"The changing roles of Escherichia coli" -- a short essay by yours truly. rdcu.be/eVtXT

A four-year postdoc focusing on "plant growth-promoting bacteriophages" available in my group. Skills in metaviromics and metagenomics essential. Application deadline: 2.2.2026. For more info, see the link.

Manchester Institute of Biotechnology is looking for a new Professor. There are a few priority areas including microbial engineering (broadly defined, from pathways to cells to microbiomes). Closing 12 Jan. Join us in the best city in the UK 😜 www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

AI folks now having to realise what GWAS folks did about studying bacterial genome datasets. Great work by great researchers

The first preprint from @izziepotterill.bsky.social PhD. A clone within ST131 clade C with a totally unique capsule region.

Bacterial genomes encode a rich repertoire of antiphage systems, but we still know surprisingly little about when these systems are actually expressed. In this preprint, Lucas Paoli et al, ask what shapes antiphage systems expression in native contexts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Living in the Arctic 🥶 means Christmas comes early 🎁🥳 10 MNOK (≈1 MUSD) Early Career Investigator grant from the Research Council of Norway to work with the fabulous @bunzela.bsky.social (Max Planck Institute) on uncovering the molecular mechanisms of antibiotic resistance. #AMR #beta-lactamases

Our story on plasmid streamlining is now published in PLoS Biology! With @andrewmatthews.bsky.social and @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social #MicroSky #Mevosky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

If massive for-profit publishers want quality peer review from over worked academics, then they need to pay for it. Share some of those mega profits

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am very excited to announce that a fully funded PhD position is available in my group. Topic: Synergistic coevolution in mono-specific and multi-species microbial consortia Please RT or forward this information to interested candidates. Deadline: 11.01.26 More info: shorturl.at/f1TuF

😳 Reversible phenotypic resistance to phage infection via capsule downregulation in Klebsiella pneumoniae #phage #phageky www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

📣🦠Check out our new Editor’s Spotlight! Senior MGEN editor Jesse Shapiro tells us about a recently published paper on the bystander effect on the evolution of Bordetella parapertussis, a non-target species of the pertussis vaccine #MGEN Read the full blog here: microb.io/48zfOlJ

Hello, old friend 🦠

🦠🧪🧬🚨 New paper and database alert: the new IMG/VR release is now MetaVR ! We have a new website - meta-virome.org - with quick search capabilities for the >24M viruses, >12M vOTUs, and >42M protein clusters (including >790k with predicted structures !). academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

If you or someone you know is looking for a post-doctoral position working on mycobacterial envelope biology, please get in touch. I am recruiting here at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.

#microsky #phagesky #phage receptor identification via TraDIS www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint from our lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Andrea Dos Santos and Clément Vulin combine experiments and models showing how adding glucose can strengthen negative interactions between microbial species. This can be used in tandem with antibiotic treatment to inhibit pathogens!

📢 We have multiple open PhD positions to study bacterial immune systems using cutting-edge cryo-EM, microbiology, and biochemistry in our group! Join us and uncover how bacterial defenses eliminate predators and engineer next-gen biotech tools. 🔥 Apply by Jan 8, 2026 Details: phd.pages.ista.ac.at

Check this out for the 2026 SISB (phage defense) meeting in NYC. Mark your calendar! (and note the Zoom option, if needed) sisb2026.rockefeller.edu

Mae says “no meetings tonight”

One plane change due to a lightning strike later, I'm finally back home from the amazing UK Phage Therapy workshop and #MicroEvo25! Had the best time catching up with folks, meeting new people, and learning a lot 🦠

How does the arms race between #bacterial defense systems and mobile genetic elements contribute to #microbiome community structure? Read below for an insightful exploration of this issue! It will not disappoint @plosbiology.org 🧪 #bacteria #immune #phage #ecology

Winning the poster prize was an amazing way to end #MicroEvo25 🎉 Absolutely loved sharing (the start of!) my PhD research! Thanks to @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @coytelab.bsky.social and Sophie for the encouragement & to @microbiologysociety.org for organising such a fantastic event!

