Come and work with us! Three new academic posts (including Animal Behaviour) and superb facilities in the new Life & Mind Building

Evidence that lifestyle drives genome fluidity from @annadewar.bsky.social today. Keeping everyone going on last day of @eseb2025.bsky.social! Great talk Anna!

I'm super bummed to be missing #ESEB2025 @eseb2025.bsky.social due to a cancelled flight! Here's a quick overview of my talk "Gene- and genome-focused perspectives on microbial pangenomes" slated to be part of The Evolution of Microbial Pangenomes -- which I recommend you attend tomorrow (Fri) ! 1/n

OrthoFinder just dropped a major update It’s faster, more accurate, and ready for thousands of genomes Let’s break it down (1/10) github.com/OrthoFinder/... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Get OrthoFinder here github.com/OrthoFinder/... Read the preprint here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Millions of species here we come! (10/10)

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...

Anna Dewar @annadewar.bsky.social asks what types of genes get horizontally transferred in bacteria 🦠🧬➡️🧬🦠 Contrary to previous thinking, plasmids didn't carry more cooperation genes than the core genome. #Evol2025 #Evol25

@annadewar.bsky.social now giving the fourth @asn-amnat.bsky.social Early Career Scientist Award lectures at #Evol2025 about bacterial pangenomes, cooperation, and gene transfer

Delighted to see this paper from danderson123.bsky.social 's PhD out. We have been building tools for AMR gene detection for over a decade now, but multicopy genes remain challenging. Dan shows that with a gene-space de Bruijn graph and long reads, you can do well www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Abstract deadline for @eseb2025.bsky.social extended to 5 May! Still time to submit your abstract for the evolution of microbial pangenomes ⬇️

If you are interested in microbial #pangenomes, join us at @eseb2025.bsky.social in Barcelona with @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social and @annadewar.bsky.social Only two days left to submit your abstract! eseb2025.com/call-for-abs...

Interested in the evolution of microbial pangenomes? Submit your abstract for #ESEB2025 to Symposium 45! Deadline is 25th April. Hope to see lots of you in Barcelona this summer! 🧬🦠☀️

Join our symposium The evolution of microbial pangenomes at @eseb2025.bsky.social with @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social and @annadewar.bsky.social (co-organized with @fbaumdicker.bsky.social and Jaime Iranzo) eseb2025.com/call-for-abs...

Huge congratulations to @annadewar.bsky.social on winning an Early Career Investigator Award from the American Society of Naturalists! @asn-amnat.bsky.social Anna is a Career Development Research Fellow at St John's, working on bacterial genome evolution. 🦠🧬

TWO postdoc positions in Computational Microbiology and/or biochemistry. Join our interdisciplinary group in the new Life and Mind Building @OxfordBiology, @UniofOxford, @IneosOxford Please apply and share this post: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMP641/p...

Interested in using genomics to study bacterial cooperation? We’ve got 2 brilliant posters at #Microbio25 today: Zohar Katz (A276) and Rosie Randall (A098). Go say hi to them! 🦠 🧬

Definitely check out Rosie's poster at #Microbio25! Particularly anyone interested in using genomics to study cooperation & antibiotic resistance in bacteria 🦠🧬

Really honoured to be among the recipients of the ASN Early Career Investigator Award! Thank you so much @asn-amnat.bsky.social!

The ASN Distinguished Achievement in the Conceptual Unification of the Biological Sciences is for a senior (but still active) investigator who has made major contributions that relate to the goals of ASN. This year’s awardee is Stuart West (Oxford) www.biology.ox.ac.uk/people/stuar... 11/N

🚨 The Whelan lab is currently recruiting for a 6-week summer undergraduate student as part of the Lister Institute's Summer Studentship scheme. 🚨 The student will work along side a Postdoc to study interactions between pathogens from the cystic fibrosis microbiome. More info & to apply please see:

I'm delighted to announce that the 2025 @microbiologysociety.org meeting on "Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics" will be held in Liverpool 26-27 November 2025! Abstract submission will open soon... #microsky 🧪🧫🦠 microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...

