🧵 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...

A short research stay in 2019 (back in the pre-COVID era) at José R. Penadés lab turned into the third chapter of my PhD and today it finally sees the light.

How specific are heritable symbioses? And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species? We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com! 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It has been a long road, but our paper on Klebsiella plasmids is finally out in Lancet Microbe. Thanks to all co authors but especially Marjorie Gibbon and Natacha Couto www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#phagesky #phage www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What’s holding back clinical use of phage therapy in the UK? Our workshop last year brought together international experts, biotech and regulators to find out Meeting Report out now in Nature Microbiology with our take on the challenges and opportunities facing the UK phage therapy sector

Out Now! Realizing phage therapy in the UK #MicroSky

New PDRA position with @knightjar.bsky.social @coytelab.bsky.social & me Community assembly processes in soil microbiomes with focus on bioinformatics and computational modelling of data from field and lab experiments www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Exciting new PhD programme CODE-M Control and Design of Engineered Microbial Systems @officialuom.bsky.social Projects now advertised! Ours is on division of labour & horizontal gene transfer in microbial communities @biotechdixon.bsky.social @coytelab.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Over and out. See you in 2026.

Microbes weaponizing secondary metabolites to make rivals vulnerable to phage attack 🧪🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

New 2-year Postdoc: Ancient #Metagenomics & #Microbiome Sciences! 🧬🦷 Join Prof. @christinawarinner.bsky.social ’s group at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social to study the evolution and ecology of ancient oral microbiota. 📅 Apply by Jan 20, 2026: www.microverse-cluster.de/en/career/jo...

so you're going into the piñata business too 😊

This was nice. Thanks to the wonderful mentees who nominated me.

For the life of me, why do people submit manuscripts now? My EIC inbox has rarely been fuller, and there's no way I'm sending these to Associate Editors until 2026. Friends don't let friends submit in late December.

It’s official: we’ve been awarded a UKRI Engineering Biology Focal Award to train the next generation of microbial bioengineer PhDs. An exciting collaboration between @officialuom.bsky.social @liverpooluni.bsky.social Projects will be advertised in February 2026! www.ukri.org/news/ukri-do...

We had two fantastic visiting speakers today MERMan alumnus @rowancallumg.bsky.social spoke about his current work with viral cheating in influenza with @asherleeks.bsky.social And @lavishaparab.bsky.social talked about phage infection trade-offs Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for our snacks!

The last seminar of the year was another set of exciting talks from visitor @alekseiagapov.bsky.social and merfolk @sophiesomerville.bsky.social ! Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the 🍪! Have a happy and safe holiday! 🤶🏻 🎅🏻 🎄

Whelan lab cake for the win at the Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics and MCF Winter Celebration 🥳 #bakeoff #whelanlab

Congratulations to PhD student Zahraa Albaqsami @zahraaalbaqsami.bsky.social for successfully defending her PhD today! Zahraa's thesis looked at thermal adaptation and mutation in the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarious. Thanks to examiners @rokkrasovec.bsky.social and Thorsten Allers!

We did a genome. Not just any genome. A Eukaryote! Telomeres, centromeres, introns! What the hell?! With megabrains @guyleonard.bsky.social Tom Richards, Fiona Savory at Oxford. A fun collaboration! Keep em peeled for more algal preprints coming soon!

#microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to Dr Rana Alruthaya, who successfully defended her PhD today on AMR diversity in Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from non-CF bronchiectasis patients. She's the 10th PhD student from MERMan. Well done Rana! @dannagifford.bsky.social @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @knightjar.bsky.social

Back home from the #MicroEvo25 conference in the heartwarming city of Liverpool 🥰 We had fun, made new friends, and discussed science and future projects. Thank you @microbiologysociety.org for these amazing days! Can’t wait for the next edition!

Come work with us!! 2.5 year postdoc on HGT in plants. Please share and get in touch if interested www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPQ418/r...

And that’s a wrap for #MicroEvo25! Thank you to @microbiologysociety.org for organising such a fantastic event & to everyone in attendance for sharing such exciting science! Let’s do it again soon?

P.S. if you were at #MicroEvo25 and didn’t get chance to scan the QR code on my poster, but would like to see some videos from our Iceland fieldwork 🌋 you can find them all here linktr.ee/magdalenakur...

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.

On the plane after a fantastic few days in Liverpool at #MicroEvo25 organised by the @microbiologysociety.org. The science, the people, and the city were all way above expectations. I’m definitely coming back. Had an absolute blast!

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!

Had an amazing time at #MicroEvo25 in Liverpool learning all about phages and evolution of antimicrobial resistance. Was great to present my first ever poster and met some lovely people!

Had a great time at #MicroEvo25 soaking up some inspiring science from lots of amazing people. Even networked! Very well organised by @microbiologysociety.org. Next time hopefully more of the work presented is published in society journals! If we don't use it we will lose it!

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

Strolling at night, in Liverpool, after science talks -> microbiologysociety.org/event/full-e...

#microsky #phagesky Mycobacterium #phage review by Graham Hatfull covering the state of the art www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Wow!! Such a 😎 meeting #MicroEvo25 Met so many old friends & made new ones. microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...

Exciting news! I have two positions open in my lab at the UoManchester: one PDRA and one Research Tech. Join our team to study evolutionary mycology and help us understand antifungal resistance in fungal pathogens. A fantastic opportunity to join the brilliant Manchester Fungal Infection Group!

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

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

🚨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

🚨#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...

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

Another fantastic poster presented by @knhanga.bsky.social at #MicroEvo25

Massive congratulations to our own @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social for winning the poster prize at #MicroEvo25!! Her poster describes coalescence dynamics in hot spring microbial communities, and featured wonderful photos from Icelandic field work

Highlights from our recent participation! Members of the Multi-Defence Consortium presented both talks and posters on phage defence systems — showcasing exciting progress across the field. Great discussions, great science, and we’re excited to share more soon! #MicroEvo25

Starting day two of #MicroEvo25 strong with our first MERMan speaker of the day! An amazing talk by @mattjago.bsky.social about mutational bias in E. coli 🧬

Day 1 of #MicroEvo25 yesterday was great, I’m enjoying and am ready for the rest of Day 2 for some really interesting talks on predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics and more poster viewing! @microbiologysociety.org

Incredibly insightful talk this afternoon by @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social speaking about within-patient ciprofloxacin resistance in P. aeruginosa #MicroEvo25

Absolutely brilliant #MicroEvo25 some great talks and talent that has me thinking about our research. And great to catch up with @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @craigmaclean.bsky.social @paulhoskisson.bsky.social @lore-fermar.bsky.social @julieakmcdonald.bsky.social @lucyweinert.bsky.social and more