#Manchester #MEEhubs26 Day 2 is on! Fantastic talks from @olimeacock.bsky.social @melissalawson.bsky.social @evokait.bsky.social on microbial community interactions with keynote by @dundee.ac.uk's Prof. Sarah Coulthurst 🦠↔️🦠

CFA: Apply by November 1st! Wiko Early Career Call for fellowships 2027/2028 in the #NaturalSciences and #LifeSciences. Gain time to think during a 3–5 month #fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin – Institute for Advanced Study: www.wiko-berlin.de/en/becoming-...

Colloquium June 16: Fellow @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social, "Endless forms most virulent – understanding “opportunistic” bacterial infections as evolutionary processes" www.wiko-berlin.de/en/fellows/a... www.wiko-berlin.de/en/wikothequ...

Last week we kicked off the ecology & evolution seminar series with a fantastic talk by @taylorlabgroup.bsky.social 🧬 A great start to a diverse series of talks organised by @bexlowrypalms.bsky.social & @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social Come and join us for the next one on 25th June!

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

After two lovely weeks at Wiko Berlin with @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social, it's back to spring in the Arctic ❄️

It is so very telling that, after a decade of hollering about FREE SPEECH and DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT, when Republicans got power in Texas Universities they straight up fired people, purged departments, threw away books, and wrote rules prohibiting even talking about particular topics.

The risks of antimicrobial resistance have been increasing, while harmful biocides have continued to be used where they are not needed. The government must act now to reduce these risks and safeguard our future. #AMR #MicroBio26

Last week's seminar featured excellent talks from @fionapoulter.bsky.social on understanding the evolution of epidemic Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Holly Richardson on why heterogeneity matters: predicting antibiotic resistance in cystic fibrosis. Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the nice snacks!

1) Being apolitical is a myth. (Hyde seems to agree.) We all approach the world with our beliefs & biases. Pretending scientists are superhuman is silly & even dangerous. Thankfully, the scientific process is set up to mitigate such biases through transparency & open debate.

📢 Excited to be offering a Plant Health vacation studentship this summer on plant disease biocontrol and predatory bacteria! Supervised by me at Manchester Uni! @manchester.ac.uk If interested—or know someone who might be—please share and apply! my.rsb.org.uk/services.php... 28th April deadline 🌿🍅🦠

“Australians can now live & work freely in the EU for 4 years and vice versa That means they now have 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 EU rights than British people. Free movement offered millions of us fantastic opportunities but Brexiteers slammed that door shut, most shamefully on their own children”

Coconuts

Here is it! Super new science from us on horizontal gene transfer & bact defense systems! Liyana OW YONG discovered the first-of-its-kind defense factor AbjA that triggers 'abortive conjugation' as a defense mechanism, by targeting the T4SS! How neat?! #MicroSky 1/7 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Shu-Sin Chng@figlegend.bsky.social · last yr.

Extremely proud of newly minted PhD Dr Nur Liyana bte Ayub Ow Yong for her work in our lab! Some new science coming soon so stay tuned! 🎉🎉

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...

Really excited that this paper has come out in @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social, collaboration led by @alanmcn1.bsky.social and Nina van Sorge (@amsterdamumc.bsky.social) Lineage dynamics of invasive Escherichia coli isolates in the Netherlands from 1975 to 2021 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Lineage dynamics of invasive Escherichia coli isolates in the Netherlands from 1975 to 2021: a retrospective longitudinal genomic analysis

Our data show the vital need for ongoing genomic surveillance of microbial pathogen populations to guide appropriate intervention strategies. Additionally, genomic insights of a pathogen population fr...

thelancet.com

Madness. A bacterium with a 10kb genome, lost replication initiation, translation.., relies on symbiotic host. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Convergent extreme reductive evolution in ancient planthopper symbioses - Nature Communications

Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...

nature.com

Very much looking forward to visiting and meeting those working @mpiib-berlin.mpg.de next week, and the chance to speak about my postdoc work on within-patient AMR evolution, thanks to @keyfm.bsky.social and @mfenk.bsky.social for the kind invitation.

Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de · 5mo ago

📢 Voices in Infection Biology Join us next week for a talk by Matthew J. Shepherd from @manchester.ac.uk, kindly hosted by @keyfm.bsky.social. 🗓️ March 25 🕓 4 pm 📍 on-site seminar (Berlin) Event info: www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/events/45077...

Trump does not think strategically, historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. Allied leaders know that if they help him in the Gulf, he won't be grateful, or even remember www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Everyone but Trump Understands What He’s Done

Allied leaders know that any positive gesture they make will count for nothing.

theatlantic.com

Horizontal gene transfer is often depicted as a process distributing pre-existing functions to novel genetic backgrounds. Yet HGT can also increase the rate of functional innovation after transfer. Here's a brief review on the topic: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #evosky #microsky

Just published! at @narjournal.bsky.social . A new example of how gene order in bacterial genomes impacts cell physiology. Inthis episode we messed up with RNA polymerase genes! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Evolutionary constraints on RNA polymerase gene positioning in the genome of fast-growing bacteria

Abstract. How gene order along chromosomes affects cellular homeostasis and genome evolution remains poorly understood. Bacterial chromosomes are organized

academic.oup.com

📣 The Whelan lab is hiring a bioinformatics postdoc 📣 Together with @fabricejpierre.bsky.social, we are offering a 1-year bioinformatic PDRA position in comparative genomics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To find out more please visit whelanlab.co.uk/contact/. Applications close 3 April 2026!

Study 2: Culture-enriched metagenomic sequencing reveals within-patient diversity and transmission of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Culture-enriched metagenomic sequencing reveals within-patient diversity and transmission of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium

Colonization of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract by vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) often precedes bloodstream infection and serves as a reservoir for onward patient transmission in h...

medrxiv.org

Study #1: Within-patient evolution of Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations during antimicrobial treatment journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Within-patient evolution of Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations during antimicrobial treatment | mSphere

Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections are notoriously difficult to treat and are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. While the genetic basis of resistance in P. aeruginosa is well docum...

journals.asm.org

Excited to say that I'll be visiting @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social at Wiko Berlin from the 8th-22nd of April, so if anyone is in or around the Berlin area around then and want to chat—let me know! 🦠

Excited to share our latest work! 📝 We measured the fitness effect of 136 AMR genes and found that many are neutral or even beneficial without selection. 🤯🧬 Oxygen availability can flip their fitness and our stochastic model indicates that oxygen fluctuations help maintain them. Learn more 👇🏼

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

Fitness effects of antimicrobial resistance genes in changing environments https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.06.710025v1

Today is the start of the 5th Analysing Microbial Genomic Data course at @unibirmingham.bsky.social #AMGDMar26 - in the last three years we’ve trained nearly 80 attendees from six countries and multiple UK universities

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

Predicting protein-protein interactions (PPIs) at proteome scale can take months with co-folding models due to the massive all-vs-all comparisons required. We are excited to announce FlashPPI, a contrastive learning framework that predicts proteome wide physical interfaces in minutes. 1/🧵