Kevin Blake PhD 💊🧫 @kevinsblake

Scientist + Writer + Illustrator kevinsblake.com St. Louis, MO Joined September 2011

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ASM @ASMicrobiology

a week ago

Despite their relatively small genomes, some bacteria can kick out unnecessary genes to gain a competitive advantage in their environment—or adapt to a new one. Explore the world of genome reduction and streamlining with @vilhelmiina_h: asm.social/2BF

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Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty

a week ago

I recently learned that the novelist, Cormac McCarthy, spent several years at the Santa Fe Institute helping scientists write papers. His advice was condensed into a brief Nature column. The first three points, and some of the final points, are really good. (h/t @eryney_ok)

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Kevin Blake PhD 💊🧫 @kevinsblake

a week ago

Buy a stack of postcards. Ones that say "Greetings from [YOUR CITY]!" or something. Mail them to friends & family on their birthdays. Especially those you don't see often. Nobody gets cards anymore--nobody gets real mail anymore. They'll love it, and you'll love doing it.

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Michael Baym @baym

4 weeks ago

What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years? Our paper looking at genomes from the NCTC historical collection now out in : microbiologyresearch.org/content/journa…

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Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty

4 weeks ago

The bacterial flagellum looks like a simple tail, or whip. But it’s actually a rotating motor, and perhaps the most sophisticated protein complex nature has ever evolved. In e. coli, these motors are capable of astonishing speeds; about 15,000 rpm. (The world record, according…

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Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty

a month ago

Two recent papers used deep learning to either create, or discover, new antibiotics. I'll first look at the paper that made new antibiotics from scratch (and then maybe write another post about the discovery paper.) The crazy thing about this paper, in particular, is that they…

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César de la Fuente @delafuentelab

2 months ago

For over a century, the hunt for new antibiotics has focused almost exclusively on bacteria and fungi. Today, that paradigm shifts. By coupling state-of-the-art AI with the vast, largely uncharted diversity of Archaea, we open a new frontier for molecular discovery. Our APEX…

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Kevin Blake PhD 💊🧫 @kevinsblake

2 months ago

.@nytopinion DNA is right-handed, not left-handed like this image. It's a minor thing (though maybe not so minor as a jeans commercial), but it's worth getting right.

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Asimov Press @AsimovPress

3 months ago

In 2006, scientists isolated 500 random microbes from soil & exposed them to 21 antibiotics. On average, microbes were resistant to 7 or 8 of them. 2 strains were resistant to 15 antibiotics, incl. compounds that were entirely synthetic and recently approved for clinical use.

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Kevin Blake PhD 💊🧫 @kevinsblake

4 months ago

Don't: Blindly trust AI Do: Read old papers rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-06-…

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Kevin Blake PhD 💊🧫 @kevinsblake

4 months ago

Are chromosomes merely a laundry list of genes? I wrote for @STCmicrobeblog about new research which finds that natural selection has organized nearly 2/3s of bacterial genes into specific positions on the chromosome 🧪🧫🧬 schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/202…

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Kevin Blake PhD 💊🧫 @kevinsblake

4 months ago

HMMER was essential to my research on finding new antibiotic resistance genes. It's loss will only make Americans sicker. communities.springernature.com/posts/sequence…

Kevin K. Yang 楊凱筌 @KevinKaichuang

4 months ago

HMMER was essential to my research on finding new antibiotic resistance genes. It's loss will only make Americans sicker. communities.springernature.com/posts/sequence…

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Penn Engineering AI @PennEngAI

4 months ago

@delafuentelab, Presidential Associate Professor at @PennEngineers, is leading research that uses AI to search ancient DNA—from Neanderthals to woolly mammoths—for new antibiotics. Their findings were published in @Nature and featured in @WSJ. on.wsj.com/45uiMb7

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Michael Baym @baym

4 months ago

Most people don’t get that “Harvard” isn’t one thing, it’s three: a fictional college, a shorthand for elitism, and a real school with smart, dedicated people The administration thinks they are attacking the first, justifying it with the second, and it’s the third who get hurt