Super-excited to be organising the first in-person meeting of the @target-amr.bsky.social network today and tomorrow. We will be launching an initiative for pump-priming and an amazing comic by Eddie Ross on AMR Genomics

Happy to share that our latest research on the eco-evolutionary dynamics of MDR plasmids and PDPs is now out (open access vAuthor) in The ISME Journal doi.org/10.1093/isme... Here, we explored how plasmid-dependent phages (PDPs) act as a selective pressure against the spread of multidrug resistance

Eco-evolutionary responses to plasmid-dependent phage constrain the spread of multidrug resistance plasmids

Abstract. Phage therapy offers a promising alternative to antibiotics for treating multidrug-resistant infections. Plasmid-dependent phages (PDPs) are part

doi.org

Less than 1 week to apply for this postdoc! If you want to find out more about the project have a look at our recent preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #mevosky

Michael Brockhurst@brockhurstlab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Why does antibiotic resistance evolution vary between patients? Come to @officialuom.bsky.social @mermanchester.bsky.social to help us find out! 2.5 year @wellcometrust.bsky.social postdoc position in experimental evolution Closing 15 May. Apply here: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Bacterial immune proteins have repeatedly evolved to become parts of eukaryotic immunity. But how? Our new preprint uncovers a recent horizontal transfer event & shows how eukaryotes co-opted a toxic bacterial immune protein 🦠🧪🧵 1/

Why does antibiotic resistance evolution vary between patients? Come to @officialuom.bsky.social @mermanchester.bsky.social to help us find out! 2.5 year @wellcometrust.bsky.social postdoc position in experimental evolution Closing 15 May. Apply here: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Research Associate in Microbial Evolution:Oxford Road

jobs.manchester.ac.uk

Join us! @wellcometrust.bsky.social postdoc position using experimental evolution to understand real-world resistance dynamics. See preprint for the 🤯 strain collection we will be working with www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Closing 15 May. Apply: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... #mevosky

Interested in working on the evolution of photosynthetic endosymbioses? Come join us! I have 2 open positions in my new group @cemess.bsky.social in Vienna 3yr postdoc info: tinyurl.com/4emkjpn4 4yr PhD info: tinyurl.com/mtxmsjpy Apply by 1st June! Please share/repost #Protists #Symbiosis #PhD

We have a PhD studentship available to develop genome safeguarding technologies for synthetic phage therapeutics www.findaphd.com/phds/project... It is part of an exciting new @officialuom.bsky.social PhD by Enterprise programme www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/resear...

(PhD by Enterprise) Genome safeguarding technologies for synthetic phage therapeutics against multidrug resistant bacterial infections at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - (PhD by Enterprise) Genome safeguarding technologies for synthetic phage therapeutics against multidrug resistant bacterial infections at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD...

findaphd.com

Here’s the latest preprint from my work on evolved resistance to Type VI Secretion system (T6SS) weaponry, funded by a @wellcometrust.bsky.social Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship. So happy to see this out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very excited to announce that we are hiring for three faculty positions at @universityofleeds.bsky.social in @bioscienceleeds.bsky.social: A/Prof Plant Science, A/Prof Animal Biology and Lecturer in Ecology, Zoology, Biodiversity or Ecosystem Management. Please do get in touch to chat. Links below:

Job Opportunity at University of Leeds: Associate Professor of Plant Science

Associate Professor of Plant Science Salary: Grade 9 (£61,759 - £73,708 p.a, depending on experience)This role will be based on the university campus, with scope for elements of the job to be undertak...

jobs.leeds.ac.uk

🚨Preprint! Happy to share the research from my PhD “Genome delivery of a contractile tailed phage and its superinfection exclusion mechanism”. We use cryoEM to study the genome ejection of the phage T4, revealing how the tape measure protein regulates the process. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating). A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

Nature Portfolio@natureportfolio.nature.com · 5mo ago

A study in Nature shows that the single-celled form of a tiny, aquatic organism can turn into a multicellular version by three different routes. The discovery adds insight to the possible origins of multicellular life, suggesting a previously unrecognized degree of flexibility. 🧪

Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23 @cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun). Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects bit.ly/DrsHGT 1/🧵

CBASS is a cyclic nucleotide-based antiviral system in bacteria that is related to cGAS-STING signaling in animals. One of the big questions is how CBASS is activated during phage infection? We made some progress on this during my final year in the Kranzusch lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration! Linking below previous thread on our findings

Structural modeling reveals phage proteins that manipulate bacterial immune signaling

Immune systems in animals, plants, and bacteria often rely on intracellular nucleotide signaling, which viruses can block by sequestering or degrading these signals. We identified structural and bioph...

science.org

Nitzan Tal@nitzantal.bsky.social · last yr.

