We collected 23 NCTC 11168 stocks that had been used in labs around the UK and sequenced them. These supposedly identical isolates differed genetically in some cases by up to 281 SNPs across 15 genes.
Morgan Feeney
@morganella.bsky.social
Microbiologist and teaching fellow. Fond of the cool things bacteria do. Likes baking, shape-note singing, crafts, earrings, shiny things. Was @mostlymicrobia on Twitter. She/her.
My Department has lost 11 faculty over the last couple years to retirements etc…and yet our total teaching credit hours have increased. We were just told that our next faculty search for one position can take place in 2030. Something has to give with the budget crunch.
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa@benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 4w agoI don't think how bad things have gotten for higher-ed is as well-known as it should be for people not directly connected to a university. So much of it is hollowed out and teetering on the edge of collapse after years of austerity and the bodyblow of Covid. Something's gotta give.
Finally published. Many thanks to a wonderful collaborative team and scientific platforms!!! And thanks to editors and reviewers for enthusiasm and a great review. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A bacterial CARD–NLR-like immune system controls the release of gene transfer agents - Nature Microbiology
An immunity-like system functions as a lysis control hub to promote gene transfer agent particle release from host bacterial cells, suggesting that bacterial immune systems may be co-opted to promote ...
nature.com
Tung Le@tunglejic.bsky.social · last yr.1/ Excited to share our latest work on gene transfer agents (GTAs) in Caulobacter crescentus, led by Emma Banks in collaboration with Pavol Bardy and Mai Nguyen from York!!! See a brief thread below. shorturl.at/o6S1w
Outreach and Engagement Prize winner Dr Lindsay Broadbent presents a lecture on "Science isn’t finished until it is communicated" at 9:00 in the Auditorium. Read more about their work: https://microb.io/4bV2Nps #Microbio26
Meet the 2026 Outreach and Engagement Prize Winner, Dr Lindsay Broadbent
Ahead of the 2026 Outreach and Engagement Prize Lecture, Swathi Sukumar interviewed Dr Lindsay Broadbent to learn more about her career and how it feels to win a Microbiology Society prize.
microb.io
Come to #Microbio26 poster 094 to hear all about natural product antimocrobial discovery from @tosinorababa.bsky.social and me #MicroSky
I’ll be at poster A038 at #microbio26 - why not pop by for some stickers and bioinformatics chat?
Microbiology Society@microbiologysociety.org · 5mo agoAnnual Conference 2026 begins today! We’re delighted to open this year’s event—start by reading the welcome blog from Professor Gordon Dougan, FRS: https://microb.io/4bUkwMH #Microbio26
Congratulations from Microbiology Society to the 2026 Prize Medal Winner, Professor Paul Williams! #Microbio26
Each publication in a #Microbio26 journal helps fund 4 student travel grants. Please publish with us if you can!
#microsky #phagesky #phage www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cross-order detection of bacteriophage transduction in microbial communities using RNA barcoding - Nature Communications
Bacteriophages are the most abundant life form on earth and can be applied to eliminate or engineer bacteria. Here, authors demonstrate RNA barcoding as a high throughput tool to measure bacteriophage...
nature.com
Why should microbiologists be interested in historical infection remedies, and how can we best investigate them for antimicrobial discovery? Thoroughly enjoyed co-writing this Microbiology Primer with @tosinorababa.bsky.social www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #MicroSky #Ancientbiotics
Microbial Primer: Ancientbiotics – making modern antimicrobials from historical infection remedies
The modern antibiotic era began in the early twentieth century, but humans have long used materials from the natural world to attempt to treat the symptoms of infection. In this primer, we will discus...
microbiologyresearch.org
Streptomyces friends! What do we think about the relative width of aerial vs vegetative mycelia? Same, or is one thicker than the other?
Good to see this out - new CRISPRi work from the @ryanfseipke.bsky.social lab/ #microsky #streptomyces A platform for CRISPRi-seq in Streptomyces albidoflavus journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
journals.asm.org
A little Christmas gift for the molecular biology nerds! I love the simplicity of this idea: very useful (and small) plasmid selection system that alleviates the need for antibiotics in molbio and bioprocesses. Elegant work by my former PhD student, lab, and colleagues: doi.org/10.1021/acss...
tRNA-Mediated Plasmid Stabilization for Antibiotic-Free Applications in Escherichia coli
Plasmids are essential tools in molecular biology and biotechnology. In research laboratories, it is common to use antibiotic selection markers to ensure that plasmids are stably maintained in a cellu...
doi.org
You spend your life learning the natural history of the prokaryotes with all this complex taxonomy and then right when you are so proud of your well earned wisdom all the names change just in time for your brain to be too old to handle it
Professor Lesley Hoyles@bugsinyourguts.bsky.social · 9mo agoMy current relationship with bacterial taxonomy...
