New PDRA position with @knightjar.bsky.social @coytelab.bsky.social & me

Community assembly processes in soil microbiomes with focus on bioinformatics and computational modelling of data from field and lab experiments

www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

We’re looking for a postdoc to investigate Pseudomonas viridiflava virulence across diverse plant lineages. The 3yr position will combine plant and microbial molecular biology to understand core processes of infection - email for more info & apply online @ www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

We’re looking for a postdoc to join the Hendrickson lab!
The project will involve dissecting the molecular mechanisms of a fascinating mobile element in our honeybee biocontrol phages. Sound like something you would be interested in? Get in touch! Details:
jobs.canterbury.ac.nz/jobdetails/a...

Individually redundant effectors are collectively required for bacterial pathogen virulence Abstract. Host specificity of a plant pathogen is defined by its effector complement. However, it remains unclear whether the full complement is required f

Delighted to see this published in ISMEJ at the end of 2025!! Building on our previous work with the Psa-kiwifruit pathosystem, we competed Psa effector knockout strains against one another, across hosts, to more sensitively identify effector requirements. 🥝🌿
academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

Congrats - super exciting news & so well deserved!! 🥝✨

New @genomejournal.bsky.social special collection “Early Leads: Plant Biology Side Projects with Big Potential”. We’re looking for short, self-contained studies with big impact. Deadline July 31st, 2026. OA, no pub. fees, ECRs!
Questions? Reach out to us (Olivia and @zoejolylopez.bsky.social)

Equally stoked to check out the UBC botanical garden and have a look at all their kiwifruit vines!! They have a gorgeous and incredibly comprehensive Asian garden section planted within a native coastal forest.

Delighted to present on behalf of the BENEFIT project in the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Systems showcase @ Cultivating Resilience summit this week! (+ a lightening talk + a poster, for completeness' sake...) 🦠🌱

Genomic correlates of tailocin sensitivity in Pseudomonas syringae Abstract. Phage-derived bacteriocins, also referred to as tailocins, are structures encoded by bacterial genomes and deployed into the extracellular enviro

Here’s published version of our manuscript using GWAS to investigate tailocin sensitivity in Pseudomonas syringae. TL:DR pretty clear LPS is tailocin receptor but also that P.syringae often completely swaps out its entire O antigen biosynth pathway w/ recombination

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

Two full-time positions | Bioinformatician (m/f/d) + Applications Specialist (m/f/d) - Molecular Biology The Genome Facility at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön is seeking to fill two positions (full time) to support and expand our core facility services.

Two new positions are available at the MPI for Evolutionary Biology to support development of our genomics facility. Both stand to become permanent. Both offer a ton of opportunity to engage in a wide range of creative science.

Pls repost 🙏

www.evolbio.mpg.de/3838377/job_...

Fig. 1. Here, we visualize how the impact of iterative microbiome passaging may differ with time.

Editor’s Pick: Terrence H. Bell et al. believe that there is no single “best” approach to iterative microbiome passaging but that experimental design choices can have substantial impacts on outcomes. Learn more: https://doi.org/10.1094/PBIOMES-11-24-0113-P

Lab to field: Challenges and opportunities for plant biology Plant-microbe research offers many choices of model and strain and whether a field-first or lab-first approach is best. However, differences between l…

1/2 What's best: a field-first or lab-first approach? No easy answers but differences between lab and field should not be seen as failure but motivate further inquiry and allow complementary discovery. Read our thoughts on this here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We are proud to announce the Keynote Speakers for ISME20, held in Auckland, New Zealand, from 16 - 21 August 2026! These eight internationally renowned microbial ecologists will each give a 45-minute presentation at the symposium.
View them on isme-microbes.org/isme20-keyno...
#isme20

From genes to epidemics: Genomic insights into bacterial plant pathogen emergence Bacterial phytopathogens are major causal agents of newly emerging plant diseases. The roles of both agricultural practices and the alteration of bact…

Happy to share the first paper from my lab! We wrote a review on bacterial plant pathogen evolution 🧫 🌱 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @microsky.bsky.social @plantsky.bsky.social

Functional regimes define soil microbiome response to environmental change - Nature Experimental perturbation of soil pH leads to a generalizable model of the soil microcosm comprising three functional regimes with distinct mechanisms linking environmental change to metabolite dynami...

Published in Nature today! Here, we sought to systematically ask how natural community's metabolism changes with the environment. A simple consumer-resource model can predict N-cycle metabolism (nitrate use) and, more importantly, the mechanism behind its change.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Extremely honoured to be a #2025ISMPMI travel awardee this year, and to be able to present the results of my masters degree all the way from NZ! Come and see me at P-319 to learn about the bacterial microbiome of Actinidia (kiwifruit).

Rapid and sustained differentiation of disease-suppressive phyllosphere microbiomes in tomato following experimental microbiome selection - Environmental Microbiome Background Microbial-based treatments to protect plants against phytopathogens typically focus on soil-borne disease or the aboveground application of one or a few biocontrol microorganisms. However, ...

Thrilled to see this work published!

We analyzed foliar disease suppressive microbial communities from tomato to identify taxa and functions associated with suppression. Congratulations to lead author @hanareiaehau.bsky.social, and co-authors Javad Sadeghi and Terrence Bell!

tinyurl.com/4pnxxuus

Pseudomonas syringae subpopulations cooperate by coordinating flagellar and type III secretion spatiotemporal dynamics to facilitate plant infection Nature Microbiology - Single-cell gene expression analysis reveals phenotypic heterogeneity to enable bacterial specialization over the course of plant colonization.

How Bacteria Outsmart Plants—Then Flee the Scene!

#MicroSky #PlantScience #Pseudomonas

Our new research in Nature Microbiology uncovers the sophisticated teamwork of Pseudomonas syringae, a notorious plant pathogen.

🔗 rdcu.be/egczU

Pseudomonas syringae subpopulations cooperate by coordinating flagellar and type III secretion spatiotemporal dynamics to facilitate plant infection - Nature Microbiology Single-cell gene expression analysis reveals phenotypic heterogeneity to enable bacterial specialization over the course of plant colonization.

Pseudomonas syringae subpopulations cooperate by coordinating flagellar and type III secretion spatiotemporal dynamics to facilitate plant infection
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics - 2025 meeting

I'm delighted to announce that the 2025 @microbiologysociety.org meeting on "Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics" will be held in Liverpool 26-27 November 2025! Abstract submission will open soon... #microsky 🧪🧫🦠 microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...

Genomic Biosurveillance of the Kiwifruit Pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae Biovar 3 Reveals Adaptation to Selective Pressures in New Zealand Orchards A hopF1c effector loss variant has emerged in commercial kiwifruit orchards, mediated by the introduction of copper resistance elements into the population.

Now published in Molecular Plant Pathology! bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Great to see this preprint out, based on Haileigh Patterson's MSc work with me, Matt, & Jay! 🥝🌿

Differential Responses of Methylobacterium and Sphingomonas Species to Multispecies Interactions in the Phyllosphere Leaf-associated bacterial populations of Methylobacterium and Sphingomonas in two- and three-member synthetic communities on Arabidopsis thaliana display distinct spatial structures and population dy....

It’s finally out! The last paper from my PhD!

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Stoked to have my picture on the February cover of Plant, Cell & Environment! Massive win for Psa enthusiasts everywhere 🌿
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Environmental Science & Chemistry building with snow in the foreground.

Snow covering spruce trees along a valley walkway

It's a snowy end of the year at UTSC! ