Nick Pokorzynski
@npokorzynski.bsky.social
Asst Professor @ Oregon State University Dept of Microbiology | Formerly Postdoc @ Yale | Investigating the metabolic basis of bacterial virulence | he/him | Views = mine
https://pokorzynski-lab.squarespace.com/
https://pokorzynski-lab.squarespace.com/
Pinned
The master virulence regulator PhoP dictates carbon metabolism by controlling cyclic AMP synthesis in Salmonella
Inside macrophages, Salmonella faces magnesium scarcity that disrupts cAMP synthesis and carbon metabolism. This study shows that the PhoP regulator restores metabolic control by promoting Mg2+ uptake...
journals.plos.org
Very happy to share the second paper from my postdoc, published today @plosbiology.org. Here, we report that the master regulator of Salmonella virulence usurps the reign of cAMP over metabolism under infection-relevant conditions. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
It was a pleasure to host Mike Gray from UAB for @oregonstate.edu Department of Microbiology seminar series yesterday. Many fascinating and head-scratching interactions between polyP and (p)ppGpp in E. coli!
(Please disregard the weird rainbow phenomenon on the pic!)
(Please disregard the weird rainbow phenomenon on the pic!)
April 15, 2026 at 4:14 PM
It was a pleasure to host Mike Gray from UAB for @oregonstate.edu Department of Microbiology seminar series yesterday. Many fascinating and head-scratching interactions between polyP and (p)ppGpp in E. coli!
(Please disregard the weird rainbow phenomenon on the pic!)
(Please disregard the weird rainbow phenomenon on the pic!)
Very proud to announce that my first plasmid electroporation in the new lab with all new equipment was a success, despite getting time constants of 0.2 ms. That’s the mark of a truly great transformation protocol.
March 20, 2026 at 4:23 PM
Very proud to announce that my first plasmid electroporation in the new lab with all new equipment was a success, despite getting time constants of 0.2 ms. That’s the mark of a truly great transformation protocol.
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
PLOS Biology is proud to present our new collection of comment and opinionated review articles on the many facets of #immunometabolism!
🧪 #immunosky #immunology #metabolism
plos.io/4c5z6Cn
See 🧵⬇️ for more details
🧪 #immunosky #immunology #metabolism
plos.io/4c5z6Cn
See 🧵⬇️ for more details
The many facets of immunometabolism
This Collection of articles aims to shine a light on the many facets of immunometabolism, highlighting how molecular and cellular mechanisms impact diverse tissue and organismal functions and the exci...
plos.io
February 3, 2026 at 10:36 AM
PLOS Biology is proud to present our new collection of comment and opinionated review articles on the many facets of #immunometabolism!
🧪 #immunosky #immunology #metabolism
plos.io/4c5z6Cn
See 🧵⬇️ for more details
🧪 #immunosky #immunology #metabolism
plos.io/4c5z6Cn
See 🧵⬇️ for more details
Has NCBI blast basically become unusable or am I doing something wrong? Why can’t I select my organism of interest and blast specifically against that? Why do I get hits that say they correspond to my species/serovar but they are absent in my genome. What is the value of this “clusternr” approach?
February 3, 2026 at 2:11 AM
Has NCBI blast basically become unusable or am I doing something wrong? Why can’t I select my organism of interest and blast specifically against that? Why do I get hits that say they correspond to my species/serovar but they are absent in my genome. What is the value of this “clusternr” approach?
This feels like a ridiculous question but is there a way to get the new NIH biosketch supplement form to recognize spaces between paragraphs? It keeps slamming all my text together into an indecipherable blob. Whose idea was this?
January 27, 2026 at 10:33 PM
This feels like a ridiculous question but is there a way to get the new NIH biosketch supplement form to recognize spaces between paragraphs? It keeps slamming all my text together into an indecipherable blob. Whose idea was this?
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Check out our new article! Congrats to Michelle Prophete, Alex Mabel and Payton Bowman for their great work!
