Two great talks from last week's seminar by Emma Wright: Mutation rates depend on the presence and density of cohabiting species, and Matt Thomas: The elements of mobile elements in microbiomes.

Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for sponsoring refreshments at our seminars.

Last week's seminar featured excellent talks from @fionapoulter.bsky.social on understanding the evolution of epidemic Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Holly Richardson on why heterogeneity matters: predicting antibiotic resistance in cystic fibrosis.
Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the nice snacks!

Kirsten is stood to the left of a slide which reads “the three-way interactions between gut bacteria, phage and the host”

Jeremy is stood to the right of a slide reading “mapping chromosome-plasmid interactions: a genome-wide knockout approach”

Two fantastic talks in our latest seminar: Kirsten Lim told us about her work on the effects of IgA on gut phage diversity, and Jeremy Dejardin shared his work mapping chromosome-plasmid interactions in E. coli

Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the best seminar snacks!

Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) at University of Birmingham Explore an exciting academic career as a Research Fellow (Postdoctoral). Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.

Two post-doctoral positions open in our lab. We're looking for people with expertise in molecular microbiology and/or genome-scale tools. Initially 3 yrs, posts could be extended for upto 8 yrs. If you'd like to know more about us take a look at www.graingerlab.com

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQY475/r...

F1AMR Scientific Meeting May 7th 2026: Live Programme What? F1AMR Network Scientific Meeting When? Thursday May 7th 2026Where? University of Manchester, UK At this fully hybrid event, we will hear presentations from colleagues in research, industry and t...

Our programme for May 7th (Manchester and online) is now live - in-person registration open until April 21st! Lots of great speakers including @mcmomany.bsky.social @aoifeodriscoll.bsky.social @normanvanrhijn.bsky.social @jon-otter.bsky.social www.fungalamr.org/post/f1amr-s...

The University of Manchester is pleased to be the UK host for MEEHubs2026. Registration now open!

We have an amazing lineup of speakers, Jasmine Ono, Stineke van Houte, and Sarah Coulthurst, & more virtually at other hubs.

We hope to see you here or online 3-5 Aug! meehubs2026.oa-event.com

Here’s the latest preprint from my work on evolved resistance to Type VI Secretion system (T6SS) weaponry, funded by a @wellcometrust.bsky.social Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship. So happy to see this out!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A screen in the centre shows a title slide in dark grey with microscope imagines of bacteriophages. The title in white reads “Regulatory Role of Lambda Q Protein in Late Gene Expression”. The speaker Xuan Chen is stood to the right of the screen.

In today’s seminar we heard about Lambda phage Q proteins and their role in gene expression from Xuan Chen 🧬

A huge thank you as always to @microbesng.bsky.social for the fantastic snacks! 🧁

Last week's seminar featured talks by Hannah on the culture enrichment of cystic fibrosis sputum samples and by Edoardo on the spatial and temporal tracking of antifungal resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus hyphal networks.

Cheers to @microbesng.bsky.social for their usual surprise snacks

We had an exciting talk at today's seminar, first on Polymicrobial interactions in Cystic Fibrosis @ambercutcliffe.bsky.social, and Coalescence in host spring microbial communities @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social.

Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the snack!

We had two interesting talks at today's seminar: Eric spoke about the multistep pharmacodynamics of multimodal antibiotics, and @laurasanrub.bsky.social spoke about the long-term evolution experiment in defenseless PA01.

Again, huge thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the snacks.

Today's seminar featured one of MERMan's PIs, @sarafederici.bsky.social, who discussed how phage therapy could be improved to target gut pathobionts in IBD.

Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the snacks.

(CODE M) Losing your head: how do bacterial viruses evolve into anti-competitor weapons? at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - (CODE M) Losing your head: how do bacterial viruses evolve into anti-competitor weapons? at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

🚨 PhD Studentship available! 🚨

We're hiring a UK student to start in Oct '26 via the BBSRC CODEM scheme. Full studentship plus £10k top-up PA. Study the mysterious ZOMBIE PHAGES 🧟 🦠 with our fabulous @mermanchester.bsky.social and @uommib.bsky.social communities!

