Duncan Kountz

Excited to share that my PhD work is now available as a preprint on BioRxiv! 🧬 🧪 It’s been a long journey to get here and I’m really happy to finally share this with everyone. Huge thanks to everyone involved! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Strange question: has anyone tried to get a winogradsky column through customs? US customs in particular but experience anywhere is welcomed

Multiheme selenoenzyme essential for elemental sulfur respiration www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

I got my official notice today that I was awarded the Humboldt fellowship. And of course I accepted it. I’m really looking forward to the next two years of technically being unemployed while I conduct research as—I presume—some sort of soul-searching hobby activity

Sunday evening, strolling along the river Lahn, beer in hand. Still cannot escape coot

I just noticed that the images on the covers are cofactors with blue bubbles as background. Until now, I assumed they were images from Coot. Then I thought “what kind of weird protein has *all three* hydrogenase active site metallocofaftors?”

Just arrrived in the mail

Back in the US for the first time since the move to Germany. Reunited with my cat, who has settled in with my parents and seems very happy. It’s the longest time she and I have been apart in her 13 year life

1/ Happy to share our preprint! The Mtr complex catalyses the second-to-last step of the methanogenesis and is an essential bioenergetic machine in most methanogenic archaea. Anaerobic cryo-EM of Mtr reveals a nitrogenase-like metallocluster bound at its active site! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I’ll take “animals I wasn’t expecting to see in Germany for $1000”

1/ Excited to share our preprint! 🥳 Degradation of aromatic compounds, including BTEX pollutants, requires highly endergonic aromatic ring reduction. Using #cryoEM and in situ #cryoET, we show how BCRII couples electron bifurcation modules in one giant redox machine www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How do “LEGO-like” electron-bifurcating modules combine to drive degradation in BTEX-contaminated ecosystems? Check out our latest preprint, where we use cryo-EM and cryo-ET to reveal how the 1 MDa BCRII complex powers extremely endergonic aromatic ring reduction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Jack Szostak "All of these things frighten me, and they should frighten you as well. I made the decision to create a life for myself here, because I viewed this as a place that rewarded determination, hard work, and integrity. It still has a chance to be that place again."

I just completely fell for something that I initially thought was satire because it was so crazy. On further inspection, it was actually satire.

Just got an email from my grad school’s Graduate Research Fund asking me to donate. The really amusing part is that the email addresses me as “Mr. Kountz”. I mean, if there was any organization that should know that I have a PhD…

A genetic toolkit for the human gut bacterium Mediterraneibacter gnavus identifies capsular polysaccharides as a competitive colonization factor www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📣 I was waiting for this paper for a while 🥳 Our new paper in @pnas.org shows that ATP synthase drastically alters membrane properties related to proton diffusion. Funded by @volkswagenstiftung.de www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

"My motto is: just do it!" We love this interview w/ Maren Nattermann, Research Group Leader @ Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, on Marjory Stephenson (1885–1948), pioneer of chemical microbiology as well as her own path into science www.mpg.de/26210626/mar... #IWD2026

Happy to share our new paper on proton transfer in metalloenzymes, out now in @pccp.rsc.org! Exploiting crystallography, electrochemistry, FTIR spectroscopy, and QM calculations we identified a Zundel ion in the catalytic proton tranfer pathway of [FeFe]-hydrogenase. doi.org/10.1039/D5CP...

Maybe this is just me, but whenever someone says Mossbauer I think of the book Mossflower in the Redwall series. I can’t be the only one.

So excited to share our cryo-EM study of the nitrogenase cofactor assembly scaffold NifEN expressed in E. coli! @ribbehulab.bsky.social @ucibiosci.bsky.social @natcatal.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today, I inoculated a methanogen culture for the first time in at least 10 years. Believe it or not

I’ve had a really positive experience in Germany so far, but from time to time I get a deep feeling of sadness from being so far from home. Not a new thing for a human to experience of course

Evolutionary bioenergetics of sporulation "energetic cost of sporulation in units of ATP by integrating time-resolved genome, transcriptome, and proteome profiles" #Bsubtilis #MicroSky #PNAS by @ckarakoc.bsky.social @shoestrapped.bsky.social @jaytlennon.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Does anyone know a good commercial source of rumen fluid in Europe (Germany in particular)? Maybe I just need to start cultivating a relationship with farmers...

From Joe Krzycki's, Bing Hao's and @djferguson.bsky.social 's labs: Delineation of the Active Site of MtgB, a Cobalamin-dependent Glycine Betaine Methyltransferase www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fantastic team effort of several groups in the SPP2002 @dfg.de and a brilliant PhD - Eva Herdering in the Kiel team @schmitzstreitslab.bsky.social

A newly identified quaternary amine:corrinoid methyltransferase (for tetramethylammonium) in Methanococcoides. Surprisingly, this one isn't a trimethylamine methyltransferase family member! www.frontiersin.org/journals/mic...

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.