This is such a great piece of work about an amazing evolutionary story, every part of this is incredible. Congrats @rudycadenabioevo.bsky.social @evanowack.bsky.social Among other surprises, oxygen scavenging instead of photorespiration is not something I was expecting!

Ben Long@botbml.bsky.social · 2w ago

Spatial proteomics reveals carboxysome adaptation and mitochondrial proteome in Paulinella chromatophora www.cell.com/current-biol...

This will be an amazing opportunity for the right person. The Department of Veterinary Medicine in Cambridge is recruiting for an established chair who will also be our Head of Department. Your research can be in any area of veterinary science. Please circulate. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/profess...

Next Wednesday we're running a live webinar on examining the genomes of examples of the 6 ESKAPE pathogens, using tools available in MORF Genomes. Come & learn about AMR gene and genomes using our visual browser-based tools. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-superb...

How Superbugs Escape: Comparative Genomics of ESKAPE Pathogens with MORF

Dive into the sneaky world of superbugs and see how the MORF platform helps crack the code on ESKAPE pathogens' escape tricks.

eventbrite.co.uk

nice to see a photo from my York collection in this latest article from @yorkcivictrust.bsky.social on the Northern Powerhouse :-) yorkcivictrust.co.uk/no-10-north-...

A quinone-transporting pseudomembrane complex in Bacillota including staphylococci. Amazing!

Jörg Stülke@joergstuelke.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Really amazing: generation of more membrane surface via a quinone-transporting pseudomembrane composed of filaments of the NADH dehydrogenase Ndh and the quinone-transporting protein Ncp! #SubtiWiki www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Professor Bonnie Bassler is awarded the Copley Medal for her discovery of the universality of chemical communication in bacteria and for her idea that interfering with this communication could form the basis of novel anti-bacterials. #RSMedals https://royalsociety.org/medals-and-prizes/copley-medal/

Bacterial lipid structural diversity mediates commensalism and pathogenesis #microbiology #bacteria #lipids #MicroSky @natrevmicro.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Bacterial lipid structural diversity mediates commensalism and pathogenesis - Nature Reviews Microbiology

In this Review, Heaver and Ley overview the different lipid structures present in commensal and pathogenic bacteria and their recognition by Toll-like receptor 2, Toll-like receptor 4 and CD1 molecule...

doi.org

Congratulations to #ucdavis Alum Bonnie Bassler www.princeton.edu/news/2026/08...

Bonnie Bassler receives top Royal Society honor for seminal research in quorum sensing

Bassler has been named the 2026 recipient of the society's Copley Medal, its oldest and most prestigious prize.

princeton.edu

Thrilled to share that our paper describing protein-dependent frameshifting is now out in Molecular Cell @cellpress.bsky.social. Huge congratulations to @jemmabetts.bsky.social for publishing the first research paper from her PhD 🧬🧪🥳 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/8

A protein-dependent riboswitch activates ribosomal frameshifting in cardioviruses

Programmed −1 ribosomal frameshifting (PRF) is a translational control mechanism used by RNA viruses to regulate the relative abundance of proteins en…

sciencedirect.com

A stress response can be a great starting point for discovering new biology! By following genes regulated during the chloroplast unfolded protein response, we’re discovering novel factors involved in chloroplast homeostasis. Here’s the first one we characterized: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

VIA1 is a conserved regulator of thylakoid membrane integrity that acts through VIPP1 | PNAS

Thylakoid membranes are indispensable for oxygenic photosynthesis, yet the mechanisms that protect these membranes from photooxidative damage remai...

pnas.org

✨ We're excited to announce our fifth keynote speaker for #coesb26, Prof @gavinhthomas.bsky.social! Gavin is a Prof. at the Department of Biology at the @york.ac.uk ac.uk, UK. We're looking forward to hearing from Prof Thomas soon! 📅 Registration opens this week! @arc-gov-au.bsky.social

After a bit of a rough patch my lab's funding situation has taken a significant upturn, so if you're looking for a Postdoc position please keep us in mind...Pseudomonas aeruginosa genetics, regulation, and physiology - with a focus on the cell envelope. Please repost. andrewdarwinlab.org

Science is rapidly changing - for better and worse - and we hope that this article collection will serve as a reference as we all navigate these new realities. The first article by Dr. Friedrich Götz of @unituebingen.bsky.social is posted and i highly recommend it journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

mSphere Legacy: Fritz about Fritz | mSphere

I began my research career in the late 1970s with my doctoral thesis at LMU Munich under Karl Heinz Schleifer in the Department of Microbiology. At the time, the department was a hotspot for bacterial classification, cell wall structure analysis, staphylococcal physiology, and metabolism. I became particularly interested in the latter areas and studied fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (FBP)-activated L-lactate dehydrogenase in Staphylococcus epidermidis and a highly stable class I FBP aldolase in Staphylococcus aureus (1). I also investigated oxygen consumption mediated by pyruvate oxidase in Lactobacillus plantarum, demonstrating that this bacterium does not require an enzymatic superoxide dismutase because it can use Mn-phosphate/pyrophosphate for superoxide scavenging—an example of the diverse mechanisms that bacteria employ to cope with oxidative stress (2–4). My scientific environment was shaped by the work of Karl-Heinz Schleifer (Technical University of Munich) and Wesley E. Kloos (North Carolina State University) who made foundational contributions to the identification and classification of Staphylococcus species, particularly during the 1970s, when bacterial systematics was undergoing major modernization. The Kloos–Schleifer classification frameworks remained standard references for the identification of staphylococci well into the molecular era (5, 6).

journals.asm.org

Happy to have this collaborative work with Zach Armstrong now out in Angewandte chemie doi.org/10.1002/anie... . We use a linked assay, coupled with fluorescent probes, to analyse mucin active carbohydrate sulfatase kinetics, cellular location, and inhibition.

