Sometimes, food can look good & still make you sick. You can reduce your risk of illness incl. by: ✅ Cooking meat all the way through ✅ Washing fruit & vegetable with safe water ✅ Keeping food at safe temp. 🆕 WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases 2026 ed. https://bit.ly/4dQyKQI

NIHR webinar on BashTheBug on YouTube BashTheBug was originally a large international citizen science project that invited anyone to help us classify how well different samples of M. tuberculosis grew in the presence of a range of antibiotics. It ran from 2017 to 2021 and in that time 46,427…

We had an amazing time in Westgate, Oxford today! We had many attempts to 'bash the bug' and get the high score for the day on our dance mat 💃🕺 where overusing antibiotics causes resistance so you have to be careful what you're prescribing!💊 #AMR #ScienceOutreach #Microbiology #Oxford

Come and try our strawberry DNA extraction! 🍓Find out how this technique can be used by scientists to diagnose infections and choose which antibiotics to prescribe 💊 @oxfordbrc.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk #AMR #Oxford

We're ready at the @oxfordbrc.bsky.social! Come over and extract strawberry DNA, fight super bugs on the dance mat, or solve the mystery of the hospital outbreak! #AMR #PublicOutreach #Science

Come see us at the @oxfordbrc.bsky.social showcase! We'll be in Westgate, Oxford 10-3.30. We'll be bringing the dance mat so come and try to beat the germs with antibiotics and claim the high score💃🕺 #AMR #PublicOutreach @ox.ac.uk

Did you know that the NHS offers free latent TB infection testing and treatment to people at greatest risk of TB? As at you GP surgery or find out more at www.thetruthabouttb.org. Prevention is better than cure. #worldtbday2026 #worldtbday

Using graph neural networks and protein structural data, we’ve also shown how deep learning can improve prediction of pyrazinamide resistance — highlighting the potential of structure-aware models to tackle complex antimicrobial resistance challenges. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We’ve explored compensatory mutations that can restore bacterial fitness in resistant strains, helping explain how resistant TB continues to spread — and reinforcing the urgency of better diagnostics and stewardship. www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Our work on bedaquiline resistance (catomatic) provides a reproducible way to construct catalogues of resistance-associated variants — critical for protecting one of the key drugs used to treat MDR-TB. www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

We’ve developed tools like gnomonicus, which translate genomic data into actionable resistance predictions using the WHO catalogue, achieving >95% sensitivity and specificity for two key first-line drugs. www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Our recent preprint shows that Oxford Nanopore sequencing, combined with improved DNA extraction and amplification, can deliver rapid and reliable genomic characterisation directly from clinical cultures — helping move toward real-time TB diagnostics. Read more: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

On #WorldTBDay, it’s important to reflect on the scale of the challenge we’re facing. In 2024 alone, tuberculosis (TB) caused 1.23 million deaths worldwide, remaining the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, according to WHO @ndm.ox.ac.uk

Since 2017 the CRyPTIC project collected and collated 53,897 clinical TB samples with genetics and drug susceptibility testing data. You can download the datasets via crypticproject.info and v4.0.0 will appear later this year. #WorldTBDay @modmedmicro.bsky.social

Bash the Bug at ATOM Festival: Dancing, Germs, and the Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance! We had a fantastic time this weekend at ATOM Festival in Abingdon, bringing microbiology to life with our Bash the Bug public engagement activities.

We had a brilliant time this weekend at ATOM Festival in Abingdon! ☀️🦠 We brought along our favourite interactive activities to help people learn about antimicrobial resistance #AMR, including our dance mat game where you fight germs with antibiotics, and we tested everyone’s handwashing skills!

Science is everywhere: in our bodies, our food, our classrooms. This #BritishScienceWeek, meet e-Bug: UKHSA's free health education programme, which helps teachers bring infection science to life from early years to KS3. Curious? Find out more at 🔗 https://www.e-bug.eu/british-science-week

International Day of Women and Girls in Science 👩‍🔬 Proud to work alongside the scientists in our #microbiology lab whose work in antimicrobial resistance, public health and diagnostics has real-world impact! #WomenInScience #AMR #PublicHealth @medsci.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

MMM has an exciting UNIQ+ project running this summer -apply now! Bacteria, microplastics & resistance — what’s the connection? #Microplastics are everywhere, even in hospitals. But what happens when bacteria stick to them? Come and find out! @afswinkels.bsky.social @nstoesser.bsky.social

Happy our preprint is out🦠: "Evaluation of an Oxford Nanopore sequencing workflow for mycobacteria from primary MGIT culture" We developed and tested a workflow for long-read sequencing of #mycobacteria, including optimising DNA extraction and assessing how #ONT performs compared with #Illumina.

Our project "Sardinia’s Invisible Marine Microbiome" is one of six 2026 #PartArt4OW participatory art initiatives! Excited to do this with the brilliant @annadumitriu.bsky.social (image credit), Sardinian scientists, citizens of Alghero, and colleagues in @modmedmicro.bsky.social @bashthebug.net

Univ of Oxford UNIQ+ scheme applications open: 7-week research internship this Summer www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/g.... Lots of projects - one in our lab on microplastics & AMR & hospital environments at @modmedmicro.bsky.social led by Aram Swinkels www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/g... (Clin Med 04). Join us!

