My news is that I will be joining the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine! I'm very excited to join an organization that shares my passion for improving global health, at the same time I'm sad to leave all of the wonderful colleagues here at SCRI who I've enjoyed working with over the past ~6y 🦠🧪

Registration & abstract submissions are open for the #Shigella meeting! Travel grants available too! All are welcomed, whether you are active in #Shigella research or interested in the 21st century perspective on this formidable pathogen! 🦠 🧫 #Microsky www.shigella2026.conferences-pasteur.org/home

The @microbiologysociety.org champions got together and talked about their fave #microbes on international microorganism day. So I did a few more portraits of the little legends! I will hopefully repost them all with alt text over the next few weeks #sciart #microsky 🧪

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... It is out! Our paper from the PhD work of Huijun Long, constructing and analysing metabolic models of Avian Pathogenic E. coli ( #APEC ) in Mgen @microbiologysociety.org With @jaimehat.bsky.social and @roblaragione.bsky.social #microsky #idsky

On this week, 40 years ago, my friend Ralph Isberg, then a postdoc with Stan Falkow, reported the discovery of the 1st invasin gene in @nature.com "We report here the identification of a single genetic locus from this organism (Y. pseudotuberculosis) that is sufficient to convert the innocuous

We're looking for a technician at Institut Pasteur for experimental work on satellite-phage-bacteria interactions, working directly with @jmouradesousa.bsky.social and myself in the lab of @epcrocha.bsky.social ! ANR funded. Link to the job emploi.pasteur.fr/offre-de-emp... Thx for sharing!

✅ Live in England? 📍 ✅ Are several members of your family willing to give a stool sample? 👪 You can take part in our PEARL-AGE study understanding how microbes are shared within families. ➡️ buff.ly/3B9QJkh @earlhaminst.bsky.social

Crisis at England universities created by successive govts. Freeze on student fees Real cuts in govt grants Harder to enrol foreign students Home student numbers falling £267bn student debt Real wage cuts 40% of universities in trouble. Local economies decline with university decline

A plasmid golden ratio? 🧬 Plasmid copy number ≈ 2.5% of chromosome size—consistent across bacterial species! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... @jerorb.bsky.social 🧪 #microbesky

Honored to have received the 2026 ASM Award for Early Career Basic Research. This award is also a recognition of my phenomenal trainees and their hard work. Thank you to the mentors that have supported my career and those who have nominated me for this award. asm.org/press-releas...

Delighted with our new paper on a novel itaconate transporter in the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, led by Javeria and Reyme. @ybri-uoy.bsky.social @javeriamehboob.bsky.social @bethkw.bsky.social A duplicated transporter on its way to itaconate selectivity portlandpress.com/biochemj/art...

This was a slow burn being a side project of a side project - started with chats with @jayhinton.bsky.social about itaconate in Salmonella and then picked up a my PhD students & undergraduate project students working together to finish a cool story - what a team!

Focusing on something other than Salmonella for a minute, because my wife’s paper is just out and it is AMAZING! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Congrats to all the authors, great work from the @dfachinetti.bsky.social @naltemose.bsky.social labs!

Eurasian Jay for #ThursJay Photographed at Brown Moss Nature Reserve near Whitchurch, Shropshire on #Kodachrome in the mid-1980s. #EastCoastKin #PhotoHour #birds #birdphotography #nature #wildlife

Assistant Prof post in bacterial genomics @unibirmingham.bsky.social Come and join us!! @imibirmingham.bsky.social www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOO184/a...

Bacteriophages against Salmonella enterica: challenges and opportunities #phage #phagesky www.frontiersin.org/journals/bio...

“Don’t trust the experts” is an absurd thing to say because we all have to trust experts in many aspects of daily life. The real questions are what defines an expert, how do you recognize them, how to distinguish them from crackpots, and what to do when expert opinions disagree.

Genetic Evidence of Yersinia pestis from the First Pandemic www.mdpi.com/3429378 #mdpigenes

New online! Clinical metagenomics for diagnosis and surveillance of viral pathogens

A new pathogen portrait: Serratia marcescens... which is opportunistic and likes to hang out in hospitals. Find out more about Serratia here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrati... I'm looking for friendlier microbes to draw from time to time too - do let me know if any occur to you! 🐡🧪🔬

New pre-print in the lab! Beautiful work by Francisco Garcia-Rodriguez in collab with @kamovalenz.bsky.social and @joaquinbernal.bsky.social : when macrophages are provided with specific nutrients, Salmonella can bypass its requirement of the T3SS to replicate, a process that occurs within the SCV

A Salmonella T3SS-2 mutant grows fine in spleen macrophages, contradicting tissue culture dogma (PMID: 23236281). This observation was largely ignored, but adding certain carbon sources rescues growth in cultured macrophages, hinting that T3SS-2 may be doing something entirely different in vivo.

