Just got round to reading this great new(ish) study by Paul Fey and colleagues in Nebraska, identifying a major Arg transporter in S. aureus. Elegant work! #microsky journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Exciting new work using high-throughput microscopy to identify important virulence factors in S. aureus! Some awesome insights here www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sensor kinase interacts directly with two distinct classes of cell wall targeting antibiotics to detect cell envelope stress. Great work onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

#microsky New on the regulation of porins function in E. coli. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PhD position on bacterial (Staph aureus) transporters and host-adaptation in my group @roslininstitute.bsky.social @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

There's just over 2 weeks left to apply for a fully funded PhD studentship with us working on C. difficile vancomycin resistance. Two more studentships - linked in the thread below - close in early January

#ISMEJournal paper from Simon Heilbronner Competitive fitness of Staphylococcus aureus against nasal commensals depends on biotin biosynthesis and acquisition academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Both the UCC and Bristol based lab members getting together in person at the Irish Division @microbiologysociety.org meeting.

New tricks for OppA! Very exciting work

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #microsky #microbiome from the @gavinhthomas.bsky.social lab in York in collab with Hull

Very happy to share some more good news. Our collaboration with Jeffrey Boyd's lab is now published at J Inorganic Biochemistry! Here, Jeff found that iron limitation reprograms S. aureus metabolism towards fermentation. We're grateful to be part of this study. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our work deciphering the substrate preferences of a di-/tripeptide transporter from S. aureus is now available as a proof at @plos.org Pathogens! Big thanks to the reviewers and to all the brilliant co-authors, particularly Callum who helped get those last few crucial experiments across the line

#NewResearch Nasal colonisation by S. aureus is linked with depression in a human cohort and shown in a mouse model to cause decreased serotonin and dopamine in the brain #MicroSky #Depression www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Latest from Lizzie Ledger in the lab…. Very cool story demonstrating the cross reactivity of a single AMR mechanism to confer resistance/tolerance to two distinct classes of antibiotics. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Awesome story!

Excited to share our new publication, out today in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41.... @kanchanj.bsky.social led this fascinating fungal-bacterial interaction project. We are grateful for our wonderful collaborators Brian Peters and David Underhill.

Great work from Nathan and the team!

New preprint from the lab, in collaboration with Ed Tate, Nate Traaseth and many others! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Also proud to see some work from my friends (and former labmates!) Naz and Lucy published today! Very cool insights into the importance of nucleotide signalling in S. aureus infection. Congrats to @corrigar.bsky.social and all the authors on this cool work :)

Great to see Sigurbjorn's work on polyamine transport out now in Nature! Great work from a great scientist www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really pleased to share some recent work from our lab now published in Comms Bio. Here, we’ve identified and characterised a peculiar TRAP transporter binding protein from B. pertussis that we think uses a membrane component from a completely different transporter family. rdcu.be/eAr8v

Out now! 🍫🦠A defined microbial community reproduces attributes of fine flavour #chocolate fermentation By Gabriel Castrillo, David Salt & co #microsky #microbiomesky 🧪 Read it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A cool use of DALI/FoldSeek building on new human HG-SNAT protein enabled Bethan Kinniment-Williams & co., to structural unify the TmAT superfamily of membrane-bound acyltransferases first proposed by Milton Saier Jnr in TCDB. @jnb-lab.bsky.social www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Very important new paper regarding amino acid acquisition inside staph-infected macrophages! Key role for BCAAs + nice evidence that host cell nutrients can be conveyed to bacteria in the phagosome to facilitate growth... Big implications for host-path interactions. Great work!

A single transcriptional regulator is crucial for the adaptation of Staphylococcus aureus to diverse niches https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.01.668060v1

Pleased to share our latest study @natcomms.nature.com! We show that the host metabolites fumarate and itaconate impose selective pressure on Staphylococcus aureus, driving its adaptation via the enzyme FumC. Grateful to all who contributed to this work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting new paper from Wonsik Lee's group in Korea, using TnSeq to study gene essentiality in various intracellular and extracellular infection niches of S aureus. Loads of cool insights into metabolism and nutrient acquisition in the host www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just seen this very clever paper from Alex O'Neill's group at Leeds. Systematic approaches to identify routes of antibiotic uptake in S. aureus and E. coli! As someone who never believed the dogma of passive diffusion, I feel very vindicated.. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40631918/

Commensal to pathogen switch in Streptococcus pneumoniae is governed by a thermosensing master regulator https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.23.655729v1

Cool work by the group of Natalia Korotkova demonstrating glycosylation of some of our favorite proteins like PBP1a, MapZ and RodZ! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Competition with Pseudomonas aeruginosa induces Staphylococcus aureus in an antibiotic-tolerant viable but non culturable state https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.30.651255v1

This is fascinating, but also terrible news regarding antimicrobial resistance in multidrug-resistant Gram-positives 'Emergence of transferable daptomycin resistance in Gram-positive bacteria' www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Just posted on bioRxiv! We reveal the structure of the MurJ/LysM (JM) complex. A small phage protein, LysM (37 residues), binds to MurJ like a wedge and freezes its motion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Great to see this exciting work from Javeria, Rory and Reyme finally out there for people to see :) such a nice, clean story

Couldn't be happier to announce I'm officially PhDone! Huge shout-out to Gavin and Marjan for their encouragement and all their support over the years :)

Pyrimidine sufficiency is required for Sae two-component system signaling in Staphylococcus aureus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.20.644390v1

Bacteriophage-derived endolysins restore antibiotic susceptibility in penicillin- and erythromycin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae infections https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.18.644011v1

Wow! surprising new cell-intrinsic innate immune function in 𝘕𝘈𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘌 PROTEOSOMES generate antimicrobial peptides that kill bacteria as a first line of defense bacterial infection alters proteasome function to boost this protective activity are proteosomes a novel target for antimicrobial therapy?

Fascinating work!

Preprint alert! Peptides are everywhere in biological environments, and these molecules serve as a rich source of nutrients for bacteria. Here, we uncover how one transporter protein allows S. aureus to utilise 100+ peptides for growth www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bittersweet moment as I set off from York. Lots of good times spent in good company. Some very cool science, too (at least I think it is). Keep an eye out for something soon 👀

Very excited to announce I'll be moving over to Cork next year to join Prof Ruth Massey as a Postdoc at @ucc.bsky.social :) Working with some very clever people to unravel the secrets of Staphylococcal blood infections 🦠 Can't wait for loads of exciting science! See you there 🇮🇪