Statement from the University on the future of the vet school. www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news...

Cambridge University has just announced that the proposal to close its undergraduate course in veterinary medicine, which would have led to the end of its Vet School and Hospital, has been dropped. The vets will carry on with the reforms they had already launched and the course continues. Victory!!

I don't think that the reviewers asking me for higher animal numbers really understand how many 40 goats are. Do you know the CHAOS that comes with dealing with 40 GOATS in an experimental setting! Mice people cannot comprehend. 3 goats alone ate a tarp, a clock, and 2 expensive accelerometers!

[Lindisfarne] Me: (chanting) teeth, teeth- Other fossil hunters: teeth, TEETH British Geological Society: [pounding its clipboard] TEETH, TEETH, TEETH!

Bit different from our usual work A PhD applying metagenomics to identify microbial plastic degradation and metabolism, fully funded studentship (UK students only). www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

My brother draws and prints custom cards and they're always amazing. This one apparently honours my taste in books

New paper out with colleagues from Malaysia www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #microsky

The collapse of curiosity driven research has occurred in STEM too. Everything has to be outcomes focused - cure disease, grow better crops, etc. But so much of what humanity has discovered is from "basic" curiosity-driven science. I'm hugely in favor of funding curiosity in every discipline.

🚨Submissions open for the Cambridge Journal of Science and Policy (CJSP)! 🚨 CJSP invites submissions for Volume 7, Issue 1 under the theme "Infectious disease policy: research, surveillance, and resilience". Manuscripts for the themed issue must be received by 6th March 2026.

Now that is an excellent idea

"Metascience Novelty Indicators" sounds super scammy? Does anyone know what it's all about? The paper of mine they cite qualifying me to contribute seems... pretty unlikely

PhD projects in microbial engineering now up, including one with @whelanfj.bsky.social @willpjsmith.bsky.social and me! 🦠 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

'to treat peer review as a throughput problem is to misunderstand what is at stake. Review is not simply a production stage in the research pipeline; it is one of the few remaining spaces where the scientific community talks to itself.' 1/3

I only just wrote to reviewers "so sorry the underlying taxonomy changed since submission" 🙈

BREAKING NEWS: UK loses its #measles elimination status @benk-d.bsky.social highlights failure to reach 95% measles #vaccine coverage target in UK + need for secure funding for vaccine outreach efforts & joined-up #PublicHealth response Read more: www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/n...

If you’re in/around London next week & want to hear me speak about lots of fun early medieval isotopes + aDNA come along on Tuesday! ⚛️🧬☠️

The publishers of Frontiers are very proud of their fraud-detection software and have appointed themselves as "Guardians of Research Integrity". Also, they publish stuff like this.

Just published a paper on the complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir meme, the decade-old tumblr in-joke that continues to impact the public understanding of the ancient world. Paywalled but email me if you want a copy. 🏺

Paper accepted! 🥳🍻

The coolest finding of my PhD is finally out! E. coli has a 7th RND pump that is present in phylogroups B2/D/E/F but absent in A/B1/C. As a result EefABC has been absent in all K-12 RND studies! Co-authored by the very talented Dr. Lizzy Darby. @jessicamablair.bsky.social doi.org/10.1099/mgen...

I have a question for people who do a lot of disk diffusion assays... have you ever seen enhanced haemolysis around azithromycin specifically? Does it damage RBCs so that bacterial haemolysis is more rapid, or is it maybe a stress response from the bacterium?

The original paper explicitly highlights how much terrorism ‘declined’ in the UK after the COVID-19 pandemic. But the decline after 2020 is only that stark because all terrorism-related variables are imputed to 0, without disclosure, after the UK left the EU in 2020. 22/x

The ViTaL-D study team is looking for 76 people at least 18 years old, who live within 70 miles of Norwich and think they might be low in vitamin D to take part in the research study 🌞 ➡️ buff.ly/JsknRSN @johninnescentre.bsky.social

Okay my loves. I need your help here with a local thing! I’m currently putting together a series of talks relating to East Sussex. If you could share with your fellow lovelies it would be incredible! @overslizzie.bsky.social @reblambert.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social @lazaruscorporation.co.uk

This is your last chance to apply for this #PhD position with @gemma-langridge.bsky.social & the @langridgelab.bsky.social Ever wonder how bacteria become more toxic via phages? & how public health deals with this🤔this project could be for you🦠🏥🧬 Apply NOW Who doesn't love a toxic burden anyway?😅

Magog Down was perfect last night

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... It's finally out! Meriam Guellil expertly led this project from the first HHV6 detection to the final paper. We found both human herpesviruses 6A and 6B in ancient remains going back 2500 years.