#phage #phagesky #microsky academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Massive thanks to the phenomenal co-first authors @1caiseypulford and @blancaps.bsky.social‬ and especially to one of my favourite scientists to work with, co-corresponding author and fellow history fanatic @weill_xavier 10/n

S. Panama causes major disease concerns, including high rates of iNTS in French Guiana, large outbreaks in European pork, AMR in Asia, and outbreaks in American soldiers from where the first (extant) isolate from 1931 came from (More in our 2019 review: 10.1128/IAI.00273-19) 2/n

There are half a million cases of invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) every year and while you might know S. Typhimurim and Enteritidis, you may not have heard of S. Panama 💩 🩸 🧫 💊 Check out our latest in @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.la... and the 🧵 below to find out more 1/n

The diversity of bacterial defence systems against phages (restriction endonuclease, #CRISPR, phage protein sensing system (RexAB), cyclic oligonucleotide-based (CBASS), ADP ribosylation (DARTG)) is simply fascinating, and we continue to discover new ones !!! www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

It was great fun writing this review with @gemccallum.bsky.social , even if our conclusions are rather scary. Lots of important pathogen evolution must be occurring outside of the infection context...

Delighted to have this review out with @jpjhall.bsky.social! We discuss the risk of transmission of antimicrobial resistance in the hospital sink drain microbiome, highlight studies providing evidence of transfer, and consider strategies to mitigate these risks 🪠🦠 doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Tae Heung Kim, 40: - Lived in US since he was 5 - Has green card - Getting PhD at Texas A&M - Researching vaccine for Lyme disease - Has 1 minor pot charge from 2011, since sealed Also: Detained incommunicado by DHS after returning from wedding in Korea www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

Lovely work ❗️This looks important for those of us interested in phage defence systems in E. coli & other bacteria…

Thrilled to see our Kiwa story out today! A membrane-associated supercomplex that senses infection and blocks replication and transcription. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Huge congratulations to Yi and Zhiying for bringing it home, to Thomas for starting us off, and to all the collaborators.

Wow Karolinska Institutet is recruiting 20 outstanding early-career researchers for assistant professor positions ki.se/en/about-ki/...

How are bacterial transport machineries regulated by external cues? @brochadolab.bsky.social &co identify environmental chemicals that regulate #transporter transcription, identifying the TF Rob as a key modulator of #EffluxPump expression in #Ecoli #AMR @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46pUM9Q

Infection and Immunity is now welcoming nominations for highly promising scientists at the assistant professor level (or equivalent) to submit research to the next New Voices in Microbiology Collection! Please nominate by the August 18 deadline using the below link: app.asm.org/account/logi...

Unexpected side-effect: how common medications clear the way for pathogens CMFI's @lisamaierlab.bsky.social @unituebingen.bsky.social show in @nature.com: many non-antibiotics weaken the natural protective function of the intestine. Press release: www.cmfi.uni-tuebingen.de/en/news-even...

📣 New preprint alert! Happy to share the first results from our effort to reannotate Pseudomonas #phage proteins of unknown function, using structural bioinformatics. 📄 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Check out what I found at the Milan Triennale

The study identifies 4 Salmonella isolates from teeth (i.e., likely a case of bloodstream infection) dating to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Would be cool to know the serotype 🙂

And there's more, grants being terminated/suspended and almost half on #tuberculosis 🦠🧪

New hope against #Salmonella: Researchers from @unituebingen.bsky.social have developed C26, a compound that blocks infections early – targeted, gentle, and without disturbing the microbiome. A promising approach beyond #antibiotics. doi.org/10.1126/scia...

🆕 Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe 🦠 📰 Our Research Group Leader @drrobkingsley.bsky.social explains the science of Salmonella in the @uk.theconversation.com ⤵️

Great opportunity for all #virology folks - the @microbiologysociety.org is looking for editors and an Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of General Virology! #MicroSky Being linked into a friendly community is one of the most precious things these days 😊🦠🧪 microbiologysociety.org/who-we-are/j...

Great news for those of us using #ONT for #bacterial genome reconstruction and epidemiological surveillance! According to these authors, we now have sufficient quality to achieve the reproducibility and accuracy required for effective bacterial surveillance. #genomicepidemiology

The new open access policy of NIH will take effect next week (July 1st). All NIH funded research 🔬🧪🧬accepted after July 1st must be open access upon publication. Worried about fees? 💸 Check out how IAI stacks up against other journals—you might be surprised. #OpenAccess #SciComm #Microbiology

10 people with type 1 #diabetes have remained insulin-independent for over a year following allogeneic stem cell-derived islet-cell therapy. Story by @miriametucker.bsky.social via @medscape.com from #ADA2025 in Chicago. #T1D #MedSky #EndoSky #endocrinology

The abstract submission deadline for Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics 2025 is soon approaching! Make sure to submit by 23:59 BST on 7 July 2025. microb.io/Abstracts #MicroEvo25

Far from the whole story but we wrote about the grant proposal contest component a few years ago. Thinking about other elements of your question this summer…. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

New tenure track assistant professor position in molecular microbiology in our department @dmf-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social! We are casting a wide net for an experimental molecular microbiologist. Apply here: wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli...

Sexually transmissible shigellosis has gone from an obscure cause of sporadic outbreaks to a sustained endemic AMR priority in only two decades! 🧫💊 Check out our latest preprint to understand how this happened 1/11 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...