Small RNA promotes negative feedback of the master virulence regulator PhoP by repressing the PhoQ sensor enhancer UgtL in acidic pH | mSphere journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Small RNA promotes negative feedback of the master virulence regulator PhoP by repressing the PhoQ sensor enhancer UgtL in acidic pH | mSphere journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Small RNA promotes negative feedback of the master virulence regulator PhoP by repressing the PhoQ sensor enhancer UgtL in acidic pH | mSphere
To cause disease, pathogens must express their virulence genes at the right time and
in proper levels. Here, we establish that a small RNA (sRNA) restricts the activation
of a regulator critical for t...
journals.asm.org
December 9, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Check out our new article! Congrats to Michelle Prophete, Alex Mabel and Payton Bowman for their great work!
Small RNA promotes negative feedback of the master virulence regulator PhoP by repressing the PhoQ sensor enhancer UgtL in acidic pH | mSphere journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Small RNA promotes negative feedback of the master virulence regulator PhoP by repressing the PhoQ sensor enhancer UgtL in acidic pH | mSphere journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Just got word that we are a go for the Bacterial Cell Biology and Development GRS and GRC at Southern New Hampshire University!
GRS will be on June 5-6, 2027
GRC will be from June 6-11, 2027
Block off your calendars Prokaryotic Cell Biologists!
More details to come! Please repost!
GRS will be on June 5-6, 2027
GRC will be from June 6-11, 2027
Block off your calendars Prokaryotic Cell Biologists!
More details to come! Please repost!
December 12, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Just got word that we are a go for the Bacterial Cell Biology and Development GRS and GRC at Southern New Hampshire University!
GRS will be on June 5-6, 2027
GRC will be from June 6-11, 2027
Block off your calendars Prokaryotic Cell Biologists!
More details to come! Please repost!
GRS will be on June 5-6, 2027
GRC will be from June 6-11, 2027
Block off your calendars Prokaryotic Cell Biologists!
More details to come! Please repost!
Very happy to share the second paper from my postdoc, published today @plosbiology.org. Here, we report that the master regulator of Salmonella virulence usurps the reign of cAMP over metabolism under infection-relevant conditions. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
The master virulence regulator PhoP dictates carbon metabolism by controlling cyclic AMP synthesis in Salmonella
Inside macrophages, Salmonella faces magnesium scarcity that disrupts cAMP synthesis and carbon metabolism. This study shows that the PhoP regulator restores metabolic control by promoting Mg2+ uptake...
journals.plos.org
December 18, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Very happy to share the second paper from my postdoc, published today @plosbiology.org. Here, we report that the master regulator of Salmonella virulence usurps the reign of cAMP over metabolism under infection-relevant conditions. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Long-term control of Salmonella after transient T3SS-2 inhibition https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.30.685576v1
October 31, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Long-term control of Salmonella after transient T3SS-2 inhibition https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.30.685576v1
If you want to understand Jim Watson’s legacy, I think this passage from Lewontin’s “The Triple Helix” helps:
November 8, 2025 at 8:34 PM
If you want to understand Jim Watson’s legacy, I think this passage from Lewontin’s “The Triple Helix” helps:
Office sign means it’s official, and it’s got my go-to Salmonella-infected macrophage cartoon on it.
October 17, 2025 at 10:24 PM
Office sign means it’s official, and it’s got my go-to Salmonella-infected macrophage cartoon on it.
Grant submitted/tossed into the abyss. Pray for me.
October 9, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Grant submitted/tossed into the abyss. Pray for me.
Georges Canguilhem, “A Vital Rationalist”
October 4, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Georges Canguilhem, “A Vital Rationalist”
Please share: I'm hiring a postdoctoral scholar to investigate molecular mechanisms governing Salmonella cell envelope homeostasis inside mammalian host cells. Come join a great microbiology community @oregonstate.edu in beautiful Corvallis, OR!
Appy here: hr.oregonstate.edu/open-postdoc...
Appy here: hr.oregonstate.edu/open-postdoc...
