Since its first isolation in 1935, several thousand Clostridioides difficile isolates have been collected & analyzed. In #ClinMicroRev: an overview of the current C. difficile population structure, including a summary of the 5 main clades. Read now: asm.social/2TC

CRUK goes green [OA] news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w...

Sad news on the passing of Prof. Andreas Engel, a pioneer in the field of cryo-EM (shared with the 3DEM community by Henning Stahlberg). Andreas' kindness, warmth, and enthusiasm for science and his colleagues will be missed.

ROCKET 🚀 inference-time optimization of AlphaFold to fit structural data is published! rdcu.be/fa9YH Since our preprint, we’ve pushed it to regimes where other methods break: low resolution, weak signal, real experimental edge cases. Here’s what we learned: 1/15

Associate Senior Lecturer/Assistant Professor position in Molecular Microbiology available at Lund University, Sweden: lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

My late husband would have been so excited about this news! Scientists discover new heavy proton-like particle at CERN share.google/8aKm98yYU5NE...

New paper from us. If you're interested in genetic manipulation of Clostridia, we have a few new tools for you! 36 new plasmids - all available from @addgene.bsky.social www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #microsky

"My name may be forgotten when it comes, but the time will arrive when great outbreaks of cholera will be things of the past. And it is the knowledge of the way in which the disease is propagated which will cause them to disappear" Happy birthday to John Snow! His name & his work is not forgotten.

It depends, on the A100 or the H200?

For the first time, researchers have simulated nearly every chemical reaction in a living bacterial cell go.nature.com/4lrAulM

🦠 “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘂𝘀 — 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘄?” Historian @kirchhelle.bsky.social chats with 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗮 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗲 & 𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗘𝗯𝗱𝗲𝗻 about revival of phage biology & phage therapy as antibiotics fail. 🎧 2024 BBC Radio 4 — listen worldwide: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #phage #phagesky #microsky

I've written a review on what I think is an extremely exciting direction in cryo-EM: Cryo-EM of endogenous membrane proteins in their native lipid bilayer Open access in Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics: doi.org/10.1017/S003...

It's been a privilege to be involved with this. #FRET approaches have so many potential applications for linking in vitro studies with in cell behaviours, but lacked a consistent benchmarking molecule that works across systems: not any more! #IDRs #smFRET #singlemolecule

Q-scores are calculated for atomic models derived from 3D electron microscopy maps, measure how well the model fits the map and reflect the quality of the map itself. 🔗 Find out more: https://ow.ly/4Vkx50Ynrxi @ucsandiego @ActaCrystD @IUCr #CryoEM #QScores #Validation

What happens when you combine all that is known about a large protein with almost 2000 residues with Alphafold2, new experiments, and in-depth structural bioinformatics? www.life-science-alliance.org/content/9/4/...

Are you looking for an interdisciplinary PhD? I have a 4 year PhD opportunity in my group to work on devising enzymatic route to oligonucleotide synthesis - combines protein engineering, directed evolution & X-ray crystallography at York with nucleotide chemistry at MIB, University of Manchester.

Having made the transition from primarily X-ray crystallography to cryoEM, this resource would have been invaluable.

What’s holding back clinical use of phage therapy in the UK? Our workshop last year brought together international experts, biotech and regulators to find out Meeting Report out now in Nature Microbiology with our take on the challenges and opportunities facing the UK phage therapy sector

Cryo-EM structures of bacteriophage T4 portal-neck assembly intermediates reveal a viral genome retention mechanism pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41654509/ #cryoem

It was great to play a part in this study, using all of the work on alphaproteobacterial GTAs to help inform and identify key tell-tale patterns of GTAs in the human gut microbiome. I'm sure there will be many great followup studies on these fascinating particles. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

These are the life-blood of science. All that lab knowledge lost, careers ended. All the investment in their training to this point lost to academic research. That's the human cost of UKRI's "review period to develop implementation"

I know what they're getting at with the "could put jobs at risk" but can we focus on the immediate impact? Each suspended round at MRC and BBSRC means about 80 fewer postdoc jobs and the retrospective cuts at MRC add another 30 or so

We need to be shouting about the effects of this on junior researchers from the roofs, writing to our MPs. We are risking a "missing generation" of researchers.