What a week! Thanks to everyone who attended the UK Phage Therapy workshop and #MicroEvo25 in Liverpool… every talk, poster, question, chat, and round of applause helps to build our microbial evolution community! Thanks to @microbiologysociety.org and @ukri.org for support

The host range of generalist and specialist phages in capsule-diverse Klebsiella hosts is driven by the evolvability of receptor-binding proteins @plosbiology.org from @pilardomingoc.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Two conferences two weeks apart, thank you to everyone who came and chatted to me at my poster (or in general) at the Phages.fr conference in Nancy and the @microbiologysociety.org #MicroEvo25 conference in Liverpool. It was great to show the first data from my postdoc and get advice and feedback

Super meeting, and @microbiologysociety.org staff organisation was incredible as always! This meeting really fills a niche in evolutionary microbiology, let make sure it runs again! Great to see old friends and make new ones @gmknght.bsky.social

Two fully-funded PhD openings in my research group at the University of York. If you’re excited about viromes, phage biology, Nanopore sequencing, soils and the odd bit of alpine or agricultural field sampling, we’d love to hear from you! 🌱🦠🏔️ tiny.cc/c4pv001 tiny.cc/e4pv001

🧬🛡️How are new immune mechanisms created? We show how Lamassu antiphage system, originated from a DNA-repair complex and evolved into a compact and modular immune machine, wt Dinshaw Patel lab in @pnas.org. 👏 @matthieu-haudiquet.bsky.social, Arpita Chakravarti & all authors! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Come and see @willpjsmith.bsky.social at poster 71 to find out more about microbial warfare! #MicroEvo25

Sweeping views across Liverpool for the Phage Workshop ahead of #MicroEvo25 tomorrow

High-throughput DNA extraction from soil: experiences? best kits? best tools? If you had a decent chunk of money to throw at it, what system would you set up to make it fast and high quality? 🌾 🧪 🔬 🦠

Officially on my way to Liverpool for the @microbiologysociety.org event on "Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics"! (do we have a hashtag yet?) 🦠

After a week of extreme ups and downs (one publication and one brutal rejection), it's nice to go outside and enjoy the last day of sun up here in the Arctic 🐻‍❄️

What is the best strategy to win any contest? Eliminate your opponents of course. Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨Preprint alert - this is a big one! We transfer the revolutionary power of TnSeq to bacteriophages. Our HIDEN-SEQ links the "dark matter" genes of your favorite phage to any selectable phenotype, guiding the path from fun observations to molecular mechanisms. A thread 1/8

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚀New preprint from our lab! I am very excited to finally share what has been the main focus of my PhD for the past almost 3 years! It is about viral dark matter and a powerful tool we built to shed light on it. 🧬💡 Continue reading (🧵)

The ecological roles of bacterial #immune systems are poorly understood. Rafael Custodio @ellinoralseth.bsky.social @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @brownlab.bsky.social & Edze Westra explore how mobile genetic elements and bacterial defenses shape #microbiome structure and function 🧪

Congratulations to my student Josh Hensley and our amazing collaborators at UCSD David Pride lab! In press today, we developed a technique to evolve phages to broaden bacterial host range to tackle bacteria that evade antibiotics. #phagesky #phage #microsky #virussky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy to see this piece out in @plosbiology.org, on the bacterial immune systems and microbial communities. It was a great team effort with Rafael Custodio, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social , @brownlab.bsky.social, and Edze Westra! 🦠🧫 #phagesky #mevosky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

PhD studentship opportunity! Join us at St Andrews to study the factors controlling plasmid transmission in the gut. Competition-funded as part of the EASTBIO DTP, co-supervised with Dr Jaclyn Pearson. Please share & pass on to anyone interested! 🦠🧫 Deadline 15th December👇

🚨#PhD studentship opportunity! Plasmids provide bacteria with antimicrobial resistance, but do they have more fundamental effects on behaviour? 🧫🦠💫🧟‍♂️ Apply for a 4y funded MRC DiMeN position with me and Jamie Wheeler @livuni-ives.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

@sacrozhangt.bsky.social and I wrote a commentary on Jordi van Gestel and Carol Gross's latest paper, check it out! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Sadly, the Editors at PNAS rejected our initial introduction, which was a David Attenborough style voice over of the microbial Serengeti (included below)

Thank you everyone who has donated so far! This will be closing at the end of the month so still time to enter for a chance to name a phage! This is open worldwide with all currency conversions accounted for. For GBP it is £2 an entry and all funds go directly to The Cystic Fibrosis Trust 💚

I thoroughly enjoyed visiting the @biology.ox.ac.uk department - thanks so much for hosting me @annadewar.bsky.social ! And thanks to everyone who chatted to me about plasmids, genomes, and more. I even manage to find a phage in the natural history museum before leaving :)

Bacteria can sense when a virus starts shredding their genome — by detecting methylated mononucleotides. Here’s the story of how we discovered the Metis defense system 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hi everyone, a few years ago, we started a list of labs studying bacterial immunty for students, editors, conference organizers... (currently n=79). Update time ! Send me a message to 1) add your lab or others 2) Correct info docs.google.com/spreadsheets... #Phagesky #Microsky