuts to Medical Research & Why It Matters
Why it matters how we communicate and visualize the impacts of proposed and ongoing cuts to science and medical research nationwide.
open.substack.com
April 4, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Weitz Group
Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs.

Find out how your community may be impacted.

Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org

a 🧵
March 28, 2025 at 2:15 AM
Reposted by Weitz Group
It's publication day for "Asymptomatic" via Johns Hopkins U Press. The book explores the paradox of asymptomatic transmission and rationale for proactive steps to confront future pandemics:

bit.ly/asymptomatic...
October 22, 2024 at 12:48 PM
👋 Hello Bluesky! We’re the Weitz Group at the @univofmaryland.bsky.social, led by Prof. @joshuasweitz.bsky.social. We study how viruses shape the fate of cells, populations, and ecosystems—combining theory, data, and a dash of quantitative chaos.

Please, follow us here. 🧪📈🦠 #WeitzGroup
April 10, 2025 at 7:46 PM