Proud of today's review on MRSA in Nature Reviews Disease Primer. Co-led by Annette Westgeest from Leiden and Josh Parsons from Duke, it features coauthors from 6 countries and 315 references. Read here: rdcu.be/fzE1Q

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Nature Reviews Disease Primers - Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a leading cause of antimicrobial-resistant infection. In this Primer, Parsons and colleagues describe the...

rdcu.be

If you missed it before, check out Xu’s great work here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... It answers an important question in the anti-phage field, namely how defence genes not encoded by MGEs are mobilised between bacteria 🧫

Bacteriophages mobilize bacterial defense systems via lateral transduction

Bacteriophages and PICIs spread bacterial defenses via lateral transduction, shaping microbial immunity and pathogen evolution.

science.org

Congratulations to @antiphagexu.bsky.social for passing his viva and being a newly minted doctor 🍾🧬🥼And big thanks to Franklin Nobrega and Nick Croucher for their (allegedly) thorough examination 🤝 @jrpenades.bsky.social

Huge faculty recruitment effort at the University of Chicago -- a division-wide, open-rank search looking to hire about 20 faculty across 5 research areas in biology. Come be our colleague! Full announcement: uchicago.app.box.com/s/ckih9zv3rj...

Two fictional (presumably AI) stories in recent X posts, now repeated as a Google summary. No need to tell tall tales about your achievements when the AI ecosystem will now do it for you…

Henrietta Lacks was #BOTD in 1920, and died in 1951 of cervical cancer. The cell line from her cancer contains HPV 18 integrated into her genome. Today we have a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer - #OncSky + #MedSky. nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaah...

Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine | National Museum of African American History and Culture

"Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951 at the age of 31. During an examination, cells were taken from her body without her knowledge or consent by a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospit...

nmaahc.si.edu

Shameless self-plug. Our new paper out in NPJ biofilms and microbiomes @masseylab.bsky.social and Mario Recker Copper at the heart of an interkingdom wound-like biofilm. rdcu.be/fw1Ut

I’m increasingly seeing examples of people getting stuck in journal doom loops of minor formatting revision followed by a request to address a new set of trivial formatting issues that weren’t mentioned before…AI issue perhaps? Incredibly frustrating…

Last days in the lab for our friend Vincent Somerville @vincentsomerville.bsky.social before he starts his own operation as junior group leader with Nicholas Bokulich in our institute - watch out for great work on microbes and phages in fermenting foods! 🧀🦠🧬

This is the key. Thinking up new ideas is never the bottleneck - it's all the institutional slow downs: Grants take years, purchasing approvals, sponsored projects office need so many docs & let's not forget how long it takes our animals to breed. AI doesn't solve the most important bottlenecks

Ran Blekhman@blekhman.bsky.social · 3w ago

Everyone says AI will accelerate science. I don't think it will -- at least not in biology, and at least not soon. New post where I explain why, and how the productivity paradox can be resolved: blekhman.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...

1/4 Every good defence needs a backup! 🛡️⚔ Out now in @natrevmicro.nature.com our Comment on "𝗶𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴"! 🎉 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Immune safeguarding as a conserved principle of antiviral defence - Nature Reviews Microbiology

All organisms defend against viral infections through active immunity mechanisms that clear the virus or population-level mechanisms that cause regulated cell death. Recent research increasingly shows...

nature.com

Applications are OPEN for the 2027 Gordon Research Conference on Multidrug Efflux Systems. 📅 When: March 21–26, 2027 📍 Where: Ventura, California 🔗 Apply here: www.grc.org/multi-drug-e... #GRC #MultidrugEfflux

Polymyxin B functions as a TLR2 agonist, suggesting that polymyxin B preparations can induce macrophage activation under conditions in which IFN-γ and LPS are present academic.oup.com/jimmunol/art... @jimmunol.bsky.social

Inspiring day of talks and memories of the brilliant Prof Jeff Cole today @imibirmingham.bsky.social. Now Prof Kevin Foster on the metabolic ecology of microbiomes

Fully Funded PhD alert!! Super interesting project with @overtonlab.bsky.social , Sara Jabbari and me!! 🤩

Tim Overton@overtonlab.bsky.social · last mo.

