A man builds an IED. He sets it off in a busy public street. Shrapnel flies about hitting cars, homes and a child's bedroom. It's a miracle nobody is injured. And Reform MP Sarah Pochin calls his imprisonment "disproportionate" and "two tier justice."

Looking up into the central tower at Durham Cathedral. The nave below was fairly complete by 1133, and the end of that century saw the building of the galilee chapel and the twin west towers. The choir was rebuilt in the 13th Century, and then 200 years later this tower was the finishing touch.

Simon Knott@simonknott.bsky.social · 3d ago

Durham Cathedral. Despite the imposing bulk of the building on its famous perch above the River Wear it is not a huge interior. The domineering forest of great Norman columns is overpowering, and there is a sense of a worshipping community camping out in the ruins of something great, now lost to us.

GOOD NEWS! Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic, known as manikomycin, that may be a bulwark in the fight against drug-resistant superbugs. By attacking the ribosome in a never-before-seen way, manikomycin can evade the existing mechanisms pathogens have developed to resist antibiotics.

Reconstruction of a 30,000-year-old biosynthetic gene cluster reveals lasso peptides formed by a highly tolerant cyclase pubs.acs.org/jacsat/artic...

Reconstruction of a 30,000-Year-Old Biosynthetic Gene Cluster Reveals Lasso Peptides Formed by a Highly Tolerant Cyclase

Abstract. Microbial metagenomes preserved in prehistoric dental calculus samples provide access to past bacterial biodiversity and evolutionary dynamics ac

pubs.acs.org

The Times - which has v much joined in the rightwing clamour to reduce immigration - now reporting that Mahmood’s “success” has cost the economy £4- to £7Bn. Would they like to now honestly confirm that fewer people = less spending power for all. There’s a high price to pay for this nasty obsession.

🎉 Out today in Cell: the paper I've been looking forward to sharing for a long time 🎉 We used cryo-ET to find a molecular machine nobody knew existed on the surface of a minimal bacterium, and worked out what it does. 🧵(1/7) #TeamTomo #cryoET

Universities have a visibility problem beyond cultural war controversies

Public hugely overestimate graduate regret and underestimate the economic value of universities while being wrong about tuition fees – new study - HEPI

The public hugely overestimate how many graduates regret going to university and significantly underestimate the importance of higher education to the UK economy, according to a new study into percept...

hepi.ac.uk

Two preprints both out today identifying *different* reverse transcriptase systems associated with arrays reminiscent of CRISPR/Cas, encoded by different phage. One from Anthropic and one from Stanford. Worth pointing out that the Stanford work clearly began earlier, and has more wetlab follow-up:

Arc Institute@arcinstitute.org · 2w ago

Many important bacterial non-coding RNAs and structural elements remain undiscovered. To help, David Li, Garyk Brixi, Michael Fischbach, @brianhie.bsky.social & team introduce Minerva, which uses a genome language model to predict RNA base pairing, repeats, & other interactions from sequence alone.

Can you tell how an antibiotic kills bacteria just by watching them under a regular microscope — without any dyes ? Yes, it turns out, at least if you are a deep neural net.

Bizarre things that happened in your assembly: A neighbour of one of the teachers gave us a five-minute lecture about kwashiorkor which involved him reciting a list of his favourite words (yes, ‘kwashiorkor’ was one of them). Included the unforgettable phrase, “Diarrhoea, another beautiful word.”

Tim Worthington@outonbluesix.bsky.social · 2w ago

Some dancers once came to our school once and did a routine to Uptown Girl in the middle of assembly. I've still no idea why.