📢Preprint out! Excited to share my final work from the @soreklab.bsky.social! We mined phage dark matter using structural features shared by anti-defense proteins (viral tools that help phages bypass bacterial immunity) to guide discovery. Found 3 new families targeting immune signaling!

#MicroSky Please RT @erc.europa.eu-funded postdoc position in my lab to identify the molecular basis of prey-predator interactions using our favorite micro-vampire Bdellovibrio exovorus as a model. Let's find what the bite is made of! 🧛 Flexible start date. Info: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/415877

Postdoctoral researcher in molecular and cellular bacteriology - ERC CoG VAMPIRE

The research group of Prof Géraldine Laloux at the de Duve Institute (UCLouvain) is looking for a highly motivated postdoc to elucidate the molecular factors underlying bacterial prey-predator interac...

euraxess.ec.europa.eu

New post-doctoral research position in my phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in @otagomicroimmuno.bsky.social at @universityofotago.bsky.social New Zealand. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link in the comments.

Phage therapy offers a powerful tool against AMR infections—but only if we move from isolated cases to coordinated systems. The first initiative of the ASM Health Unit, led by Colleen Kraft and Dev Mittar, will tackle this. Delighted by this scientific leadership, join us! asm.org/about-asm/as...

New preprint out on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread? Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵

Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins - Nature

A common mechanism of inhibition of the essential lipid II flippase MurJ by three distinct phage-encoded single-gene lysis proteins provides insights into potential new targets for antimicrobial devel...

nature.com

Now out & nicely formatted in @isme-microbes.bsky.social A big analysis of ocean genomes & metagenomes co-led by former postdocs, now PIs, @gmdouglas.bsky.social & @cyanophage.bsky.social along with co-PIs @lbobay.bsky.social & Samuel Chaffron. A few highlights... 🧵 (1/n) doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Co-occurrence is associated with horizontal gene transfer across marine bacteria independent of phylogeny

Abstract. Understanding the drivers and consequences of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a key goal of microbial evolution research. Although co-occurring

doi.org

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

Now published: our work using phylodynamics from surveillance data to quantify and experimentally validate the fitness impact of antibiotic resistance determinants & how this changes with patterns of antibiotic use: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Quantifying the real-world impact of antibiotic use and genetic determinants of resistance on gonococcal dynamics

Nature Microbiology - Phylodynamic modelling shows how the changing antibiotic landscape and genetic determinants of resistance shape real-world gonococcal dynamics. Experiments validated that...

nature.com

Yonatan Grad@yhgrad.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint! How much does antibiotic use shape bacterial lineage dynamics, and how does that relate to the fitness costs/benefits of resistance determinants? All sorts of fun findings and a method that we hope will be broadly useful. See @dhelekal.bsky.social's thread and the preprint!

Thank you Mike! I encourage your colleagues to join the new initiative from ASM Health to develop and execute on synergies with phage therapy. Would be great to involve multiple societies and NGO's here as appropriate, as we share common goals. asm.org/about-asm/as...

Out now in @plosbiology.org : our big joint effort on the role of #CRISPR in plasmid competition. Read on for a really fun (I’m biased ok) analysis of how a defence system has new selective pressures when it’s mobile journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... 1/6

Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Up to what degree of interspecific genetic distance is it possible to form viable and fertile hybrids? A strange species of paramecium breaks the record: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Alita Burmeister (@aburmeister.bsky.social) is looking to hire a postdoc (or potentially a PhD student) for projects on phage resistance and evolution. The position description is posted to the Eco-Evo Jobs wiki and also available on her lab's website (arburmeister.weebly.com).

The Burmeister Lab: Studying Microbial Evolution and Extinction

​Our research integrates evolutionary biology and microbiology, using bacteria and phage as study systems to address fundamental questions in both fields. ​ ​We study microbial evolution, a...

arburmeister.weebly.com

MENI is back! Join us in Dublin this August 2026 for our 3rd Meeting for Microbial Evolution in Ireland. We are delighted to have @rachelmwheatley.bsky.social @drrebeccajhall.bsky.social @jpjhall.bsky.social and @tweethinking.bsky.social join us as keynote speakers this year. miniurl.com/MENI

Cancer therapies exploit DNA repair defects to kill tumours. We asked whether the same logic could constrain antibiotic resistance evolution... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...