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

This week's seminar featured two talks.
@normanvanrhijn.bsky.social talked about fungal pathogens, and @taoranfu.bsky.social discussed population-level defence systems in bacteria.

Huge thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for the snacks!

Nominations are now open for the 2026 Horizon Awards 🏆

Do you know someone driving real impact in applied microbiology — from public health and policy to food security, D&I, or the environment?

Nominate them now: appliedmicrobiology.org/advocacy-policy/horizon-...

We're Hiring! We're looking for a postdoc with bioinformatics/modelling skills to join us in an exciting microbiome ecology project in Manchester (deadline 1st March) www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Huge thank you as always to @microbesng.bsky.social for our fantastic seminar snacks 🍪

Ryan is stood to the right of his title slide which reads: Smart-Phage: designing synthetic bacteriophage to defeat superbugs

Dolan is stood to the right of his title slide which reads: modelling the fallopian tube in a microfluidic setting

From phages to fallopian tubes - in last weeks seminar we heard about designing synthetic phages from Ryan ⚙️

And Dolan from the Tank lab @raveentank.bsky.social spoke about their microfluidic fallopian tube models 🧫

Ingrid is stood to the left of a screen showing a title slide which reads “Long term evolution experiment - investigating the evolutionary trajectories of defenseless PAO1 (dPAO1v2) strain exposed to mobile genetic elements

CD is stood to the left of a screen showing a red title slide, white text reads “The first long-term community evolutionary experiment in archaea”

This week’s seminar featured two talks about long-term evolution experiments! 🧬🕣

Ingrid talked about contamination detection for Pseudomonas LTEEs & CD shared their results of archaeal commmunity LTEEs

Huge thank you to @microbesng.bsky.social for the snacks! 🍪

A screen in the centre shows a slide titled “Culture cycle dependent mutation rate”, Ziang Zhang stands to the right looking at a the audience

A very interesting talk about culture cycle dependence of mutation rates by Ziang Zhang 🧬

Accompanied by fantastic snacks thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social 🍰

Logan and his title slide

Last ECR talk of the day from Logan Sauers on IgA transcriptomics #UoM_EEday

I was absolutely delighted to give a talk at the University of Manchester Ecology and Evolution day yesterday. An incredible collection of talks and posters were presented and we had some great discussions - thank you to @whelanfj.bsky.social and @knightjar.bsky.social for organising!

Sharon introducing herself and her research.

So excited to have @szytynska.bsky.social kicking off our Evolution & Ecology day at @manchester.ac.uk today! #UoM_EEday

This week we kicked off the new year with a great talk about endosymbiosis evolution by Dan Malumphy 🔬

Thank you to @microbesng.bsky.social for supplying us with snacks! 🍪

UKRI doctoral training investment set to power UK growth UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) invests in next-generation doctoral training to boost UK innovation and economic growth.

It’s official: we’ve been awarded a UKRI Engineering Biology Focal Award to train the next generation of microbial bioengineer PhDs. An exciting collaboration between @officialuom.bsky.social @liverpooluni.bsky.social
Projects will be advertised in February 2026!
www.ukri.org/news/ukri-do...

We did a genome. Not just any genome. A Eukaryote! Telomeres, centromeres, introns! What the hell?! With megabrains @guyleonard.bsky.social Tom Richards, Fiona Savory at Oxford. A fun collaboration! Keep em peeled for more algal preprints coming soon!

Thanks to examiners @jpjhall.bsky.social and Mato Lagator 🥳

Congratulations to Dr Rana Alruthaya, who successfully defended her PhD today on AMR diversity in Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from non-CF bronchiectasis patients. She's the 10th PhD student from MERMan. Well done Rana! @dannagifford.bsky.social @brockhurstlab.bsky.social @knightjar.bsky.social

Zahraa standing with her name placard on the wall of PhD graduates

Congratulations to PhD student Zahraa Albaqsami @zahraaalbaqsami.bsky.social for successfully defending her PhD today! Zahraa's thesis looked at thermal adaptation and mutation in the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarious.

Thanks to examiners @rokkrasovec.bsky.social and Thorsten Allers!

Whelan lab cake for the win at the Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics and MCF Winter Celebration 🥳
#bakeoff #whelanlab