PhD alert! We are advertising an exciting PhD opportunity as part of the BBSRC-funded BARRIΣR project, investigating how molecules get into bacteria with the aim of improving solvent tolerance. Please share with any (home) students you think might be interested! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Interested in joining our group in Oxford? We are looking for a PDRA with single particle Cryo-EM experience to help us figure out how sphingolipids are transported to the cell surface of Gram-negative bacteria. The deadline is 31st July. Informal enquires are welcome. Please share!

New review: Host-driven remodelling of the Staphylococcus aureus cell envelope: mechanisms, consequences and therapeutic implications. Published in Microbiology as part of the Emerging Investigators collection: https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001718 #MicrobioJ

Out Now! Identification of chemical features for improved outer membrane permeation in mycobacteria using machine learning #MicroSky

Identification of chemical features for improved outer membrane permeation in mycobacteria using machine learning

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 30 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02412-5Screening 1,572 compounds for mycomembrane permeation plus cheminformatic and machine learning analyses reveals features associated with improved permeation in the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and model organism M. smegmatis.

go.nature.com

Thrilled to share our recent paper at @cellpress.bsky.social's @cp-iscience.bsky.social studying the antibiotic responses of MRSA, one of the most common wound pathogens, under wound infection-like conditions vs. standard lab test conditions. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Uncovering the mechanisms of clinically relevant altered antibiotic responses of Staphylococcus aureus under wound infection-mimetic conditions

Biophysics; Clinical microbiology; Microbiology; Molecular biology; Systems biology

cell.com

Recruiting a postdoc to join my lab at @lshtm.bsky.social to work in an MRC porgramme grant funded project to dissect the gut colonziation by Klebsiella. In vivo and in vitro models, and new approaches to identify Klebsiella factors involved. jobs.lshtm.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

Job Opportunity at LSHTM: Research Fellow

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is one of the world’s leading public health universities. Our mission is to improve health and health equity in the UK and worldwide; working i...

jobs.lshtm.ac.uk

ZERO! None. Not one. Science is incredible. What incredible news to start the day. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cervical cancer deaths fall to zero in young women given HPV vaccine

A new study finds that hundreds of lives have been saved since school-age girls were offered the HPV jab in 2008.

bbc.co.uk

Vaccines work. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cervical cancer deaths fall to zero in young women given vaccine

A new study finds that hundreds of lives have been saved since school-age girls were offered the HPV jab in 2008.

bbc.co.uk

RIP Mark Rothko. You would have loved how the hydrogen peroxide bleach is only turning the Reflecting Pool blue around the perimeter

Professor Colin Kleanthous FMedSci FRS is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is a biochemist whose work has fundamentally changed our understanding of the outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative bacteria. #RSFellows https://royalsociety.org/people/colin-kleanthous-38107/

A generation of children confined to exclusively posting on LinkedIn, humbled to share that they have been recognised as thought leaders in vertically integrating your mom's supply chain.

BacPROTACs outperform inhibitors in Mycobacterium tuberculosis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.12.731830v1

New pre-print from the lab! Murepavedin is a Pseudomonas-specific antibiotic, but it disrupts the outer membranes of a wide range of different Gram-negatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Murepavadin is a broad-spectrum outer membrane permeabiliser

Murepavadin is a Pseudomonas-specific antibiotic that targets LPS transport protein LptD. However, whilst the mode of action of murepavadin is well defined, the mechanism by which the drug gains acces...

biorxiv.org

📢 We are recruiting! I’m looking for a Research Associate in Structural Biology to join my lab at Imperial College London to study horizontal gene transfer using cryo-EM, biochemistry and microbiology. Please share with interested candidates! Apply: shorturl.at/gmJGS

Description

Please note that job descriptions are not exhaustive, and you may be asked to take on additional duties that align with the key responsibilities ment...

imperial.ac.uk

I am very happy to be in the part of this work! Congratulations @abarbotin.bsky.social @carballido-lab.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Two temperature-dependent membrane fluidity regimes in gram-positive bacteria | mSphere

Temperature changes affect the physical properties of the plasma membrane. Typically, a reduction in temperature causes a less fluid and thus more viscous, membrane. It has been long established that ...

journals.asm.org

PhD position available for self-funded / scholarship students here in lovely Sheffield using flies to dissect macrophage heterogeneity with @macrofage123.bsky.social and Ryan West - more details via lnkd.in/eVDVJF5m