UK and EU finalise agreement to bring UK into Erasmus+ in 2027 - Thousands across the UK set to benefit from re-opening of the historic Erasmus+ programme www.gov.uk/government/n...

The next International Conference on Gram-Positive Bacteria will take place between 29 June – 2 July 2027 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. #subtiwiki

🫵 Post-translational modifications of GlmR integrate metabolic and stress signals to maintain cell envelope homeostasis in Bacillus subtilis: 👇👇👇 dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour... @cdiAMP #subtiwiki

Open postdoc position in my lab on HGT and interbacterial competition. We seek candidates with a PhD in microbiology (or related fields)+ strong 1st-author publications. Curious, highly motivated, and dedicated team players ready to contribute fully are encouraged to apply. Details: tiny.cc/cz01101

Looks like a great @embo.org workshop coming in September: “Lipid Code to Life”, with a who’s who of lipid #biochemistry… (e.g. @dimovalab.bsky.social @holthuislab.bsky.social @sciezgin.bsky.social etc ) More info and registration: meetings.embo.org/event/26-lip... #lipids #biophysics

Check out our new preprint providing direct in vivo evidence for transertion in Bacillus subtilis (also arguing for coupled transcription-translation). Excellent work by Jonathan Norris, co-supervised by Nikolay Zenkin and me during his PhD. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #microsky

It's been our great pleasure to host @lalouxlab.bsky.social for a seminar today, and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about Bdellovibrio polarity and polar protein targeting. Such an odd little bacterium!

2 year fellowship available in AMR research www.medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk/grants/antim...

Neat paper from Schwille lab. They demonstrate constriction of synthetic vesicles using important components of the bacterial cell division machinery, FtsZ and FtsN. They induce strong constriction of Z-rings in vesicles just by adding the cytoplasmic domain of FtsN www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New post-doctoral research position in my phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in @otagomicroimmuno.bsky.social at @universityofotago.bsky.social New Zealand. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link in the comments.

Delighted by this @target-amr.bsky.social publication in @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social. Led by @drtessjohnson.bsky.social and @lewiscemason.bsky.social 'The role of microbial genomics in delivering the UK’s national action plan for confronting AMR 2024–29' www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Save the date for the next International Conference on Gram-Positive Bacteria which will take place between 29 June–2 July 2027. The organizers (@annadragos.bsky.social, @polonca32.bsky.social, and Ines Mandic-Mulec) look forward to welcoming you to Ljubljana, Slovenia

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...

Come do a PhD with me and @trevor-lithgow.bsky.social at @monashuniversity.bsky.social ! We’re at the leading edge of pathogen biology using cutting edge Cryo-EM and AI-driven genetic screens to uncover the mysteries of outer membrane biology. Reach out to me for a chat! macsys.org/phd-scholars...

Very happy to host Fred Antson (University of York) today for a seminar! Stunning structures and functional insights into phage/virus capsids and DNA loading.

#NatMicroPicks Aerobic archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor? 🦠🫁 The ancestor of eukaryotes may have combined hydrogen metabolism with aerobic respiration, shaping early cellular complexity. #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

On the "positive" note 😱 Reform appoints Suella Braverman as education spokesperson share.google/gUPJctQnbu5c...

Lipids are kind of the ignored middle children of origins of life research. It's time they got a bit of attention, too! This week's post is a Q&A with geoscientist-turned-??? (interdisciplinary folks know the struggle) @jamessaenz.bsky.social about why there's no cutting the fat from origins. 🧪

Thank you for highlighting our paper on how septal PG hydrolysis licenses a second wave of PG transpeptidation during cell separation! www.nature.com/articles/s41.... I will do a thread when the page set version is out.

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Two Postdoctoral Research Associates in the Molecular Analysis of Bacterial Outer Membrane Protein Biogenesis BEN BERKS lab 🤩

SAVE THE DATE! The next instalment of the long-running Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Division Conference will take place at www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels..., Italy from the 20th to 23rd of April 2027. Organisers: me, @s-lab.bsky.social, @awehenkel.bsky.social. More info soon. #MicroSky

Research into filamentous actinomycetes, the antibiotic producers, is in steep decline. Loads of natural products chemistry research worldwide but not much aimed at understanding their biology and ecology. The latter is key to unlocking their specialised metabolism link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is so evolved at surviving environmental stresses! By @oneyrolles.bsky.social & team #TBSky #MicroSky @embojournal.org link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Please spread the word: the Structural Studies Division @mrclmb.bsky.social is looking for a new tenure-track, independent group leader with an exciting plan in any area of Structural (Molecular & Cell) biology, in discovery biology and/or methods development. 🥳 mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

This is a nice one! Congratulations @carballido-lab.bsky.social et al! Nice to see you agree that this might lead to local enrichment of cell wall precursor lipids. Not easy to prove but I still think its an attractive model (to ensure high CW synthesis given low lipid II levels).

