Excited to share this new paper from the lab: academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...! See thread below

Please share widely! Abstract submissions open for the 2026 Jacques Monod conference: Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world! Held in beautiful Roscoff France from November 2- 6, 2026. Abstracts submission deadline : June 6 cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

I have been reading through papers on evolution and microbes from the 1940s to 1960s. I have found some amazing work, but I am sure that there is much more that I haven’t found. Can you send me links to classic evolution+microbiology papers from pre Levin era?

And the preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We compared plasmid conjugation in liquid and on solid across 13 AMR plasmids with different types of conjugative pili.

Final version of our last paper is out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How does treatment induced antibiotic resistance happen in real-world infections? We analysed 25k Pseudomonas isolates from 180 patients in a clinical trial to find out! TLDR: The ecological and evolutionary paths are surprisingly diverse & complex even in patients receiving identical treatment…

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

New #AMR pre-print Combining antibiotics with genotoxins can efficiently suppress bacterial in high throughput experimental models. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Fun collaboration with Nassos Typas lab led by @mulkern.bsky.social

🧵 New preprint! Our 4-lab team evolved Streptococcus pneumoniae in antibiotic-treated mice of varying immune states and discovered something surprising: bacteria rarely evolved resistance. Instead, they found a different way to survive — by rewiring RNA turnover. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint! Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠 Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare! An epic effort by Rosanna Wright www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New pre-print with @wtmatlock.bsky.social!!! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... What shapes the distribution of plasmids across bacteria? Our paper shows that conjugative plasmids actually have a very narrow distribution compared to mobilizable plasmids. Conjugative systems restrict plasmid transfer!

🚨 New preprint 🚨 How promiscuous really are conjugative plasmids, and what does that mean for plasmid co-occurrence? A pleasure to collaborate with @craigmaclean.bsky.social on the first paper of my fellowship! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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.

We've come full circle! I began my postdoctoral career by identifying the peptidyl deformylase gene. Today, we show that half of bacterial species harbor multiple PDF genes (up to 7, for always a single Met-tRNA transformylase), and while the role of these PDFs ... academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Good news for Canada and Canadian science. It is the right time to aggressively target top international and expatriate scientific talent. Although I am a blue skies scientist, I think that it is right to focus on research with societal and economic impact ... www.canada.ca/en/innovatio...

Just wrote my last grant review of 2025. UKRI: if you ask me to review another grant next week I will give it a 0 out of principle!

Back in Oxford, but still buzzing with excitement from #MicroEvo25 ! Great science, friendly and relaxed atmosphere, and a brilliant opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues. Liverpool is a good place for scientific meetings.

Just finished reading this amazing history of biology by #massivelegendofscience Francois Jacob. Some of the evolutionary biology and microbiology is outdated, but the perspective is compelling and the breadth of scientific scholarship is amazing.

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/...

🚨#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...

New paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Klebs can evolve resistance to Colistin through mgrB mutation or by acquiring the mcr-1 gene. Both routes have similar fitness costs against a bacterial competitor, but mgrB mutations are associated with enhanced virulence.

I can't wait for the day that I see a paper entitled "One health papers on AMR are a major source of AMR"

Our review is out in Nature Reviews Genetics! rdcu.be/d5AY2 We show how phylogeny-based methods can resolve the problem of non-independence in genomic datasets. These methods must be considered an essential part of the comparative genomics toolkit. @lauriebelch.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social

New pre-print: Plasmid dependent phage effectively eliminate AMR bacteria and block plasmid transmission in the chicken gut microbiome Fun collaboration with Tao He lab (JAAS) and @brockhurstlab.bsky.social lab (Manchester) #phagesky#microsky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

DNA from Napoleon’s 1812 army identifies the pathogens likely responsible for the army’s demise during their Russian retreat. www.cell.com/current-biol... Nicolás Rascovan & colleagues @currentbiology.bsky.social

Three Bicentenary research fellowships on offer at @officialuom.bsky.social @fbmh-uom.bsky.social for exceptional ECRs with <3y postdoc experience 3yrs salary + £30k pa research expenses Do you have a great idea & want to join @mermanchester.bsky.social? www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/research/sup...