Valuable contribution to the issue of how we ight look at data that have evolved in a hierarchical manner: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bacteria produce an enzyme that functions after they die, to break up proteins and altruistically release nutrients to living cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really looking forward to this! 🧬🦠

☎️ Calling #MEvoSky ☎️ 2x 5-year research associate / research assistant positions in experimental evolution ERC-funded project: How do mobile genetic elements and defence systems shape bacterial genome evolution? Join the friendly and exciting @mermanchester.bsky.social community in Manchester!

🎊 My first BlueSky Post! 🎊 We recently published in Nature E & E, using comparative phylogenetic techniques to study worker caste evolution across 794 species of ant 🐜 (Key words: ants, social insects, evolution, Bayesian statistics, ancestral state reconstruction) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 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

New pre-print!!! What types of genes end up on plasmids and why? The take home message of this paper is that beneficial genes move from plasmids to chromosome, causing the ecological value of plasmids to decay over time. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Write-up of our new paper on information transfer in plant-fungal networks: "Study shows plants are more likely to be ‘eavesdroppers’ than altruists when tapping into underground networks". www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-01... @tobykiers.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social

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...

New paper with @tobykiers.bsky.social and @stuwest.bsky.social on whether plants send signals through fungal networks to warn other plants of impending attack – theory suggests unlikely. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

And it’s been a while since I dipped my toe into the questions of what ‘species’ might mean for bacteria, and how they relate to ecology. But still interests me! genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

🚨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 ⬇️

NEW ONLINE! New online! A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics

Hopefully this will be useful for anyone doing comparative genomics! In Box 1 we show some case studies where controlling for phylogenetic non-independance can reverse a result

Comparative genomics needs to use phylogenetic methods: why, how and common questions www.nature.com/articles/s41... @annadewar.bsky.social @lauriebelch.bsky.social

Our review is out in Nature Reviews Genetics! rdcu.be/d5AY2 We show how phylogeny-based methods can resolve the problem of non-independence in genomic datasets. These methods must be considered an essential part of the comparative genomics toolkit. @lauriebelch.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social

go.bsky.app/QKajPgc A starter pack for social evolution! Lots of space left for anyone who would like to be added

Check out the Microbial Primers list from the Microbiology Society. Whether you're an early career researcher or an established scientist, ‘Microbial Primers’ is your first-step navigational tool in the expansive landscape of microbiology. #MicroSky www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/micr...

Tried to put together a Microbial Evolution starter pack, but there were so many great people I didn't want to leave out it turned into 3 starter packs Comment or DM me if you were missed or would like to be added! A thread (1/3) go.bsky.app/6pkuYhi

Why is sharing your research with the media important? Sign up for this Microbiology Society free webinar on 24th October to find out more: microbiologysociety.org/event/full-e...

At #ISBE2024 next week? Come see my first ever conference poster. (I'm cheating - it is a slight update of an awesome poster by @annadewar.bsky.social )

Check out our contribution to special feature of @RSocPublishing. Early germ-soma commitment beats single-cell bottlenecks hands down for predicting organism complexity! With Jack Howe and @CKCornwallis #procb @OxfordBiology

🚨 The Whelan lab is hiring! 🚨 We're looking for a Research Assistant to join our lab at U of Manchester. We're seeking someone with experience in microbiology & microbiome to support our growing group. Note this isn't a postdoc role (though keep 👀 for those announcements soon!) #Microsky 🧪 🧬 💻

Happy Friday! New ERC-funded postdoc position available in my lab: using genomic approaches to study evolutionary drivers of AMR in patients and experimental models. Job add closes on Oct 11, send enquiries to me with CV and cover letter. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Our "guided tour" of comparative methods is out (sort of) in AREES. Our aim was to help get your started, let me know if you find it helpful (or not!). With Charlie Cornwallis (obvs) ❤️ www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Very excited that next month, I’ll be starting a Career Development Research Fellowship at St John's College, Oxford! I’ll be using comparative genomics and phylogenetics to tackle broad, across-species evolutionary questions in bacteria and eukaryotes. Can’t wait to get started! 🧬🦠

A few days left to apply!

🦠 Lifestyle plays a key role in shaping bacterial pangenomes 🦠 New research from @annadewar.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social shows that species which live in more variable environments have more fluid pangenomes 👇 bit.ly/3wC8M0w

Bacteria with more variable lifestyles have more fluid pangenomes www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @annadewar.bsky.social @lauriebelch.bsky.social