Join us at 2pm today for this month’s JMM seminar by Dr Rob Fagan on ‘Clostridioides difficile - an evolving AMR threat.’ Register here for joining instructions: https://microb.io/4l58vI6 #JMM

"The question is not whether another spillover is coming. It is whether the world will have destroyed the very people and systems capable of detecting it before it arrives." This is such a good quote.

So happy to see this finally published in @plosbiology.org! This is the first chapter of @julielebris.bsky.social PhD thesis demonstrating how capsules are exchanged by plug-and-play dynamics w/ @epcrocha.bsky.social #microsky @klebclub.bsky.social Link below- Check out her 🧵 for more details!

Nothing beats the sheer jubilation of the cancellation of a Monday morning team huddle.

Don’t go to the US is the easy solution.

Resident doctors in the NHS to launch a six-day strike straight after the Easter bank holiday starting at 7am on April 7 until 6.59am on April 13.

Now published! 'Identification of transporter-dependent capsular loci associated with the invasive potential of Escherichia coli' www.nature.com/articles/s41... insights below.....

We created a database compatible with Kaptive3 of 90 distinct capsule (K) loci; 66% represented novel K-loci that did not correspond to the known phenotypic K-antigens. Give it a whirl, and get in touch to have novel K-loci added to the DB github.com/rgladstone/E...

Salah going is the right decision at the right time. He is not adding to the team anymore. But he is still one of the greatest to ever pull on a Liverpool shirt. Time to celebrate him and send him off in style

UKRI virtual town hall meeting

Further details on the meningococcal genome and genomic epidemiology including data release info from the recent explosive Kent outbreak: www.gov.uk/government/p...

One of many reasons to support reference labs; invaluable insight into population dynamics of important pathogens in a vulnerable population 👇

Keir Starmer's 'Love Actually' moment after insults from Trump. “A lot of what is said or done is undoubtedly to put pressure on me. I understand what is going on. “But I am not going to waver on this. I am the British PM and my job is to be absolutely focused on the national interest."

Join Dr Rob Fagan's Seminar this Friday at 2pm on ‘Clostridioides difficile - an evolving AMR threat.' Register here: https://microb.io/4l58vI6 #JMM

Back in the noughties when I was an academic, my lab did quite a bit of work on (conserved) alternative transcripts. This study in @plosbiology.org presents compelling evidence that most alternative transcripts are deleterious noise journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

You can keep birthday cake

Is this new? I did four shifts a week in a pub all the way through my PhD.

Does an imbalanced gut microbiome worsen chronic kidney disease? By elucidating the ecological causes for changes in the gut microbiota composition and its consequences for disease progression we were able to answer this question. Read more at: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Cowards is it, Admiral Bonespurs. www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/...

The research center of gravity is shifting faster than many expected. New data suggests China's public R&D spending could overtake the US by 2028. While our investment grew 12% since 2013, theirs surged 90%.

"Work from home and drive more slowly to save energy, global body urges" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Or you know, STOP MAKING WARS. And turn the AI crap off whilst you're at it.

For six months the project has been digging and building a pond. Two weeks after filling it is attracting visitors

Right. It’s the big birthday I don’t want on Sunday. We had a Lancet Microbe paper out yesterday. The weather is nice. Time to get out of here There is a beer with my name waiting for me.

Out now in @science.org Host-derived nitrate fuels indole production by Escherichia coli to drive chronic kidney disease progression | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Full article: Genomic evolution and re-emergence of a multidrug-resistant Clostridioides difficile RT027 clone with reduced vancomycin susceptibility driving a prolonged hospital outbreak www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/...

OxBreaker: species-agnostic pipeline for the analysis of outbreaks using nanopore sequencing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.709804v1

Today saw the publication of the Covid-19 Inquiry Module 3 report, which speaks personally to the experiences of the people at the centre of the NHS response. Read our full statement: www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-ce...

Its quite the day for papers. also out today, again led by Zong, this study on stepwise phage administration in response to resistance to create collateral susceptibility in a Klebsiella infection model www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

NEWS! Riyadh named UK City of Culture newsthump.com/2026/03/19/r...

PhD available with @overtonlab.bsky.social Sara Jabbari and me associated with our BBSRC sLoLa project! www.findaphd.com/phds/project... (UK students only)

Yep bsky.app/profile/onis...

PS And superspreading of meningococci among students has also been described before.

Not unusual that meningococcal outbreaks happen when lots of people interact closely, could we please remember history? Hajj, Umrah, refugee camps, scout conventions. Yes, should definitely look at pathogen in current outbreak and generally, vaccination policy, but stop invoking "immunity debt".

New research article Lineage dynamics of invasive Escherichia coli isolates in the Netherlands from 1975 to 2021: a retrospective longitudinal genomic analysis www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... #IDSky #ClinMicro #AMR #OpenAccess #OA

“These observations show that AMR is not a crucial driving factor in the prevalence of a lineage in specific patient populations or disease manifestations” Neonates and E. coli invasive disease. Complexities of pathogen dominance - It’s not all about antibiotic use, virulence factors illuminate.

Am stoked and thrilled that our latest paper is now out. A longitudinal study of invasive E. coli from children in the Netherlands over 50 years www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

People keep (wrongly) claiming the overturning of the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology by discoveries like reverse transcription Crick predicted such modes of information transfer were perfectly possible Reverse translation is where he drew the line. Nature has never invented it. But we now have

Head trauma from sports can disrupt the blood-brain barrier for years in retired athletes, a highly toxic mutant protein could offer a more effective target in Huntington's disease, and more this week in #ScienceTranslationalMedicine. https://scim.ag/4busk7z

Have you ever wondered why children starting nursery/daycare pick up so many germs? I certainly did, and with a crack team of parent-scientists/clinicians, we set out to answer that question. Is childcare a germ factory or an immune bootcamp? journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Important study by Chris Connor and Ben Howden (both not on here?) @unimelb.edu.au 'Global dissemination of optrA-mediated linezolid resistance in enterococci', major roles of mobile genetic elements in the dissemination of this important resistance determinant academic.oup.com/jac/article/...

Rumours have it the population of North Korean is set to decline by 0.07% over the next couple of hours.

Horizontal gene transfer is often depicted as a process distributing pre-existing functions to novel genetic backgrounds. Yet HGT can also increase the rate of functional innovation after transfer. Here's a brief review on the topic: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #evosky #microsky

Completely agree. This seems to have been a good PH response to the cluster of cases that has likely contained the outbreak, but the media appear to be presuming it’s a failure because there was a cluster

Scooby Doo’s favourite pantomime.

Toadlers?

The coverage of the Men B outbreak seems to be looking for scandal. It takes some time to identify an outbreak. However you do surveillance you will lag. Offering vaccination won’t help those already exposed and liable to infection.

I absolutely love this stuff. Is your position in a chromosome important is the most primal level of fitness selection.

Just published! at @narjournal.bsky.social . A new example of how gene order in bacterial genomes impacts cell physiology. Inthis episode we messed up with RNA polymerase genes! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Wow