Microbiology Postdoctoral Scholar | Office of University Human Resources
hr.oregonstate.edu
October 2, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Please share: I'm hiring a postdoctoral scholar to investigate molecular mechanisms governing Salmonella cell envelope homeostasis inside mammalian host cells. Come join a great microbiology community @oregonstate.edu in beautiful Corvallis, OR!
Appy here: hr.oregonstate.edu/open-postdoc...
Appy here: hr.oregonstate.edu/open-postdoc...
Anybody out there using the Bio-rad TransBlot Turbo system? Do you like it? Have you compared to the iBlot platform? Pros, cons? Welcoming all strongly opinionated immunoblot snobs in the replies below 👇
September 30, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Anybody out there using the Bio-rad TransBlot Turbo system? Do you like it? Have you compared to the iBlot platform? Pros, cons? Welcoming all strongly opinionated immunoblot snobs in the replies below 👇
My only criticism of One Battle After Another is that they got the molecular biology wrong
September 29, 2025 at 3:26 AM
My only criticism of One Battle After Another is that they got the molecular biology wrong
Our lab website is live, check it out: pokorzynski-lab.squarespace.com
Pokorzynski Lab @ Oregon State University
pokorzynski-lab.squarespace.com
September 16, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Our lab website is live, check it out: pokorzynski-lab.squarespace.com
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Latest from the lab! Analysis of everyone’s favorite regulatory mechanism in bacteria — the RF2 programmed frameshift! Likely present in the ancestor of bacteria, use of this mechanism is influenced by stop codon usage! Big congrats to @cassidyprints.bsky.social
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Conservation and evolution of the programmed ribosomal frameshift in prfB across the bacterial domain | mBio
Translation termination is catalyzed by one of two release factors in bacteria, RF1 or RF2. It has been known for decades that RF2 levels in Escherichia coli are regulated by a programmed ribosomal frameshift within the prfB gene that encodes RF2. We ...
journals.asm.org
August 19, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Latest from the lab! Analysis of everyone’s favorite regulatory mechanism in bacteria — the RF2 programmed frameshift! Likely present in the ancestor of bacteria, use of this mechanism is influenced by stop codon usage! Big congrats to @cassidyprints.bsky.social
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
The B. subtilis histidine-containing phosphocarrier protein (HPr) supports PTS-sugar import, interacts with GAPDH, and helps mediate carbon catabolite repression (CCR). Here, a mutant HPr protein is shown to alleviate metabolic intoxication in a cpgA mutant.
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
August 14, 2025 at 2:09 PM
The B. subtilis histidine-containing phosphocarrier protein (HPr) supports PTS-sugar import, interacts with GAPDH, and helps mediate carbon catabolite repression (CCR). Here, a mutant HPr protein is shown to alleviate metabolic intoxication in a cpgA mutant.
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Cool to see this out in the world - a project that I helped start in the Carabeo lab before I left for Yale: iron starvation enables recognition of intracellular Chlamydia due to dysregulated peptidoglycan remodeling. Congrats to 1st author Monisha Alla!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Chlamydia iron starvation links nutritional immunity to pathogen recognition
Nutritional immunity is an antimicrobial strategy that evolved to starve pathogens of essential nutrients, with death as the desired outcome. Here, we report that transient iron starvation of the obli...
www.biorxiv.org
August 10, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Cool to see this out in the world - a project that I helped start in the Carabeo lab before I left for Yale: iron starvation enables recognition of intracellular Chlamydia due to dysregulated peptidoglycan remodeling. Congrats to 1st author Monisha Alla!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
200 days in, checking in on HHMI funding opportunities:
Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program - not accepting applications
Gilliam Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Investigator Program - not accepting applications
Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program - not accepting applications
Gilliam Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Investigator Program - not accepting applications
This is not some small foundation -- HHMI has a $24 billion endowment. It is the world's 2nd richest biomedical research foundation.
If any funder can double down on their support for science right now, it's HHMI. But they are doing the opposite.
If any funder can double down on their support for science right now, it's HHMI. But they are doing the opposite.