Fluorogenic Coupled Assays Reveal Catalytic Properties, Inhibition Constants and Cellular Location of Mucin‐Active Carbohydrate Sulfatases

We report plate-based coupled assays to rapidly and quantitatively determine the activity and selectivity of mucin-active carbohydrate sulfatases. This fluorogenic assay further enables inhibitor ide...

doi.org

Great to see Sam's work on PdhD out now in Microbiology! Very cool story showing how subtle metabolic adaptations can give Staph an edge during systemic invasion #microsky www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Metabolic reprogramming promotes Staphylococcus aureus serum resistance

Staphylococcus aureus is a leading cause of bloodstream infections causing an estimated 300,000 deaths worldwide. Using a functional genomics approach, our group previously identified that adaptation ...

microbiologyresearch.org

A lipid cue drives the subcellular localization of a self-inserting bacterial transmembrane protein bioRxiv from @ramamurthilab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is awful to hear, describing how Sean Eddy (HMMER, infernal, pfam, rfam) has been defunded. The letter said his work "had been determined to be of absolutely no value to the US taxpayer, and therefore it was being specifically terminated," www.npr.org/2026/05/21/n...

Researchers say the Trump administration is finding new ways to punish science

Even with federal grants largely restored, scientists say the Trump administration is still preventing those funds from reaching them. The consequences, they say, are already becoming clear.

npr.org

What a kick-off to @pintofscience.uk in York last night! Presenters covered topics on solar panels & biodiversity, sustainable fishing & maths, biomolecules science, and stressed microbes by @gavinhthomas.bsky.social #pint26 #STEM #AVERTproject #BBSRC

New work from @henrikstrahl.bsky.social and coworkers!

bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Membrane-targeting antimicrobials trigger lysis in Bacillus subtilis by disturbing the MreB-dependent regulation of peptidoglycan hydrolases https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.01.722135v1

Reflecting on the passing of J. Craig Venter, who I never met, and was not everyone's cup of tea, but TIGR's work on the first bacterial genome in 1995 has to be the landmark paper in my PhD era and it would not be an exaggeration to say that it has shaped my whole academic career. #lovemicrobiology

Congratulations Lukas on this nice work which we heard about at the Staph GRC last Autumn. More great work from Tübingen @andreaspeschel.bsky.social

Andreas Peschel @andreaspeschel.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Commensal bacteria are crucial for microbiome interactions and pathogen exclusion but are often very difficult to tackle genetically. Our new paper describes an intriguing advance: @cmfi.bsky.social @dzif.bsky.social @spp2330.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@gavinhthomas.bsky.social is taking the stage for the Pint of Science Festival! 🍻🔬Join him on May 18th for a fascinating deep dive into the world of microbes and how they handle stress pintofscience.co.uk/event/nature... #outreach #BBSRC

Nature, Numbers, and the Invisible World

Explore the hidden rules that shape our world, from the stress responses of microbes and the molecular machinery of life to the maths behind ecosystems, mo…

pintofscience.co.uk

New paper! We have written a (hopefully) simple primer on microbial energy metabolism - how do bacteria harvest energy from their environment, and how does this impact their behaviour? www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Microbial Primer: Bacterial energy metabolism

All cells need energy to perform their functions. This primer introduces energy metabolism in bacteria, with a focus on key pathways and examples from model organisms, while acknowledging that bacteri...

microbiologyresearch.org

Had lots of fun too at the Memb Prot Conf in Birmingham a few days prior, getting to know @chrismulligan.bsky.social, @gavinhthomas.bsky.social, @allistercrow.bsky.social, @renaeryan.bsky.social and catching up Andy Lovering, Jani Bolla, @pstansfeld.bsky.social & @davidroper2.bsky.social of course!

If you’re attending @microbiologysociety.org 2026 keep an eye out for Luke Shipley from the MORF-Bio team. He’ll explain how to explore your microbial data through interactive, visual tools with MORF Genomes. 🎁 And there’s a £100 Amazon voucher up for grabs! If you spot Luke, come and say hello!

Check out the first of our public lectures on AMR run by the YPS - kicked off by the fantastic Prof. Jess Blair from Birmingham. What is a superbug? @jessicamablair.bsky.social @ypsyork.bsky.social @ybri-uoy.bsky.social - two more in the series coming soon! www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFYs...

What is a Superbug? The global threat of antibiotic resistance

YouTube video by Yorkshire Philosophical Society

youtube.com

It is with deep sadness that we share the passing of Professor Jeff Cole. An esteemed academic, Jeffs research on bacterial adaptation to oxygen and nitrosative stress made a lasting impact on the field. He mentored nearly 60 doctoral students, our thoughts are with his family, friends & colleagues

"Nobody will care about your work about sugar metabolism and transporters in Neurospora crassa" Nobody can predict what can happen with your work. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fungal-derived cellobiose metabolic pathway fuels T cells to bypass intratumoral glucose competition

Solid tumors harbor immunosuppressive microenvironments that inhibit tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) through the voracious consumption of glucos…

sciencedirect.com

How do you react when your favorite microbe is renamed by taxonomists who are completely outside your field—and who ignore the community that actually works with it? Here is our clear answer re the case of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 👉🏻 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

The disputed identity of Pseudomonas putida KT2440: when taxonomists rename your favorite microbe | mBio

Names matter; they are not mere labels. They operate as anchors of memory, social coordinates, and references of collective identity. When a name becomes established through long-term use and broad ad...

journals.asm.org

Heading down to the Festival of Genomics to tell people about MORF and get the latest on Microbial genomics - give me a DM if you’d like to chat 👍