It was a huge pleasure to welcome my former mentor, @unimelb.edu.au 's Prof James Osborne, to @mermanchester.bsky.social this week! Here I am seconds after having embarrassingly dropped several of my cryos on the floor

Outstanding MathBio seminar by @olimeacock.bsky.social today at @manchester.ac.uk! Thanks Carl Whitfield and @mermanchester.bsky.social members for great chats Oli has developed beautiful eco theory on how microbes interact via environmental change 1/2

Here’s the latest preprint from my work on evolved resistance to Type VI Secretion system (T6SS) weaponry, funded by a @wellcometrust.bsky.social Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship. So happy to see this out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New pre-print from us showing how biophysical traits like cell surface hydrophobicity dictate Pseudomonas aeruginosa aggregate architecture & shield cooperators from cheaters. May have relevance for understanding social evolution in chronic infections. 🧬🧫 doi.org/10.64898/202...

🚨 Calling all UK microbiologists 🚨- MEEHubs Registration is now OPEN! Come join our hub at ☀️ @manchester.ac.uk ☀️

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…

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...

🚨 PhD Studentship available! 🚨 We're hiring a UK student to start in Oct '26 via the BBSRC CODEM scheme. Full studentship plus £10k top-up PA. Study the mysterious ZOMBIE PHAGES 🧟 🦠 with our fabulous @mermanchester.bsky.social and @uommib.bsky.social communities! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Congratulations also to MERMan's new Bicentenary Fellows, Dr. @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social and Dr. Ryan R Cochrane! Names on doors!!! 🎉 @mermanchester.bsky.social @manchester.ac.uk

Huge congratulations to @mermanchester.bsky.social 's latest graduate, Dr. Rana Alruthaya, who passed her PhD viva today! Well done Rana!

Our new Microbial Primer describes the mechanistic action and therapeutic potential of R-pyocins produced by P. aeruginosa. www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Fantastic talk about the impact of inflammation on Pseudomonas aeruginosa evolution by @taoranfu.bsky.social #MicroEvo25

Find out more about DNA repair protein single-molecule tracking from @bexlowrypalms.bsky.social at poster 18🔬 #MicroEvo25

Come chat to Dan at poster 22 to learn about endosymbiosis evolution #MicroEvo25

Had the best day at #MicroEvo25 yesterday! Excited for day two and to be chatting more about hot spring microbial community coalescence 🌋 find me at poster 62 (likely with a coffee in hand)

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

Happy to share our latest T6SS review: nature.com/articles/s41... Thank you, Jan, Danny (@dannyjamesward.bsky.social), Joana (@joanampereira.bsky.social), as well as reviewers and editors @natrevmicro.nature.com!

Can we leverage bacterial competition for targeted replacement of harmful strains? Maybe! Our recent piece in @natmicrobiol.nature.com provides a theoretical framework and a set of experiments to show what it might take: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Had a fabulous time at the @wellcometrust.bsky.social ECR meeting today! Thanks for sharing some inspiring science and innovations to improve research culture 🧑‍🔬 and sustainability 🌱

So happy to share this! Bacteriocins were first discovered over 100 years ago, but what do they actually do? We look at >1000 bacteriocin plasmids and find links to virulence and antimicrobial resistance, and frequent bacteriocin sharing in Enterobacteriaceae. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hello everyone, take a look at my cool bugs from the Microbial Dark Matter phylum Saccharibacteria! These ultrasmall bacteria (in green) track down Actinobacteria hosts (not in green) and grow on the host cell envelope.

Open position to work on Type IX secretion (#T9SS) in our lab, in collaboration withe the group of Eric Reynolds at the Dental School of the University of Melbourne. Please spread the word, and forward to anyone potentially interested ! Apply here: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Docto...

🧐Checkout our preprint revealing the stepwise firing💥 mechanism of a Contractile Injection System @xujwet.bsky.social&@chipericson.bsky.social trapped the complex by structure-guided engineering🧪 in multiple intermediate states and imaged them by multimodal #cryoEM❄️🔬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Metabolic interplay drives population cycles in a cross-feeding microbial community www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Phage "satellites" that produce capsids but have no genes to produce tails have puzzled scientists for a long time. These are abundant as prophages in bacteria, but it was unclear how they can infect without tails Now, Penadés & co show that they hijack tails from other phages. Incredible!

New preprint bubbling up in our group for a while: "Phase separation and coexistence in spatial coordination games between microbes" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Generalizes findings of phase separation in microbes using T6SSs to a broad range of interaction mechanisms. Li + Steinbach et al.

