JOB OFFER #PhageSky We have a postdoc position opening in my group to investigate phage-MGE interactions ! We're based in the very nice city of Lyon, France @mmsb-lyon.bsky.social Contact me for more info ! >> Apply on the CNRS webpage emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

Come and work with me and @ariannebabina.bsky.social on #Streptomyces evolution and antibiotic production Origins of a tangled bank: Adaptation and evolution in antibiotic-producing Streptomyces www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate... please repost

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

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org doi.org/10.1126/scie... If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇

So a small update on French politics for my English speaking followers the guy who had been charged with forming a government and came up with the same government than the previous government has quit this morning following the announcement of his government and is now in charge of forming a new one

Published in Current Biology! P. aeruginosa can use its filamentous phage to inhibit competitors but high phage production is susceptible to cheater miniphage invasion. Subsequent phage tragedy of the commons can lower bacteria and phage fitness. Link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lt5I3QW8S...

🚂 😴 A peine lancés et déjà supprimés ? Sauvons les trains de nuit Paris-Berlin et Paris-Vienne, un voyage bas-carbone largement plébiscité par ses utilisateurs et utilisatrices. Pétition à signer ici ⤵️ agir.greenvoice.fr/petitions/sa...

Now peer-reviewed, improved and published in @microbiologysociety.org Microbiology - thanks to editor and reviewers! www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

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...

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

Exclusion systems, far from slowing down plasmid spread, are in fact essential to preserve host cell viability and thereby ensure the successful dissemination of conjugative plasmids and antibiotic resistance genes. @nfrk92.bsky.social @narjournal.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Super paper from the mighty Mia Winkler, @genomarit.bsky.social and Iren Lohr. "We have previously shown that there were relatively few strain-sharing events across ecological niches...plasmid-sharing is considerably more common across niches than strain-sharing. " www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to share our recently published work! Ever wondered how Klebsiella (and others) deals with capsule production’s costs ? The paper: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Thread👇

only a microbiologist can be happy she left home in a rush three weeks ago and did not empty her tea mug @contamclub.bsky.social

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

What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years? Our paper looking at resistance genes from a century of NCTC historical isolates now out in mGen: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

This is my happy place and I'm not sure I want to leave ever

New paper out! 🔈🔈📣📣 Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through Insertion Sequence-mediated gene inactivation. Combining experimental and computational approaches, we unveil how two of the most prevalent bacterial MGE accelerate the evolution of AMR. 🧵👇🏻 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If you ever find yourself needing evidence for ‘Plasmids are just as common in microbes without resistance genes,’ we’ve got you covered! Check our new paper, out today: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Feels surreal to say but: I'm hiring! If you are or know anyone interested in looking at the evolution of phage resistance using A. baumannii and natural transformation, then this might be for you www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

“We sense this, we aggregate that, we compress information to some new output, in the form of a sentence in a human language, a language called English. A language both very structured and very amorphous, as if it were a building made of soups. 1/2

Want to name a real virus? I have recently discovered 9 new phages which now need names! To enter, you simply need to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on my JustGiving page (£2 = 1 entry) and share your email with me on donation (see link info). Please share 💚 www.justgiving.com/page/meaghan-c-1

It is funny reading papers from labs with different interests and approaches, which consider variation in conjugation rates in opposite ways: on one side (more molecular genetics), dismissing anything less than 10-fold or 100-fold as ‘not really involved in transfer’

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....

Thrilled to see our Kiwa story out today! A membrane-associated supercomplex that senses infection and blocks replication and transcription. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Huge congratulations to Yi and Zhiying for bringing it home, to Thomas for starting us off, and to all the collaborators.

🦠🧍‍♀️From bacterial to human immunity. We report in @science.org the discovery of a human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins that participates in the TLR pathway of animal innate immunity. Co-led wt @enzopoirier.bsky.social by D. Bonhomme and @hugovaysset.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

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...

📣 We're hiring! We have a 12-month vacancy for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with skills in molecular microbiology. See the details and apply here: www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... Please share!

Bonjour @lefigaro.fr L’alcool est une drogue qui peut détruire la vie. 50 000 morts par an. Que l’alcool vienne de France ou d’ailleurs. Évitons d’en faire l’apologie.

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)

I did not expect the weather / climate would end up being a positive aspect of moving to Scotland! Friends in Paris telling me they can't open the freezer to look for strains as it's 37°C in the lab ... (the aircon is broken of course) 😱

Working from Cornwall for a few days ... and I remember why I bought a tablet with which I can read in the sun :)

I should have seen that one coming… it took me literally decades to get out of massive stage anxiety and impostor syndrome, and as I was finally beginning to enjoy being more relax about these things (well it’s all relative), I’m now starting from scratch, this time for my students! It never stops.

Sharing the most significant work from my group, led by the @evolvingstem.bsky.social team. Come for the discoveries of how Pseudomonas adapts in biofilms, stay for the story of how they were discovered by thousands of young scientists in grades 9-12. 🧪🧫🧬🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/ Excited to share our latest work on gene transfer agents (GTAs) in Caulobacter crescentus, led by Emma Banks in collaboration with Pavol Bardy and Mai Nguyen from York!!! See a brief thread below. shorturl.at/o6S1w

New Research Assistant position available in my lab to work on a project testing the efficacy of pills dependent #phage against clinical isolates of enteric bacteria . Part of a growing phage research theme in my lab my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

When things add up: environmental structure and microbial interactions drive antibiotic-resistance plasmid evolution. New paper from the lab, and the third chapter of Lars Zandbergen’s thesis! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Due to elections and such, I have finally googled 'how to become a british citizen' and am currently laughing at the Life in the UK test and its "long and illustrious history" to master.

Come join us in Southampton! You need to register to participate (free registration!). To give everyone an opportunity to showcase their science, we extended the deadline for title submission to May 16. Share widely!

Come work with us! We're looking of postdoc(s) with experience in bacterial genomics and interest in mathematical modelling to work on bacterial ecology and evolution in the context of public health. tinyurl.com/n34vzszu

I always forget to tag #Mevosky too!

New preprint with nice detective work by PhD student Khadija Hanga: gain of pOXA MDR plasmid is facilitated by chromosomal mutations affecting OmpF which act synergistically with the plasmid’s carbapenamase to give high level resistance. Led by @mbottery.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New postdoc position in our lab (2 y+): evolutionary genomics of integrons and MGEs with focus on vibrio-phage interactions. Great environment @pasteur.fr for science, career building. Super collaborators @celineloot.bsky.social @amazeld.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social 3 weeks to apply!

New publication from our Lesterlin lab in collab with lab of @knutdrescher.bsky.social We determined the spatiotemporal dissemination of conjugative plasmids within biofilms and found that they spread only in specific structural regions. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Join the Blokesch lab (@EPFL) as a postdoc in Molecular Microbiology 🤩 Study Vibrio cholerae defense systems (phage/plasmid) in a dynamic, collaborative environment in Lausanne close to Lake Geneva in 🇨🇭! Please visit my lab's webpage for details about the position and how to formally apply.

If you're curious about philosophy in France, thousand of students have competed during an exam (6h) and the question was "You must." Without knowing anything about the expected methodology, what would you write?

I am back at work but my cats are in Cornwall and it's bank holiday for them so they send me updates

New paper: long-term trends in antibiotic resistance show signs of stabilisation (thread). journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Do restriction-modification systems shape plasmid sequence composition? A group of plasmid-aficionados, led by Liam Shaw, started to explore this during the 2023 @embo.org Workshop on Plasmids in Trieste. Happy to have contributed to this work and be part of such a great team!