So happy to see Mark recognised for his incredible work. Over a ~40 year career he and his group discovered ECF sigma factors, characterised many key developmental regulators of the Streptomyces lifecycle, and identified new mechanisms of bacterial gene regulation, antibiotic action and resistance.
John Innes Centre@johninnescentre.bsky.social · 9mo agoNEWS - Professor Mark Buttner receives Marjory Stephenson Prize 2026 Professor Buttner, one of our Emeritus Fellows, has received the @microbiologysociety.org Marjory Stephenson Prize for 2026. Congratulations Mark! 👏 Read about his exceptional research and career: www.jic.ac.uk/news/profess...
Can you help my final year project student with her research please? If you are a student, please try her virtual escape room! tinyurl.com/mr88k53k If you are not a student, please share/repost to help us reach more students!
Lac operon: Two gems from the early days (1|2) by Christoph — When I recently wrote about noise in the basement of the lac operon, I stumbled across two papers in said basement, both of which I – and not only I – consider gems of early molecular biology: 'Isolation of the lac repressor'…
Lac operon: Two gems from the early days (1|2)
by Christoph — When I recently wrote about noise in the basement of the lac operon, I stumbled across two papers in said basement, both of which I – and not only I – consider gems of early molecular biology: 'Isolation of the lac repressor' (Gilbert & Müller-Hill, 1966), and 'The nucleotide sequence of the lac operator' (Gilbert & Maxam, 1973). Here in part 1, I will dust off the lac repressor story a bit to make this gem sparkle again...
smallthingsconsidered.blog
#microsky #phagesky (Fancy!) transposon-insertion sequencing identifies essential genes in #phage. By @aharms485.bsky.social & Co. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Systematic mapping of bacteriophage gene essentiality with HIDEN‑SEQ
The constant arms race of bacteriophages and their bacterial hosts has inspired major breakthroughs in biotechnology and shaped phages as fierce predators with great clinical potential to fight multid...
biorxiv.org
Come and work with me and @ariannebabina.bsky.social on #Streptomyces evolution and antibiotic production Origins of a tangled bank: Adaptation and evolution in antibiotic-producing Streptomyces www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate... please repost
University of Glasgow - Postgraduate study - Centres for Doctoral Training - NorthWest Biosciences - Our Projects - Underpinning Bioscience - Paul A Hoskisson
gla.ac.uk
Periodic reminder that growth curves need semi-log plots! schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2...
Why You Must Plot Your Growth Data On Semi-log Graph Paper
by Elio — Take our word for it. For experiment involving growing cells, bacterial or otherwise, God meant you to pay attention to the conditions of growth. He also meant you to plot the results of a g...
schaechter.asmblog.org
Super super super recommend Grace Petrie's Fringe show - two nights left!!! Absolutely brilliant!! www.edfringe.com/tickets/what...