🔬 New blog post! Infections after joint replacement are serious, and identifying the bacteria quickly is crucial for patient care. We explain our research into metagenomic sequencing—reading all DNA in a sample to identify bacteria without needing lab growth. 👉 tinyurl.com/mrh8ukha #AMR #Genomics

Our paper is out in Microbial Genomics! 🧬 We evaluate gnomonicus, an open-source AMR prediction tool, using 2,663 Mycobacterium tuberculosis genomes—showing how WGS can deliver faster, scalable TB resistance predictions. Read the full paper here🔗 bit.ly/4iZepd1 #TB #AMR #Genomics

Diagnosing infected replacement hip or knee joints When patients suffer infections related to replaced knee or hip joints, medical teams need to know which bacteria are causing the problem. A promising new method called metagenomic sequencing reads all the DNA in a sample and can identify bacteria…

Plant sale for Oxford Hospitals Charity Last week the MMM Unit held a plant sale to raise some money for Oxford Hospitals Charity. The work had started some weeks before with lots of propagation of spider plants and sourcing of paper coffee pots (so we didn't have to buy any plastic pots). The…

Our team wore blue for World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2025💙 Research into how resistance emerges, spreads and can be prevented is vital. Our group works to understand these processes and develop better tools to detect, monitor and combat antimicrobial resistance. #WAAW @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

Dr Bernadette Young talking about Fluoroquinolones You can listen to our very own Dr Bernadette Young talking about fluoroquinolones -- these are a very valuable and widely-used class of antibiotics -- on Episode 32 of the Communicable podcast. This prestigious podcast is published by the European…

Why is antimicrobial awareness important? Antimicrobial resistant infections are rising. In the next 25 years an estimated 39.1 million people globally will die from infections with antimicrobial resistance. So what can you do to help? Something as simple as finishing your course of antibiotics!

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi & parasites change over time - leading to medicines being less effective against them. Here you see bacteria growing and antibiotics (the small discs) which kill the bacteria...unless they are resistant! #WAAW #AMR @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

Are you interested in infections, the micro-organisms that cause them and antimicrobial resistance? So are @bashthebug.net and they're looking for new members to join their patient & public group. More info: bashthebug.net/lay-represen... Deadline 27 Nov @ouhospitals.bsky.social @medsci.ox.ac.uk

🔔🔔Post-doc in microbial genomics with @modmedmicro.bsky.social🧬 - deadline tomorrow! Big genomic and clinical datasets to play with, friendly and very multidisciplinary team! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

We have a fully funded PhD studentship available @modmedmicro.bsky.social in Oxford to work on a really cool project looking at population heterogeneity in bloodstream infections www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/study/dphil-... Please spread the word/get in touch if you'd like to chat.

Read about the work we’re doing to make our research more sustainable Dot Nagy, one of our DPhil students, has written a great blog post about how she and others have got the rest of us in the Unit thinking more about how to reduce the environmental impact of our research.

From Pipettes to Pipelines: Greening a Multidisciplinary Research Lab. @dotnagy.bsky.social writes about the experiences from the Modernising Medical Microbiology (MMM) research group on engaging wet lab, computer lab, and office teams on the #sustainability agenda. #GreenLab #SustainableScience

Freezer Challenge! We have to keep most of our biological samples at -80°C which is much colder than the -20°C you'll find (hopefully) inside your freezer in the kitchen. This does require a lot of electricity. Valentina put in an application to the Freezer Challenge and we came 19th out of 115…

Read what our work experience got up to with a blog post written on their final day! From gram staining to agar art 🦠 bashthebug.net/2025/07/11/w... #Microbiology #WorkExperience #YoungScientists

'Linking life expectancy to the bacteria in our gut: A final year undergraduate project'. Akika investigated how the gut microbiome influences longevity, with fieldwork in Nagano, Japan—home to the country’s longest-living population. Read the blog post here ➡️ bashthebug.net/2025/08/22/l...

Green Impact Silver Award! This year, our group has achieved Silver in the Green Impact award - a sustainability scheme which supports teams who want to improve their sustainability efforts. As part of the scheme, you are given a toolkit with lots of different activities to complete which…

Who should own data about you? We ran a session at the Philosophy in Pubs Oxford group in April 2024, discussing where the moral lines can and should be drawn around the use of data about us. Who does the data really belong to? What are legitimate uses of it? What are the factors that make people…

MMM at the Westgate Shopping Centre.. again This is the third year that the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) held its Showcase at the popular Westgate Shopping Centre in the centre of Oxford. Like last year it was held jointly with the NIHR Oxford Health BRC. Our research software…

Looping out bacteria (well couscous) is harder than it looks! @oxfordbrc.bsky.social @modmedmicro.bsky.social

Come and play our dance mat game named after me! Outside John Lewis in the Westgate as part of the @oxfordbrc.bsky.social showcase!

Come and find @modmedmicro.bsky.social at the Westgate in Oxford as part of the @oxfordbrc.bsky.social showcase!

1/2 Our 🌟Modernising Medical Microbiology and Big Infection Diagnostics team🌟 is working on improving how we deal with infections in healthcare oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk/research-the... @nihr.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @ndm.ox.ac.uk @medsci.ox.ac.uk @modmedmicro.bsky.social @bashthebug.net

Join us this half term at Westgate, Oxford to find out how our scientists are working to improve your health! 📅 29 May 2025 ⌚ 10:00am – 3:30pm 📍 Westgate Oxford, Leiden Square (OX1 1PE) 🔗 oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk/brc-event/heal… @modmedmicro.bsky.social #ScienceOnTheHighStreetet