ATP-driven membrane binding and polymerization of bacterial actin MreB promotes local membrane fluidization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.705564v1

Charging batteries at the Cheviots. (First sunny day of 2026)

New in JB: Jorgenson reviews recent advances in cell envelope assembly via the lens of the essential lipid carrier undecaprenyl phosphate and with an eye on targets of novel Abx development. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @asm.org #JBacteriology

Still time to apply for the open postdoc position in our lab!

Or perhaps antibacterial drug discovery is more your jam? @banzhaflab.bsky.social and @henrikstrahl.bsky.social at Newcastle have just the thing! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

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...

ICYMI: UKRI pauses several funding calls amid priorities shake-up. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Fabian was quicker :) But yes, we have an open postdoc position in bacterial bioenergetics and membrane biology, using on B. subtilis as the model. Come join us! @cbcb-newcastle.bsky.social is a great place to work, and we are a friendly, international lab. Visa+IHS fees covered. #microsky

@poojag96.bsky.social work on the bioenergetics of spore germination is now published- Pooja had a really nice summary that I've put below but essentially we think the role of bioenergetics in spore germination has been completely overlooked! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

💼JOB OFFER: There is a great opportunity for #PDRAs to join the #KathrynLilley #UniversityofCambridge lab to work on an ancient set of effector proteins IM30 family, that promote membrane integrity. See: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc.... Apply by the 13th Feb

Ancestral sequence reconstruction reveals CTP-dependent loading of the bacterial centromere-binding protein ParB as an ancient evolutionary feature Now published: tinyurl.com/4ddhwbb3 Thanks to the Hochberg and Bange labs for the great collaboration!

Happy holidays everyone from a not very wintry Newcastle!

We’re excited to share our latest study that reshapes our understanding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) lipid composition, with major implications for drug discovery, immunity, and vaccine development. www.nature.com/articles/s41... A thread.

Take advantage of this fantastic opportunity to become part of the SCALE community! Several professorships and group leader positions are available at Goethe University and FIAS. We are looking for professors in the fields of molecular microbiology, cellular biochemistry, and molecular biochemistry.

Now online @natmicrobiol.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🤩 Long ago in 2021, Irina Afonina saw E. faecalis prophage tail fibers co-purify with membrane vesicles, but we didn't know their fxn: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC.... In this new preprint, Mike Gilmore and colleagues show us what the tail fibers (aka efagins) actually do! Super cool work. 🤩

Happy to finally share micromorph with everyone! If you are interested in performing morphological measurements of bacteria, and like using Python and Napari then this is for you! You can read about it in our preprint, and find the code on our Github repo, PyPi or directly from the napari hub!

Big thanks Paula and @matupton.bsky.social for the great job as expert examiners. Much appreciated!

We're advertising for a bacteriology technician and a post-doc to work on AI-guided antibiotic development as part of a large multidisciplinary Fleming Initiative project: www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-... www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

Fantastic to have Prof Matthias Wilmanns from EMBL Hamburg hosted by @kshbeckham.bsky.social to give a @mhd-newcastle.bsky.social seminar on mycobacterial infection #dreamtheme

Today, we are lucky to have Imane El Meouche from IAME, France to give a MCM seminar @medicalsciencesncl.bsky.social (chaired by @henrikstrahl.bsky.social) on antibiotics tolerance in E. Coli

I had a great time at the @bsacandjac.bsky.social ARM workshop! I met some wonderful scientists and had great discussions about my work! Also, I walked away with a poster prize!! Thanks for organising @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social @conmeehan.bsky.social

Happy to share a new preprint from the lab: Marko became interested in whether the disordered linker of FtsZ might influence how the protein organizes into the Z-ring. And this led to some surprising findings! Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are organising an AMR meeting next spring in Helsinki. Meeting includes evolution of AMR and environmental AMR sessions. Please submit your abstract now! Deadline Dec 1st.