Charles Winterhalter
@winterhalterlab.bsky.social
Wellcome Early-Career Fellow investigating novel DNA damage repair mechanisms in bacteria at Newcastle university (UK)
Amazing work from the Dewar lab!
James Dewar@jamesmdewar.bsky.social · 2mo ago🧬 ⛓️💥 Our paper is now out in @natsmb.nature.com ! We examined the fate of replication forks that collapse at single-strand DNA breaks (SSBs) in vertebrates 🐸, comparing the consequences of collapse at single vs convergent forks. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We have a PhD studentship open! (UK only sadly) but if you are or know a student keen to work on some *really* weird mycobacterial enzymes then get in touch! #glycotime Advert below www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Uncovering a new class of toxins in pathogenic mycobacteria at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Uncovering a new class of toxins in pathogenic mycobacteria at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
Please share - full funded (UK students only) PhD studentship in the Duncan lab ‘intergrated ‘omics for accelerated antibtioic dicovery from abyssal actinomycetes’. Co-supervisors @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social, Marcel Jaspars, @zmaw.bsky.social- deadline 20th May www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Want to research the basis of how drug resistant bacteria interact with human immune cells? Fully funded 4-year PhD position available (UK home students). Come and join our amazing interdisciplinary team at the intersection of microbiology, immunity, metabolism and the clinic! Please spread the word
Hiding in plain sight: How a multi-drug resistant pathogen evades detection and killing by human neutrophils at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Hiding in plain sight: How a multi-drug resistant pathogen evades detection and killing by human neutrophils at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
**PhD opportunity** Join me, @henrikstrahl.bsky.social, and Alistair Brown at @newcastleuni.bsky.social to uncover how Mycobacterium tuberculosis survives antibiotics, one molecule at a time! 🔬🦠 #PhD #microbiology #biophysics #microscopy 📅 Deadline 20 May 2026 (UK home only) RT = 🙏
Resolving the mechanism of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antibiotic tolerance through single-molecule microscopy at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Resolving the mechanism of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antibiotic tolerance through single-molecule microscopy at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
What are the genetic and molecular determinants underpinning the repair of bidirectional replication fork collapse in bacteria? PhD position open in my lab in collaboration with the brilliant @heathmurraylab.bsky.social. Please share and contact me if interested: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Identifying bacterial DNA repair requirements enabling stable genetic inheritance during bidirectional replication fork collapse at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Identifying bacterial DNA repair requirements enabling stable genetic inheritance during bidirectional replication fork collapse at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
Checkout our latest preprint which is a real lab-wide effort to map antibiotic stress signatures across the pneumococcal pangenome. All findings have also been incorporated in PneumoBrowse 2.0. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Hey #Microsky, time to celebrate your amazing female colleagues, students and mentors for #IWD2026! Nominate an inspiring woman whose research, teaching, innovation, or community leadership deserves recognition! @femsmicro.org crm.fems-microbiology.org/ssp/internat...
International Women's Day: Nominate a woman in microbiology! | crm.fems-microbiology.org
crm.fems-microbiology.org
Fantastic work coming out of Neil Hunter’s lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Protecting double Holliday junctions ensures crossing over during meiosis - Nature
Conditional ablation experiments show that key components of the synaptonemal complex protect double Holliday junction recombination intermediates to ensure their resolution into crossover products, which are required for accurate chromosome segregation during meiosis.
nature.com
PhD & Postdoc Positions at the Dept of Microbial Population Biology of the MPI for Evolutionary Biology (Plön, Germany) to work on jumbo phages & HGT of genomic islands. An amazing research team led by the one and only Paul Rainey, one of the most hard-core evolutionary micro/biologists of our time!
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Two Postdoctoral Research Associates in the Molecular Analysis of Bacterial Outer Membrane Protein Biogenesis BEN BERKS lab 🤩
my.corehr.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Mechanism and reconstitution of circadian transcription in cyanobacteria - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
Fang et al. reveal how a bacterial circadian clock turns genes on and off at the right times of day and use the purified proteins to drive circadian gene transcription in a test tube for days.
nature.com
Our latest preprint: Together with the team of Jan Löwe, @danieltamarit.bsky.social and many others we discovered and characterized several Asgard tubulin genes and propose that microtubule architecture and dynamics evolved in Asgard archaea prior to eukaryogenesis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Nice to see some yeast genetics in a Cell paper, where the authors test models based on single-molecule in vitro analysis. The combination of genetics and biochemistry often addresses questions most effectively. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A non-catalytic role for RFC in PCNA-mediated processive DNA synthesis
The RFC clamp loader remains associated with PCNA beyond the loading step, supporting processive DNA replication by stabilizing the inherently unstable PCNA-polymerase ẟ complex.
cell.com
In our most recent work David Forrest has discovered a widespread mechanisms linking transcription initiation to DNA supercoiling... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The bacterial RNA polymerase-associated CarD protein couples promoter activity to DNA supercoiling - Nature Communications
The transcription factor CarD facilitates the activation of transcription in many bacteria and in Rhodobacter sphaeroides, CarD compensates for suboptimal promoter DNA sequences. Here, the authors sho...
