Ever since I learned about this study enrolling I have been eagerly awaiting the results. Researchers in Uganda took a centuries-old cultural practice mothers carrying babies on their backs in cloth wraps and turned it into a public health tool. You got to love it! www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Autism is a natural divergence from neurotypicality. It's normal & not the tragedy these clowns are making it out to be. Transness is a natural divergence from cisnormativity. It's normal & not the tragedy these clowns are making it out to be. Just deal with people being different than you.

The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026): www.embl.org/about/info/e... We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them

We wrapped up #IMMEM XIV over the weekend and it was a fantastic success with over 250 participants from 35 countries. A big thank you to the organisers and specifically @esgem-sg.bsky.social our study group on epidemiological markers! The content will be available on ESCMID media soon. #clinmicro

Great to see this out there! We infer the evolutionary pathways behind patterns of AMR in Klebsiella across 102 states, finding globally consistent principles, state-specific deviations (and covariates), and validating evol predictions with new genomes. biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/

It's that time of the year again... Soon the applications for 12 PhD positions at @sangerinstitute.bsky.social will open. Interested in genomics and thinking about doing a PhD? Join us at Sanger. www.sanger.ac.uk/about/study/...

Thrilled to share this preprint on Klebsiella pneumoniae plasmids in a One Health setting 🦠 Fantastic work by @twinkler.bsky.social! 🎉 @irenlohr.bsky.social @margaretlam.bsky.social

🎉 Delighted to share the first pre-print from my lab where we demonstrate that intergenic DNA repeats mediate phase variation of the mucoid phenotype in hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #klebclub

If you are UK-based and working on any aspect of microbiomes (human, plant, insect, soil, animal, ...), please do sign up to Microbiome-Net for details of networking, funding and training opportunities. forms.office.com/pages/respon...

Perfect timing as I'm updating my lecture slides for the first class next week of "Digital Practices". That list of definitions will follow this slide I had for last year. Great work.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians. It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical. While here, he developed a new way of aligning to millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For anyone who has used pling for comparing plasmids using rearrangement distances ("how many structural events apart are these plasmids"), here's how to tweak parameters, and integrate it with typing info, and the host phylogeny www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... github.com/iqbal-lab-or...

"The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat." www.seattletimes.com/business/usd...

We have a position for an Assist Prof in Microbial Genomics in our School of III. Hod Joan Geoghegan will be happy to field questions if you are interested. No specific area of microbial genomics preferred so please do consider it www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOO184/a...

Assistant Prof post in bacterial genomics @unibirmingham.bsky.social Come and join us!! @imibirmingham.bsky.social www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOO184/a...

This one's for the eukaryotic microbes, and their researchers 🤓! Collection launch in Microbial Genomics @microbiologysociety.org giving all your wonderful weirdness a place to shine 🌟 #MicroSky #protistsonsky #protists #fungi #parasites #Microbiology 💻🧬 www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/micr...

Received two reviews on a paper I am a co-author on that was submitted the @natureportfolio.nature.com Scientific Reports. Both reviews were written by ChatGPT & clearly not edited with hallucinations. Shame on the editors for letting this unethical nonsense out the door.

I think about this quote a lot...

The webinar co-hosted by the AMR Policy Accelerator at the GSL is fast approaching! Next Thursday, the webinar covers the IPEA, the Zero Draft & the ongoing consultation led by the Quadripartite WHO, FAO, UNEP, WOAH. 📌28 Aug @ 15:00 CEST 🗳️Register: amrpolicy.org/events... #IDSky #clinmicro

If you remember how big the Human Microbiome Project was - the apparent disappearance of its main database will be shocking to you!

Garden art

Strike 2 from the incredibly important #Klebsiella transmission work from MLW, identifying maternal hands, cots and ward surfaces as major players. tl;dr Esp in low-income settings, investment in IPC is hugely important against AMR. #MicroSky #IDSky #GlobalHealth 💻🧬 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

VO: The Vaccine Ontology https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.12.669998v1

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

📢 The Carpentries is in Forbes! Our Directors @drkariljordan.bsky.social @erinstellabecker.bsky.social were interviewed by @jdrakephd.bsky.social for Forbes on The Carpentries' decision to withdrew from the $1.5M science grant due to new federal DEI rules: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

To all post-docs: The Genome Biology dept ‪@embl.org has an Independent faculty position. Fantastic place to set up your lab –great package: core funding, fantastic Ph.D. students, cutting edge core facilities & great colleagues. Closing date Sept 19th embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

I don’t have enough hats to tip for the bold move that @carpentries.carpentries.org just made.