We will be offering a free crèche at Annual Conference 2026. All delegates are welcome to use, but children must be registered in advance on a first-come, first-served basis. Learn more about it and register your children: microb.io/48tq0w8 #Microbio26

My sister in law's MP! #SaveTheVetSchool substack.com/home/post/p-...

“Love it or hate it it’s here to stay” is a crazy thing to keep saying about a technology. If people don’t like using something it doesn’t have to stay we’re not talking about bad weather here

Delighted to express my support for the #SaveTheVetSchool campaign. It would be dreadful decision for @cam.ac.uk to abolish one of the best (if not the best) undergraduate Veterinary Medicine degrees in the world. savethevetschool.co.uk

Official Statement: Cambridge University, Department of Veterinary Medicine, 12/12/2025 "The decision to recommend the closure of what the Times Higher Education Supplement ranks as the best undergraduate veterinary course in the world has come as a bolt from the blue." [1] #SaveTheVetSchool

{Mariah Carey voice}: 🎶All I want for Christmas... ...Is yooooooooooooouuuuuuuu... ...r review of this manuscript submission even though I know you are burnt out and ready for break 🎶

Today I learned that bluesky has a "rude" moderation filter set to hide content with coarse language by default 😂 Settings > Moderation > Advanced I look forward to seeing more of your colourful posts now!

I took part in a study like this, and let me tell you I was not prepared for how difficult it would be to concentrate on one thing when I'm capable of listening to 2 conversations at once and I'm NOSY

After being with the journal since its very inception, the time has come for me to step back from Microbial Genomics. This is a wonderful opportunity to have a leadership role in one of the leading journals for microbial genomics research microbiologysociety.org/news/society...

Published today! 'The Kocurious case of Noodlococcus: genomic insights into Kocuria rhizophila from characterisation of a laboratory contaminant' A labour of love in the group, led by @gemccallum.bsky.social @biostan.bsky.social @prob91.bsky.social www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Quality trolling that

Happy to share that the paper describing Autocycler is now 100% up: doi.org/10.1093/bioi... (1/3)

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

the most important thing to remember when you see eugenicists who don’t believe that autistic people should exist rambling about “the autism epidemic” is not that they’re wrong about the “cause” (although they are absolutely wrong about it); it’s that they are eugenicists

I do enjoy a good WEF/Klaus Schwab conspiracy though. I met Schwab once in Davos and saw a clown squeegee his bald head. He was a good sport about it. True story.

If you are UK-based and working on any aspect of microbiomes (human, plant, insect, soil, animal, ...), please do sign up to Microbiome-Net for details of networking, funding and training opportunities. forms.office.com/pages/respon...

In short, we need more Archaeologists again. The First Lego League squads just keep rolling in. Spread the word among Archaeologists!

🚨 New pre-print from the lab! We performed a large-scale meta-analysis of the uncultured gut #microbiome in >10,000 metagenomes enabling us to identify a new candidate biomarker of health. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Join us for Annual Conference 2026! Abstract submission and registration are open for the UK’s largest annual gathering of microbiologists. Held in Belfast, UK, this year’s Conference also features two-day attendance tickets.

New paper out in Pneumonia. More data from the carriage study in Southampton, UK looking at pneumococci in pre-PCV13 era versus early- and late-PCV13 periods. pneumonia.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... (I also snuck in some bits on other bacteria ... just for a bit of variety)

I have been online since 1997 and every day I think that is too long.

Excited to say we’re hiring 😊. We’re looking for a post-doc in ancient pathogen genomics to join our friendly supportive team in London at @ugiatucl.bsky.social. Start date January 2026. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...