Does your lab perform killing assays? TL;DR: we’ve identified a problem that can bias the outcome of killing assays, making antagonism look stronger than it really is. Adding a simple extra step can mitigate this bias!  Out now at #MicrobioJ www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... 1/n

The Royal Society David Attenborough Award and Lecture 2025 is awarded to Dr Roger Highfield for a vast contribution to public engagement, reaching audiences of millions through journalism, broadcast, books and museum-led initiatives. https://royalsociety.org/medals-and-prizes/attenborough-prize/

Check out our latest preprint! We show that the same antibacterial toxin requires different immunity proteins depending whether it’s intra or extracellular

Go Team! Deeply honoured that the MERMan lab reps won an @manchester.ac.uk‬ "FMBH heroes" award - thanks ‪@fbmh-uom.bsky.social‬ and @mermanchester.bsky.social for nominating us ❤️❤️❤️

Only one week to go until the abstract submission deadline for Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics 2025! Make sure to submit by 23:59 BST on 7 July 2025. microb.io/Abstracts #MicroEvo25

#Bacteria use weapons to outcompete rivals, but what happens if they're transferred? @prokaryota.bsky.social @jdpal.bsky.social &co show that HGT of toxin #plasmids is rare but recipients can thrive under relaxed nutrient competition, reshaping bacterial warfare @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43vC3X7

Delighted to be able to share our new review on R-pyocins produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It covers genetics, regulation, killing mechanisms and therapeutic potential amongst other things. #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Had a fantastic time at @pintofscience.uk last night! Here I am wobbling on a chair trying to turn a #Phage into a #T6SS. Thanks @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social‬ for the pic!

Had the absolute best time at @pintofscience.uk talking about microbial evolution and some of the work I’ve been doing at @mermanchester.bsky.social with @flanagella.bsky.social and @dannagifford.bsky.social 🧫💊🧬

An excellent showing from @mermanchester.bsky.social at #microbio25!

1/46 Hey folks, we have a new paper out on the MuLTEE. Strap in and I’ll tell you the story of how this “little paper on polyploidy” turned into the most data rich paper our lab has produced, largely thanks to the leadership and work ethic of @kaitong25.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Oxford U. Foster and Slack labs are hiring! A chance to work in bleeding edge microbiome science with some really great mentors @mucosalimmunology.bsky.social www.fosterlab.uk/vacancies

Embracing the systems complexity of microbial ecology and evolution: call for papers #mSystems Editorial by a group of editors, senior editors & editor-in-chief @leonorabit.bsky.social @gilbertjacka.bsky.social @ashley17061.bsky.social @markjmandel.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Thrilled to have our recent T6SS resistance work featured in this @pnas.org commentary by Prof. Nick Shikuma. Thanks for the shoutout Nick! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Starting my Bluesky adventure by highlighting a new paper from the lab!

Hi folks, I'm excited to share a whale of a tale (sorry, bad pun), where we engineer snowflake yeast to express sperm whale myoglobin, and explore how oxygen-binding proteins may have helped overcome anatomical limitations to early multicellularity. 🧪 #MEvoSky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

And now with the working link! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Join us at 13:00 BST today for the AMR in Focus series: "What's new in therapeutics." The webinar is free, and all are welcome to attend. Register before 11:00 BST to join - https://microb.io/AMR-in-Focus

Distribution of the four type VI secretion systems in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and classification of their core and accessory effectors @naturecomms.bsky.social from Daniel Unterweger www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing work from @mattjago.bsky.social and coauthors - QMS-seq reveals numerous and unexpected routes to #antimicrobialResistance in E. coli. Congrats all, stunning work 🎉🎉🎉

Great to see this work out with bunch of great colleagues!

Chuffed to have been featured in the local news! Thanks @MENnewsdesk for covering our T6SS toxins story🗞️ www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨PhD studentship opportunity! Bacteria protect themselves with a huge arsenal of defences, but does this affect how they gain new traits on plasmids? 🧫🦠💫 Apply for a funded 4y position with me @livuni-ives.bsky.social, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @jojofoth.bsky.social & @multidefence.bsky.social ⬇️

Joy! Published today in PNAS: multi-toxin T6SS attacks limit resistance evolution in competitors! Big thanks to our wonderful team of collaborators for all their help: @coytelab.bsky.social @knightjar.bsky.social @basler-lab.bsky.social @brockhurstlab.bsky.social 🎉 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...