If AI is so smart & my iPhone keeps upgrading OS every other night… why does the mail app still autocorrect “All the best” to “Allison the best”??? Besides how stupid that is in general, the only Alison in my contacts is spelt with one ‘L’ so you are not even spellchecking effectively…????

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...

Stellar work by graduate students to build this comprehensive dataset of antifungal resistance mechanisms. Kudos and congratulations to the Landry lab @christianlandry.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pleased to say that our preprint benchmarking Nanopore data for MLST, cgMLST, cgSNP & AMR typing from bacterial isolates is out! TL;DR you can get almost perfect results from 50x depth using live SUP basecalling with a GPU in under 20 hours #microsky#IDsky 🦠🧬🖥️ /1 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint where we analysed IS loads in 🦠 #Klebsiella pneumoniae lineages and found they're inversely associated with nutrient usage. We propose an insertional tolerance model, whereby IS can only insert into metabolically-tolerable sites. #IDSky #MicroSky 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists

Recently I learnt that EMBL-EBI has a free online course about AlphaFold — how it works, strengths and limitations, how to use it — and it's very good! There are also little quizzes and interactives. www.ebi.ac.uk/training/onl...

BIGSdb v1.51.4 has been released. This adds a new #Kaptive plugin for surface polysaccharide typing of Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella. github.com/kjolley/BIGS... for details. Kaptive is developed by @tomstantonmicro.bsky.social, @kelwyres.bsky.social , @katholt.bsky.social and colleagues.

A periodic table of bacteria?: Mapping bacterial diversity in trait space https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.11.664459v1

"Closure of the Fleming Fund risks undermining UK leadership on AMR." BSAC is seeking urgent clarification from the Government regarding the UK’s future leadership on antimicrobial resistance (#AMR), following reports that the Fleming Fund – the UK’s flagship global AMR programme – is set to close.

Finally online! Our latest research is out @nature.com: We show that non-antibiotic drugs can disrupt colonization resistance, raising the risk of enteric infections. rdcu.be/ewwrG

Wow, this completely ignores our 2021 paper on MALDI-TOF speciation of Kleb pneumoniae from variicola, quasipneumoniae etc pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34004273/ We even provide a web app to process your data and get accurate speciation maldityper.pasteur.fr

Register today for the 14th International Meeting on Microbial Epidemiological Markers (IMMEM XIV)! Session topics range from how genomics inform resistance profiling to pathogen surveillance in a One Health framework. Learn more: ow.ly/lBGs50WpOZs #IDSky #MedSky #clinmicro

Great opportunity for all #virology folks - the @microbiologysociety.org is looking for editors and an Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of General Virology! #MicroSky Being linked into a friendly community is one of the most precious things these days 😊🦠🧪 microbiologysociety.org/who-we-are/j...

Don't miss the chance to be a part of this exciting conference on microbial typing & genomics #IMMEMXIV. The theme this year is Microbial typing: from fundamental to daily microbiology. @escmid.bsky.social @esgem-sg.bsky.social Register today and see you in Porto! www.escmid.org/congress-eve...

Cross-border spread of a mosaic resistance (OXA-48) and virulence (aerobactin) plasmid in Klebsiella pneumoniae: a European Antimicrobial Resistance Genes Surveillance Network investigation, Europe, February 2019 to October 2024 https://doi.org/doi:10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2025.30.27.2500439

IMMEM is 2 months away! #MicroSky Don't miss the opportunity to be a part of this exciting conference on microbial typing & #genomics. The theme this year, Microbial typing: from fundamental to daily microbiology Register today and see you in Porto! www.escmid.org/congress-eve...

To understand why US science is currently being destroyed, take a close look at this: The "Abundance 2025" conference is being held in Sept. It is FILLED with rightwing money. Most notably the "Foundation for American Innovation," which is funded by billionaires that wish to privatize science. 1/

AI slows down experienced developers (against their expectations) in a randomized controlled trial of AI coding effectiveness. metr.org/Early_2025_A...

Huge News Coartem® Baby—1st malaria drug approved for newborns <5 kg It's a cherry-flavored mix of artemether (rapid parasite clearance) & lumefantrine (long-acting, prevents recrudescence)—dissolves in breast milk and optimized PK/PD for infant metabolism Not-for-profit launch planned in Africa

I've always found this frustrating. You or your child has a respiratory infection. It's not flu or COVID. Your doctor can only tell you, 'you have a virus'. Could it be a little bit more specific? We hope to help answer this question, non-invasively, and for free. 1/