Jesse McNichol
Asst Prof in Biology dept @ StFX, NS, Canada. Microbial ecology, oceanography, bioinformatics. I enjoy gardening, fermenting things, cooking, and spending time outdoors. Cover photo credit: P. McNichol.
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol🚨BREAKING🚨 Rents are falling across Canada — but not in Nova Scotia. While the Houston government refuses to create real rent control and build homes people can actually afford, renters are paying the price.
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholHappy that our work on the evolution of Yellowstone cyanobacteria is now published in @elife.bsky.social: doi.org/10.7554/eLif...! Did a lot of work in revision—many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for great suggestions! Also see the eLife digest for a summary: elifesciences.org/digests/9084...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholToday is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women. On this day, we honour those killed and injured during the École Polytechnique tragedy, and all women who experience violence. It is also a day to commit to ending gender-based violence.
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol“Every year, when I see 14 beams of light projected into the sky above Mount Royal, I have to catch my breath. “36 years ago, 14 young women were murdered in one of the most violent examples of misogynistic terrorism Canada has ever known.” An editorial by @mtltoula.bsky.social. #December6
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholThis nice summary by @michiwagner4.bsky.social makes it easy to fit my post in a few characters. Amplicon sequencing is still an affordable and quick way to get good insights into who lives in your samples. Our new primers make sure your vision is 20/20. Try em, and contact me if you have questions!
📢 New preprint on bioRxiv! We introduce V4-EXT, a revised 16S rRNA V4 primer set that dramatically improves detection of Patescibacteria and other undersampled lineages ✅ 938 samples ✅ More novel ASVs Primer choice matters 👀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @ppjevac.bsky.social #HuifengHu
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholLet me excerpt the concluding paragraph:
- "You can’t reboot the planet if you crash it" | My commentary on Bill Gates' flawed new climate missive for @thebulletin.org: thebulletin.org/2025/10/you-...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholToday, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community. reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholHorrific details emerging from El Fasher, Sudan: pools of blood so large they’re visible by satellite, people being killed systematically. Last week, MSF teams assessed 165 children under 5 fleeing the area and found 75% were acutely malnourished. An accelerating genocide before our eyes.
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholWow, our AEM paper on a new methane-oxidizing bacterium just got a Commentary! 🎉 Congrats Kambara-san—so happy to see the work getting recognized! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholI’m excited to share our effort to obtain one of the first estimates of the net rate, in physical time, of lateral gene transfer (LGT) – nature’s own genetic engineering - across a complex, global microbiome: doi.org/10.1093/isme...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholNot just classes are cancelled. DFA members have been locked out by the admin since August 20th: we can't sign students in from waitlists, can't advise them, can't share syllabi, can't help them with scholarship applications, etc. etc. #KeepDalStrong www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholWow. Check this out. Politicians actually trying to solve problems can achieve a lot! www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol“Suffering is not a death sentence; it can be confronted, it can be overcome. And we can be creative in how we address the human condition.” —Ofosu Jones-Quartey
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholI am increasingly frustrated, even angry, about the hypocrisy—tempted to say disinformation—from @dalhousie.bsky.social’s administration. How can you say “the university’s priority is working with the DFA to reach a resolution” when they have not even tried to return to the table? #KeepDalStrong
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholChris Algar, Assoc Prof, Oceanography @dalhousieu.bsky.social Lessons in solidarity from the picket lines. This isn’t just a fight to #KeepDalStrong; it’s a fight against employer greed. @ansut.bsky.social @caut.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholSequestration by the biological carbon pump: Do we really know what we are talking about? aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #jcampubs 🌊
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholOur latest, and the second paper led by Jordan Coelho this year. Want to remove bacteria from POM for single-cell microbiology/culturing/'omics applications? We've got some data: Detergent-based separation of microbes from marine particles www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs 🌊
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholOut in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵
- So excited to announce the GRUMP paper is published! This global dataset provides relative abundances for plankton spanning Archaea to Zooplankton from unfractionated (>0.2µm) water samples using 3-domain universal primers that amplify 16S and 18S in one PCR reaction. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- The GRUMP project began in 2018 when I started as a postdoc in @jedfuhrman.bsky.social's lab and was funded by the @simonsfoundation.org as part of the CBIOMES collaboration.
- This was a huge team effort - many thanks to our collaborators, especially "early adopters" including Craig/Ellie (UCSB), Paul/@stevenbiller.bsky.social (MIT/Wellesley), Wade/Joe (USF) as well as my "partners in crime" Nathan Williams and Yubin Raut!
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View full threadFor a handy summary of what GRUMP is, feel free to view and share the following presentation from the CBIOMES 2025 annual meeting: slides.com/jcmcnch/cbio...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholPlease Re-Post. Our global GRUMP microbial ocean database is out in Scientific Data! Unfractionated, single universal PCR, with Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryotes all on the same scale with the same denominator. Pole to pole, depths to 6000m. Lots of metadata. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol"Institutions must support transgender and gender nonconforming and other marginalized scientists by securing their safety and privacy; their access to legal aid and health care; and their opportunities in education, employment, and society," argues a new #LetterToScience. scim.ag/4kQCMtr
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholA healthy diet outperforms fecal transplants in restoring and protecting the gut microbiome, according to new research from the Simons Foundation’s Joy Bergelson and collaborators: www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/05/13/t... #science
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholNSF: "Biology, engineering, and education will all be slashed by over 70 percent..." "The fleet of research ships [UNOLS] will essentially become someone else's problem" Contact your representatives, even in blue states, as these cuts can still be stopped! arstechnica.com/science/2025...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholVery grateful to #MarcGarneau for his kindness and support when we fought to protect environmental laws attacked by Harper administration. We have lost a truly great Canadian.. and far too soon. #RIP
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholI am honored to have been named a 2025 Howes Scholar by the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship committee! www.krellinst.org/csgf/about-d...
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol[This post could not be retrieved]
- So happy to see this paper finally out! A fun project with collaborators Emily Zakem, @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social and Yubin Raut!
- Functional biogeography of marine microbial heterotrophs #USC_MEB #ResearchAtUSC www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs 🌊
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholOur newest on using genomic and phylogenetic information to predict microbial maximum growth rates www.nature.com/articles/s41... with @liangxu.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholVery cool study - motility in marine bacteria represents a risk-reward trade off under carbon starvation: some keep swimming at the expense of biomass while others stop swimming #MicroEco - www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Jesse McNichol[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholVery excited to present the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database (GBR-MGD), a comprehensive DB of 1000s of high-quality prokaryote, virus, plasmid, and chromosome-level eukaryote MAGs using Nanopore long reads. Subthreads incoming. Please share widely. 🙂 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholMicroenvironments on individual sand grains enhance #nitrogen loss in coastal sediments #denitrification #oxygen www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholWhen you look at the list of institutions they want to defund: libraries, museums, the Smithsonian, public schools, PBS, NPR, archives, you can clearly see that the real threat to an authoritarian regime is an informed and educated public
- Reposted by Jesse McNicholFabulous: An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs
- A wildlife photographer in Canada captured a symbolic confrontation between a goose and an eagle... defiance against bullying of all sorts is critical even when (perhaps especially when) they display their big sharp claws to try and intimidate you.