New pre-print www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Plasmid-dependent phage (PDPs) are ubiquitous, but the selective pressures that they impose on plasmids are not well understood. Project led by Daniel Cazares in collaboration with @brockhurstlab.bsky.social! #phagesky#microsky

hosting.northumbria.ac.uk/nu-omics/vom... #phagesky #phage #microsky Come and join us for Viruses of Microbes UK 2026 at @northumbriauni.bsky.social ! Fantastic chance for ECRs to showcase their work 🙂

Interesting job opportunity: duunitori.fi/tyopaikat/ty...

Now published in @natcomms.nature.com 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... With Gillian Rodger, @nstoesser.bsky.social, @samlipworth.bsky.social, @stat-sarah.bsky.social, and many others!

New pre-print Competition between phage constrains adaptation to thermal fluctuating temperatures. More work led by Sam Greenrod in collaboration with @kayla-king.bsky.social lab. #Phagesky#Microsky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Precisely calling mutations across hundreds of bacterial isolates has been hard, requiring manual filtering and expertise. Until now, using AccuSNV. Herui Liao trained an ML model based on our previous meticulously called SNVs. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New pre-print: Eco-evolutionary responses of phage to different thermal regimes. Great work led by Sam Greenrod and fun collaboration with Kayla King's lab. 1/2 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols. Thread 1/n

Recent paper from the lab studying predictors of phage cocktail efficacy against complex clinical Pseudomonas populations royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.... Led by Rosanna Wright with extraordinary MSc (PhD) student Maisie Czernuska

New ERC funded computational postdoc position in my lab! We are looking for someone who will study the genomics of bacterial evolution using samples from experimental evolution and clinical trials. Lots of opportunities for interesting and fun collaboration! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Looking for a new approach to studying or eliminating phages? Check out our study introducing anti-phage ASOs (antisense oligos) out in @Nature today. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Our second paper with @tcostalab.bsky.social and GoogleDeepMind reports our experience with Google’s co-scientist: remarkably, the AI independently recapitulated our experimental discovery on cf-PICIs, showcasing AI’s potential to accelerate biology. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Thrilled to share our two latest papers with the @tcostalab.bsky.social lab! In the first, we uncover a new mechanism of satellite transfer: cf-PICIs hijack tails from diverse phages to spread across species. @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

This looks like a must read …

We are also hiring a 4-year postdoc to study the dynamics and evolution of mobile genetic elements in the C-fixing Icelandic host-spring microbiomes Join our exciting multidisciplinary team funded by @ukri.org BBSRC sLoLa www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

New pre-print from my lab! Plasmids link antibiotic resistance and phage defense. E.coli plasmids are hotspots for both antibiotic resistance and phage defense. Phage therapy has the potential to accidentally select for antibiotic resistance!!! #microsky#AMR#phage www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....

🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!! Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species, stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper with @rwheatley8.bsky.social and Cedric Lood Actual title: Chromosomal capture of beneficial genes drives plasmids towards ecological redundancy. Sensationalist title: Plasmids carry useless genes academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

It was an honor and a joy to receive the National Research Prize for Young (!) Researchers. The highlight? My grandma greeting the King of Spain. What a day! www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSQP...

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)

Cool paper showing 🦠 recipient response to #plasmid conjugation Capsule blocks conjugation, preventing MPF between donor:recipient. However, conjugation exploits recipient strain heterogeneity of capsule thickness, conjugating to cells with less capsule #MicroSky 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I want to echo @sheldonbirds.bsky.social important point. I give Oxford Biology top marks for how they have supported me through difficult times.

I think I have been fortunate to work in an institution (and a department) that has been led by people who saw the importance of enabling flexibility between work and personal life. It was crucial when we faced a major personal family challenge some years ago, and remains a core principle

Dear @sanmillan.bsky.social: I found some fermented sauerkraut at the back of my fridge today that I opened about 3 weeks ago. The package says to eat within 3 days of opening, but it doesn't smell like it has gone off. Is it safe to eat? Your advice on this dilemma would be much appreciated.