New paper out in @pnas.org, and it made the cover! 👁️ We represent plasmids as circles and mutations as dots, resembling an eye, because in this paper we literally 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ plasmids evolve. ‼️Check Paula’s 🧵 and the paper👇 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Our story on plasmid streamlining is now published in PLoS Biology! With @andrewmatthews.bsky.social and @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social #MicroSky #Mevosky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Conjugative plasmids help spread AMR genes. @andrewmatthews.bsky.social @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social & @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social show that #AMR loss in evolving populations involves streamlined #plasmids that gain a transmission advantage by deleting AMR genes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/48NM0BL

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're into plasmid biology, you can't miss this back-to-back by two inspiring teams!

🦠 Nuestro #articulodelmes habla sobre cómo los integrones móviles codifican sistemas de defensa contra fagos de la mano del grupo investigador liderado por el Dr. José Antonio Escudero 📄https://f.mtr.cool/qxwueostwp

Ceftazidime-avibactam (a last resort drug) use selects multidrug-resistance and prevents designing collateral sensitivity based therapies against P. aeruginosa (no robust patterns emerge). Happy to see it published! 🥳 @cnb-csic.bsky.social @idisba.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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

Preprint below has been a long time coming, here just in time for #microbio25 ! (if the train wifi lets me) With @andrewmatthews.bsky.social #MicroSky 🧵

Join us in at #ESEB2025 Barcelona for our symposium on microbial adaptation to changing conditions. Organised by @mtoll8.bsky.social @javierdelafuente.bsky.social and me. Amazing invited speakers @saramitri.bsky.social and Itzik Mizrahi!! @eseb2025.bsky.social

🚨 New preprint! We know that plasmids are associated with very variable fitness costs in their different bacterial hosts. But, what is the contribution of each of the plasmid-genes in these host-specific effects? Study led by @jorgesastred.bsky.social, @sanmillan.bsky.social and myself! 1/14

As of 2025 I am officially a junior PI at the Institute of Functional Biology & Genomics. My lab will focus on building quantitative models of eco-evo dynamics. There is available funding for PhDs and postdocs — formal job announcements will come soon, but feel free to reach out in the meantime!

Chromosomal plasticity can drive rapid adaptation in bacteria by @mtoll8.bsky.social's lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PhD opportunity in St Andrews on plasmids, antibiotics and defence systems, in collaboration with Helen Alexander in Edinburgh. Funding via BBSRC EastBio, please share & pass on to anyone interested! #microsky🦠🧫🧬 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Thrilled to share our new article now out in Nature Reviews Microbiology! We review how bacterial #AMR evolves within patients during #antibiotic therapy, highlighting the complexity of the problem and how to improve understanding in future work. 1/7 #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excellent paper by Dan Andersson's group 'Bacteria can compensate the fitness costs of amplified resistance genes via a bypass mechanism' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just one week left to apply for this eco-evo PDRA position working in a multidisciplinary team developing synthetic phage therapy 🧫 🧬 🫁 #microsky

First step in a community project to provide a uniformly assembled, annotated and searchable set of bacterial genomes, our preprint on our initial release of 1.9 million genome assemblies+taxonomic estimates. (figure compares with previous 661k dataset) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky

BBSRC 2-year PDRA position to work on ecology & evolution of phage therapy with synthetically engineered phages. Part of an exciting multi-university consortium & UK’s Engineering Biology priority. Synthetic genomics; experimental evolution; AMR. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... #microsky

Exciting chance to join our Wellcome Trust collaborative project understanding AMR evolution in human infections! Genomics, experimental evolution, Pseudomonas. Research Assistant 4-days per week for 2-years, deadline 18.03. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... #microsky

Excited to share the first preprint from my lab, collaborating with the fantastic @sanmillan.bsky.social 's lab, led by the amazing Jorge Sastre. We've demonstrated how insertion sequences encoded in plasmids promote bacterial adaptation. This project has been incredibly fun!

New preprint in collaboration with @asantoslopez.bsky.social lab and led by Jorge Sastre. Combining experimental evolution and analyses of longitudinal samples from hospitalised patients, we unveiled a new mechanism of plasmid-mediated evolution beyond HGT 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

And its out! New paper for #integron aficionados. We found gene-less cassettes in superintegrons that express/silence other cassettes in the array. Here is a 🧵(if I know how to do this in Bluesky...😆) academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

New perspective paper with the amazing @asanchezlab.bsky.social @javierdelafuente.bsky.social and Juan Diaz-Colunga. Can we use global epistasis patterns to predict/understand plasmid-mediated AMR evolution? www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....