Matt Barber

🚨 Our department is hiring! Looking to fill an endowed position in genetics/genomics to join us in beautiful Oregon. Search is at the Associate/Full Professor level. See below for details and share with your colleagues!

Thrilled to share the latest preprint from me & @brodskyigorlab.bsky.social led by our amazing joint postdoc Matt Sherman! We find that in addition to lipid A, there is an unexpected role for LPS polysaccharide in caspase-11 inflammasome formation & activation! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

Stoked for this GRC and also for the corresponding GRS June 12-13, co-chaired by @meganbehrmann.bsky.social and myself. Will be an excellent meeting for students and postdocs in functional evolutionary genetics working in diverse model systems! More to come here: www.grc.org/molecular-me...

Sure it’s a sweet gig in a cool place to live. But you have to deal with an awesome department and colleagues too.

@joethorntonlab.bsky.social and I are thrilled to co-organize the 2027 Molecular Mechanisms in Evolution GRC, June 13–18, in beautiful Portland, Maine! See our ⭐stellar⭐ lineup of speakers ⬇️ spanning evolutionary biochemistry, cell biology, development, behavior... www.grc.org/molecular-me... 1/n

I had followed Helen’s reporting for years, her passing is a loss to us all.

It's happening! NYUGSM Microbiology is hiring and I'd love to see more bacteriology here! Please repost and spread the word!

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

@nicolabarber.bsky.social commented I am “linesmaxxing” the grant I’m writing right now and I just died 🤣

Exciting news: @uwgenome.bsky.social will be hiring for two tenure-track faculty positions this year, one open rank and one assistant professor. Both are “Genome Sciences” interpreted broadly so we welcome applicants working in a variety of fields and methods. Ad will be out shortly.

Parenting “win” of the day: narrowly avoided putting habanero pepper jelly in my daughter’s PB&J 😅 🥵

Now published from a fun collaboration, please see 🧵 academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

I’m excited for Jordan Rodriguez’s paper and software, This Must Be the Place and EcoLocator! She uses global prediction of location and climate of origin to identify loci with signatures of local adaptation. Also applies to Doug Fir data. Feedback welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

stone cold classic

Briefly popping my head back in to unveil the cover of my upcoming book, LIFE BEYOND MEASURE: Nature's Hidden Wonders at Every Scale. It’ll be out on April 6 in the U.S. and April 29 in the U.K. and you can pre-order it right now! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/757705... 1/

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

'Large outbreak of aggressive strain of MRSA superbug in Ireland was linked to bouncy castles' www.thejournal.ie/mrsa-bouncy-... Paper: www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2...

Job opportunity at Columbia U., in "any combination of field, experimental, computational, or theoretical approaches to study fundamental questions in evolutionary biology".

Hey y’all, did you know that study sections have been asked to vote each round to adopt the “modified review” practice of only discussing the top 1/3? What if we don’t vote yes?.. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

When old SVU episodes don’t hold up in modern times.

The current NIH Director’s animus against NIAID to sign away much needed research funds so we can continue bombing another country is… a staggering betrayal of Congressional intentions and authority. Not surprising but still staggering.

It's taken 12 years and a lot of work from many fantastic people, but we have published an analysis of how our reconstruction of Bald's eyesalve kills bacteria. This was driven by @tosinorababa.bsky.social & Jess Furner-Pardoe through their PhD work #MicroSky journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... [1/n]

Excited to share new work from my lab showing that early-life colonization with C. difficile remodels the developing infant gut, published today in @science.org! This study was co-led by two truly amazing scientists: @haidermanzer.bsky.social and Alexa Semon. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

You can now update bioRxiv/medRxiv preprints with funding information after the fact. Authors often omit/don't have all funding info when submitting, but funders understandably want it there. This solves the problem without requiring you to submit a whole new paper. openrxiv.org/updating-fun...

UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke to combine herbaria, creating the third-largest university plant collection in the United States ncbg.unc.edu/2026/08/31/u...

Senator calls for criminal investigation of RFK Jr after Guardian report www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Most basic science departments at UCSF are having faculty searches this year. Biochemistry & Biophysics, Microbiology & Immunology, Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and more. We're looking for new and exciting science and nice people. You'll find them all at aprecruit.ucsf.edu

So excited to share our recent paper!Urogenital immune signatures are associated with birth outcomes after maternal urinary tract infection | Science Translational Medicine share.google/pW97VQQofxId...

How do #antimicrobial peptides embedded within larger #proteins arise? This study by @titas10.bsky.social @biobarber.bsky.social @caitlinkowa.bsky.social &co resurrects ancient antimicrobial proteins, revealing their origins and diversification. 🧪 #AcademicSky #evolution plos.io/3SonQtD

My MCDB Dept is hiring, again! Assistant Professor Faculty Search. Please Repost! Applications Due Oct 1st We welcome applications from all areas of cellular/molecular biology in prokaryotes, plants, and animals. More information can be found HERE: jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/679540/a...

The August Recess is a great time to urge Congress to oppose the OMB's proposed rule on federal financial assistance. See details at the link below, which includes a letter template that you can customize and will automatically send to your Senators and Representatives. asm.org/articles/pol...

If you live in the UK and you want something from my shop without the overseas shipping, get in touch

I am excited to announce a job for an Asst Prof in Plant Evolution in the dept. of Evolution and Ecology at @ucdavis.bsky.social. We're looking broadly, from macro (speciation, comparative genomics, evo-devo) to micro (pop biology, adaptive evolution, evo-eco). recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07777

Nothing better when I'm in an “everything is awful, science is under attack” slump than having a call with a collaborator, getting super excited about combining our expertise to do cool science! I will keep fighting for future scientists to still get to experience this feeling 💪 #standupforscience