Emergence of short-lived meningococci causing focal epidemics can be associated with gene transfer from carriage-associated Neisseria www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Emergence of short-lived meningococci causing focal epidemics can be associated with gene transfer from carriage-associated Neisseria

In March 2026, an unusually large outbreak of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in Kent, UK, was linked to attendance at one nightclub over a single weekend. The outbreak organism was a Neisseria m...

biorxiv.org

Prof Sheena Cruickshank@sheencr.bsky.social · 2w ago

Interesting data shows that the March meningitis outbreak was as a result of a recombinant strain of the bacteria that had picked up microbiome genes. May explain its virulence but also why spread less. Flags that this can happen though and quickly! Greater need for vigilance and preventative vax

pLAST - a tool for rapid comparison and classification of bacterial plasmid sequences | Bioinformatics | Oxford Academic

pLAST - a tool for rapid comparison and classification of bacterial plasmid sequences

AbstractMotivation. The increasing number of fully sequenced bacterial plasmids being annotated and catalogued has prompted the development of computationa

dx.doi.org

On the BBC News Katya Adler has just described Germany, where the far right AFD keep winning elections, as entering 'uncharted political territory'. Hmmm. Where Germany is concerned I think that territory is pretty well charted.

“Universities have managed staff costs significantly below inflation,[between 2016-17 and 2023-24] increasing only 14% compared to the 41.2% increase in RPIX [measure of inflation]” Substantial real terms pay cut, which continues a trend existing years before that…

Cost of undergraduate provision and qualifications in England

A study of the full economic cost of providing undergraduate-level higher education and other qualifications in England.

gov.uk

A beautiful sunny morning at Roker. Still quite cool in the water though (14.5 deg C) & has probably already peaked for the year.

microbingle.bsky.social@microbingle.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Sub-optimal conditions this morning to start a (hopefully) weekly dip in the North Sea. Dark grey skies, cool breeze (13 deg C) & *massive* waves. Surprisingly pleasant in the water (1 deg warmer than the air), but when I got out after 20 mins 🥶

Leading region anti-defense genes drive conjugation success of IncM & IncL plasmids. assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-105...

Every year on 19 December, the famous Christmas lights at Mousehole in Cornwall are dimmed between 8 and 9pm, leaving just the Cross and Angels shining down across the village and out to sea.

Interested in a PhD on viral metagenomics from clinical samples? Check out this collaborative project between my group at @biology.ox.ac.uk and @eit.org eit.org/project/viro...

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

Naive bioinformatics Q: is there a quick way to sketch out the diversity of major subgroups in a clade (e.g. a species) without drawing a humungous tree?

I wrote a blog post about aeornophiles for Small Things Considered. smallthingsconsidered.blog/schaechter/2...

Aeonophiles

by Karen G. Lloyd — The story behind some extremely long-lived microbial cells.

smallthingsconsidered.blog

Sunderland's new Culture House is rather special.

Please share! We are looking for a PhD student excited about gene transfer, and tackling Antimicrobial Resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae. 🧬 More details & applications on funder website by 21st Oct 👇🏻 gw4biomed.ac.uk/developing-c...

They’ve all forgotten their kit and are having to do fascism in their pants.

A chance to do a PhD on plasmid copy number with the excellent @wtmatlock.bsky.social , highly recommended! Combines genomics and experimental evolution with Tiff Taylor (whose bsky id I can't seem to find, apols) gw4biomed.ac.uk/turning-up-t...

Tetracyclines are one of the oldest and largest families of antibiotics in use. Consequently, bacterial resistance to them is widespread. This latest review contemplates the future of this longstanding antibiotic family. Read the full article here🔗 https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.002197

super interesting paper: 👇 Evolutionary Maintenance of Amino Acid Prototrophy in Escherichia coli! academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

The Evolutionary Maintenance of Amino Acid Prototrophy in Escherichia coli

Abstract. Escherichia coli is a prototroph and can synthesize all twenty proteinogenic amino acids when required to grow in minimal medium. There are appro

academic.oup.com

New paper led by Liam Shaw, with Arancha Peñil Celis, @aresarroyom.bsky.social, @adalijuanluo.bsky.social & Fernando de la Cruz. academic.oup.com/nar/article/... This is very much Liam’s story, but I loved playing a small part in it 🧵

The leading region of many plasmids is adapted for translational efficiency

Abstract. To successfully transfer, conjugative plasmids must overcome a recipient cell’s defence mechanisms. The leading region of many plasmids—the first

academic.oup.com