nature.com
Dynamic DnaA–DnaB interactions at oriC coordinate the loading and coupled translocation of two DnaB helicases for bidirectional replication url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
Dynamic DnaA–DnaB interactions at oriC coordinate the loading and coupled translocation of two DnaB helicases for bidirectional replication
Abstract. Bidirectional replication is a conserved principle requiring coordinated translocation of the two replicative helicases loaded at the origin. In
academic.oup.com
PhD position available in our team to study how UPEC exploits metals to successfully colonise the host gut. Cool collaboration with @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social and @banzhaflab.bsky.social Please share and get in touch for more details
Microbial metal-head: the integrated roles of metal homeostasis in host-pathogen interaction at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Microbial metal-head: the integrated roles of metal homeostasis in host-pathogen interaction at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
www.findaphd.com/phds/project... interested in bacterial antagonism? PhD opportunity in our team, see below. Please repost!
Characterising antibacterial toxins in the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Characterising antibacterial toxins in the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
E. coli is the leading bacterium causing death from AMR infections worldwide. If you'd like to explore approaches to exploit the DNA damage response as alternative antimicrobial, please apply to the following PhD studentship available in my lab starting October 2026: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Exploiting the bacterial DNA damage response as an alternative antimicrobial at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Exploiting the bacterial DNA damage response as an alternative antimicrobial at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
Beautiful work with big implications for the future of Cas9-type technologies www.nature.com/articles/s41...
An anti-CRISPR targets the sgRNA to block Cas9 and guides the design of enhanced genome editors - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
Yu, Yin, Zhu, Lu and colleagues show that Acr inhibits Cas activity through a scaffold RNA interaction and further develop an RNA truncation optimization strategy to enhance editing performance.
nature.com
Recombinational repair is the major pathway required to reload the bacterial replicative helicase following introduction of single-strand DNA breaks. A great way to end the year! Big thank you to co-authors from the @heathmurraylab.bsky.social
@heathmurraylab.bsky.social · 7mo agoA cool genetic system to study site-pecific replication fork collapse and repair from the brilliant @winterhalterlab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Congratulations to Hannah and colleagues for depicting the consequences of DNA replication hyper-initiation in Gram-positive bacteria! @microbiologysociety.org www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
Conflicts between the DNA replication and repair machineries promote cell death in Gram-positive bacteria
Cellular proliferation relies on the successful coordination and completion of genome replication and segregation. To help achieve this, many bacteria utilize regulatory pathways that ensure DNA repli...
microbiologyresearch.org
New cryo-EM/ET story - a brilliant collaboration with Sergey Melnikov's lab in Newcastle @sergeymelnikov.bsky.social and Stefan Pfeffer's lab in Heidelberg @pfeffercryolab.bsky.social. Great work in particular by Karla Helena-Bueno and @sophiekopetschke.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Structurally heterogeneous ribosomes cooperate in protein synthesis in bacterial cells - Nature Communications
Cells can simultaneously produce structurally dissimilar ribosomes, suggesting functional specialization of distinct ribosome populations. Here, the authors show that distinct ribosomes cooperate rath...
nature.com
Still time to apply and join my team on a fully funded PhD project looking at dynamics of the bacterial DNA damage response in live cells using genomics.
CBCB Newcastle@cbcb-newcastle.bsky.social · last yr.Engineering anti-CRISPR/Cas systems to control the DNA damage response in live bacterial cells. Supervised by @winterhalterlab.bsky.social, @acdarby.bsky.social, and Katarzyna Mickiewicz. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
This was a fantastic collaboration with our neighbors @mblokesch.bsky.social & David Adams and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social in Bristol. Special thanks to the DCI for invaluable support with cryo-EM of a rather difficult target! @drhonsworth.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Structure and Activation Mechanism of a Lamassu Phage Defence System
Lamassu is a diverse family of defence systems that protect bacteria, including pandemic strains of Vibrio cholerae, against phage infection. They target essential cellular processes, aborting infecti...
biorxiv.org
Beautiful work from the Dewar lab and colleagues diving into replication fork rescue in vertebrates. Together, our papers highlight critical similarities/differences in DNA damage repair processes occurring in prokaryotes vs eukaryotes when the replisome encounters a single-strand discontinuity.
James Dewar@jamesmdewar.bsky.social · last yr.🧬⛓️ Our latest preprint examines the fate of collapsed forks in vertebrates 🐸 and our colleagues in @heathmurraylab.bsky.social asked similar questions in bacteria 🦠 to reveal how evolution shapes the response to fork collapse (see🧵) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Excited to share with you the story that enabled me to start my own lab: what happens when the bacterial DNA replication machinery encounters single-strand discontinuities on template DNA? What is required for break repair and replication restart? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Rescuing bacterial genome replication: essential functions to repair a double-strand break and restart DNA synthesis
Many antibiotics indirectly generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) that can damage bacterial genomes. Oxidised nucleobases become genotoxic when they are targeted for repair through excision, generati...
biorxiv.org