August 9, 2025 at 4:42 PM
200 days in, checking in on HHMI funding opportunities:
Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program - not accepting applications
Gilliam Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Investigator Program - not accepting applications
Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program - not accepting applications
Gilliam Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program - not accepting applications
Investigator Program - not accepting applications
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Dianne Newman: beautiful demonstration of maintenance metabolism in #Psuedomonas, which uses PCN redox cycling to support PMF during anaerobic growth #Phages2025
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
Mechanistic study of a low-power bacterial maintenance state using high-throughput electrochemistry
Anaerobic phenazine cycling by an opportunistic bacterial pathogen supports a low-power,
non-growth metabolism that lends itself to quantitative and mechanistic study of maintenance
physiology.
www.cell.com
August 4, 2025 at 11:59 PM
Dianne Newman: beautiful demonstration of maintenance metabolism in #Psuedomonas, which uses PCN redox cycling to support PMF during anaerobic growth #Phages2025
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Super excited to share our paper online 🚨today🚨 in Cell Host & Microbe! Xiaomei Ren @xiaomeiren.bsky.social and Mason Clark @rmasonclark.bsky.social co-led discovery of ecological factors for Acinetobacter baumannii carriage in the gut, a reservoir for pathogen spread. 🎉
tinyurl.com/443kfefk
tinyurl.com/443kfefk
Amino acid competition shapes A. baumannii gut carriage
Acinetobacter baumannii uses ornithine to compete w/ microbiota & persist in gut. Amino acid supplementation & differences in diet promote A. baumannii gut colonization in mice & humans
@laurenpalmer.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Acinetobacter baumannii uses ornithine to compete w/ microbiota & persist in gut. Amino acid supplementation & differences in diet promote A. baumannii gut colonization in mice & humans
@laurenpalmer.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Amino acid competition shapes Acinetobacter baumannii gut carriage
Ren and Clark et al. show that Acinetobacter baumannii uses ornithine to compete with
the resident microbiota and persist in the gut. Additional evidence demonstrates that
amino acid supplementation a...
www.cell.com
August 4, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Super excited to share our paper online 🚨today🚨 in Cell Host & Microbe! Xiaomei Ren @xiaomeiren.bsky.social and Mason Clark @rmasonclark.bsky.social co-led discovery of ecological factors for Acinetobacter baumannii carriage in the gut, a reservoir for pathogen spread. 🎉
tinyurl.com/443kfefk
tinyurl.com/443kfefk
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
Metal ions are universally required for life, and many of the foundational principles of metal homeostasis have emerged from studies of microbial systems. In this review, I provide a introductory overview targeted to those new to the field.
#MicroSky #Metals
rdcu.be/eycU2
#MicroSky #Metals
rdcu.be/eycU2
Microbial metal physiology: ions to ecosystems
Nature Reviews Microbiology - Metal ions are required for all cells, and their homeostasis relies on ancient mechanisms that facilitate their import, distribution and storage. In this Review,...
rdcu.be
July 28, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Metal ions are universally required for life, and many of the foundational principles of metal homeostasis have emerged from studies of microbial systems. In this review, I provide a introductory overview targeted to those new to the field.
#MicroSky #Metals
rdcu.be/eycU2
#MicroSky #Metals
rdcu.be/eycU2
Reposted by Nick Pokorzynski
If this all sounds like a calculated plan to reduce the size of the federally funding biomedical research enterprise, I believe that is exactly what is it.
The notion that this "facilitates efficient management" of grants and the appropriation is, to use an official NIH term, horseshit.
/fin
The notion that this "facilitates efficient management" of grants and the appropriation is, to use an official NIH term, horseshit.
/fin
July 22, 2025 at 11:54 PM
If this all sounds like a calculated plan to reduce the size of the federally funding biomedical research enterprise, I believe that is exactly what is it.
The notion that this "facilitates efficient management" of grants and the appropriation is, to use an official NIH term, horseshit.
/fin
The notion that this "facilitates efficient management" of grants and the appropriation is, to use an official NIH term, horseshit.
/fin