Wheelchair Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets
edfringe.com
#microsky tRNA modifications in Pseudomonas aeruginosa academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
tRNA modification profiling reveals epitranscriptome regulatory networks in Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Abstract. Transfer RNA (tRNA) modifications have emerged as critical post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression affecting diverse biological and di
academic.oup.com
Our new preprint is out! EEC1 is a massive 4.2 Mb secondary chromosome from Embleya australiensis. Conserved across Embleya, these are the first replicons of their kind in Actinobacteria and the largest secondary replicons in bacteria identified to-date! 1/6 🦠🧪🧬🔬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Evidence supporting the first secondary chromosome in actinobacteria as a hallmark of the Embleya genus
Embleya is a genus within the family Streptomycetaceae, a group of actinobacteria with outstanding capacity for production of specialised metabolites and a strikingly complex life cycle. In this work, we sequenced the complete genome of the new species Embleya australiensis MST-11070 and validated the assembly using optical mapping. The genome of E. australiensis MST-11070 consists of a 7.1 Mb linear chromosome and three additional replicons, including a 4.2 Mb linear replicon, EEC1, significantly larger than all previously described secondary replicons from bacteria. EEC1 is typified by its similar composition to the chromosome in terms of GC-content, codon usage and gene functions. It also carries terminal inverted repeats identical to the chromosome. EEC1 is enriched in biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), including the only copy of the BGCs for the spore pigment and the surfactant peptide SapB, metabolites essential for the organism's lifecycle. EEC1 contains an origin of replication with at least some chromosomal properties, and its replication is likely to depend on functions provided by chromosomally located genes. Further comparison of Embleya spp. genomes suggests that EEC1-like replicons are conserved across the genus, in contrast to other known large linear extrachromosomal replicons (megaplasmids) in the order. EEC1 is thus a hallmark of the Embleya genus and is central to its evolution within the Streptomycetaceae family. We propose EEC1 as a secondary chromosome, distinct from previously described secondary chromosomes that utilise plasmid-like replication mechanisms (chromids) and the largest secondary replicon reported in bacteria, to date. ### Competing Interest Statement Ernest Lacey is a Founder, Board Member, and the Managing Director of Microbial Screening Technology Pty. Ltd. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, https://ror.org/00cwqg982, BB/P021506/1, BBS/E/J/000PR9790, BB/X01097X/1, BB/M011216/1 Novo Nordisk Foundation, https://ror.org/04txyc737, NNF22OC0078997
biorxiv.org
“Changing how many chromosomes your host has?? Phages shouldn’t have that power” — my labmate
Jesse Shapiro@bjesseshapiro.bsky.social · last yr.One of my favourite serendipitous results from the lab came about because we were long-read sequencing bacterial: Vibrio cholerae, which is "supposed to" have TWO circular chromosomes (3 + 1 million base pairs) often has just ONE fused chromosome (4 Mbp). www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)
Great news - this work is now published!! Big congrats to @yeowjiang.bsky.social - amazing that he mastered cryo-EM and now solved his 2nd set of strs! And kudos to Chee Geng (& Nadege) for non-trivial homogeneous purification of TolQRA! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... #MicroSky #SGBUG 1/4
Structural Insights into the Force-Transducing Mechanism of a Motor–Stator Complex Important for Bacterial Outer Membrane Lipid Homeostasis
Gram-negative bacteria assemble an asymmetric outer membrane (OM) that functions as an effective barrier against antibiotics. Building a stable and functional OM requires the assembly and maintenance ...
pubs.acs.org
Shu-Sin Chng@figlegend.bsky.social · 2y agoReally excited to be sharing our newest work on the bacterial Tol-Pal complex! The amazing Jiang YEOW solved cryo-EM structures of the TolQRA complex in 2 rotary states, aiding us to come up with a model for force transduction across the cell envelope! Pls RT! #SGBUG #SCELSE_SG #ChemNUS
I'm excited to share the final version of some fun work from our lab. A few interesting phenotypes - depleting host glutathione causes intracellular Rickettsia to form long chains and get restricted by antibacterial autophagy. Congrats to the team! urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
Host glutathione is required for Rickettsia parkeri cell division and intracellular survival
Nature Communications - Rickettsia species are bacterial pathogens that obligately reside in the host cell cytosol. Here, Sun et al. report that Rickettsia use host glutathione as a nutrient source...
urldefense.com
Thank you to everyone who has used pyani over the years (I know it's thousands of people!) but we have now archived the repository. But we have replaced it with a completely rewritten and extended implementation: pyani-plus! github.com/pyani-plus/p... 1/
han solo from star wars is pointing at the camera in a room .
ALT: han solo from star wars is pointing at the camera in a room .
media.tenor.com
Just learned that Frank Stahl (of the Meselson and Stahl DNA replication experiment ("the most beautiful experiment in biology") died at the beginning of April, to no fanfare. Here's a lovely video of them reminiscing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-tn...
The Most Beautiful Experiment: Meselson and Stahl
YouTube video by Science Communication Lab
youtube.com
Thanks so much for everyone who came out in person or online to hear me talk about our LLM course today at UNSW. thebullshitmachines.com
Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines: Introduction
A free online humanities course about how to learn and work and thrive in an AI world.
thebullshitmachines.com
Claire Hosking@hoskingc.bsky.social · last yr.I'm at @carlbergstrom.com 's lecture on LLMs as bullshit machines and it's so far the most thoughtful and insightful critique I've seen of LLMs. It's not dismissive of the power of the software, the benefits, or the users, while remaining critical.