Would have been good to have added an apology for the lack of comms so far this year, particularly for those that submitted grants to UKRI applicant-led funding streams in Sept 2025, as these are highly unlikely to be funded (www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...)

I am sorry. We all knew the three buckets were coming. We are all prepared for a shift in priority. But this message does nothing for all the UK scientists dependent on project grant funding. It doesn’t actually give any information www.ukri.org/news/open-le...

Finally comms from UKRI - on a Sunday evening. No mention of the hundreds of ECRs who will see their careers ended by these decisions and notably no explanation for MRC retrospectively applying cuts and wasting all the work that went into writing, reviewing and scoring applications - £millions

Dr Sir Ian If this statement is supposed to reassure that everything is under control, you are sadly very wrong. Strategic change needs managing to take the community with you, what’s happening now with MRC, BBSRC, STFC etc looks like panic & smells of desperation. Do better

At a time when the UK should be capitalising on its global reputation as a great place to do science, this is an enormous own goal. I am so sorry for all those who jobs are going to be impacted.

Leaks everywhere and finally we get an official statement, one that somehow manages to say a lot while; No timelines. No clarity. No acknowledgement of impact on ECRs whose careers depend UKRI funding. “Later this year” isn’t a plan. And the sector deserves better than reassurance without detail.

Startling that this is being broadcast in the absence of any public communications by @ukri.org The academic community has a right to expect to be told first hand what is happening with response mode funding and what the immediate future looks like www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Quite timely that Sir Ian Chapman, UKRI CEO, will be in front of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on Tuesday next week… 👀

Dear colleagues in science - it is time to stop normalising the emerging fascism of the US by attending conferences there as though everything is fine.

This is an official White House post. The ignorance of this administration knows no bounds. Which continent to they think they are on?

Three UK research-intensive universities have revealed they will not be renewing subscriptions to Elsevier journals amid concerns over the cost of a nationally agreed deal, reports @jgro-the.bsky.social #academicsky https://ow.ly/Aaw750Y0I1u

Just watching live transcripts of Trump's Davos speech. BBC verify is having to work to maximum capacity to keep up with his verbal diarrhoea of lies.

An open letter organized by US-based researchers working in Greenland opposes any takeover of the territory go.nature.com/3YBbU7d

Our annual collection of exceptional papers in cell biology is here! These articles advance our understanding of the structures and processes at the core of diverse living systems and human disease. www.life-science-alliance.org/content/cell...

Congratulations to the new Dr @bexx-menday.bsky.social! And huge thanks to fantastic examiners Peter Rosenthal and Ellie Harrison

Our paper with @robfagan.bsky.social @jasonwils.bsky.social and Louis-Charles Fortier on #phage has been included in this year's LSA special collection. www.life-science-alliance.org/content/cell...

The ecological roles of bacterial #immune systems are poorly understood. Rafael Custodio @ellinoralseth.bsky.social @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @brownlab.bsky.social & Edze Westra explore how mobile genetic elements and bacterial defenses shape #microbiome structure and function 🧪

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

70 teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute & observed weekly over 5 months. 80% of spoons disappeared; spoon halflife~81 days. Communal room halflife lower than in specific labs. 250 spoons annually required to maintain 70 spoon population. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Thrilled to present the findings from my 2025 #SUREscheme project - 'Investigating the influence of latent bacteriophages on healthcare-associated C. difficile lysogens' - at the showcase yesterday evening. Huge thanks to @funnirudh.bsky.social and @robfagan.bsky.social for making this possible!

Nottingham university to close its Microbiology course ☹️

By studying the process through which a soil bacterium naturally produces a well-known drug, scientists have discovered a powerful antibiotic that could help to fight drug-resistant infections go.nature.com/4oQ8bxO

Chris Russo and Anastasiia Gusach have developed a new method to prepare #cryoEM samples that avoids protein damage during freezing Read more: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/a-new-method... #LMBResearch

Structural basis of multitasking by the apicoplast DNA polymerase from Plasmodium falciparum pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41099714/ #cryoem