Our work characterizing how mutational bias is influenced by the local sequence context beyond trinucleotides is out now @pnas.org! We also showed which motifs are most prone to mutations caused by strand misalignment, revealing several new hotspots! 🧬 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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 🧬

Seattle showed up for #standupforscience2025 Great slate of speakers, kudos to the organizers! 🧪 🧬

🎉 Congratulations to Dr Rowan Green, who defended his PhD today! @rowancallumg.bsky.social

These days it’s hard to justify loving space exploration/development (as I deeply do). We have so many terrestrial problems, and space has become the purview of the uber-rich. This is an excellent piece on why it’s still a worthy thing to care about, and we shouldn’t let these people take it from us

🚨 Job alert 🚨 — are you interested in understanding how mobile genetic elements and defence systems shape bacterial genome evolution? 🧬 🧪 🧫 🦠 2x 5-year research positions available in experimental evolution @mermanchester.bsky.social Join us! #microsky www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Are you a #Pseudomonas researcher? Please take our survey and help shape the direction and priority of future pseudomonas.com database development: forms.gle/gTPT6ruf3mqb... #microsky #idsky

The, what appears to be, scrubbing happening right now at NIH is mind boggling "Accounting for sex as a biological variable in clinical studies"... gone "Supporting Women in Biomedical Careers"... gone

🎉 Congratulations to Dr Dolan Evans! Dolan defended his thesis on microbiota of the pre-term infant gut today @mermanchester.bsky.social @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social

Excellent perspective by @lisamjarvis.bsky.social @bloomberg.com on the deep freeze at NIH

Fascinating talk yesterday by James Horton on #mutation hotspots in bacteria! They show T bases which follow a run of Gs are highly susceptible to TA>GC transversions. And the identity of bases *before* the run of Gs influences the mutation rate, 5+ bp away from the mutation locus! 🧪 preprint ⬇️

📣 New high-throughput method for determining genes involved in #AMR, Quantitative Mutational Scan Sequencing (QMS-Seq) Special congratulations to MERMAN PhD student Matt @mattjago.bsky.social for his 1st first author paper & supervisor Mato Lagator! #MicroSky 🦠🧫 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited that my 1st first-author paper has just been published!! We present a novel mutant screening technique that can rapidly identify 100s of antibiotic resistance mutations, while evaluating how likely they are in different genetic backgrounds. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🙌 Come and read about how inflammation-like environments shape Pseudomonas adaptation, limiting loss of quorum sensing, through 42-day transfers! 🦠🧪🧫🖥️ 🧬 #ecoevo

🚨PhD Opportunity - please share!🚨 We’re hiring a PhD student to start Sept 2025: how do bacteria ‘tame’ phage parasites, and turn them into deadly Tailocins? Come join me, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social, Patrick Cai & @raveentank.bsky.social as we study ZOMBIE PHAGES! findaphd.com/phds/project...

🚨 PhD opportunity 🚨 The Whelan lab, @jojofoth.bsky.social, & @brockhurstlab.bsky.social are looking for a PhD student w micro experience to study how commensal bacteria modulate the virulence of P. aeruginosa using a fly infection model. More info & link to apply below. Please spread the word!

We had a great time at the Community Festival this weekend! It was amazing to chat with so many people about all things microbial and see the wonderful creations on our Make Your Own Bacteria stand!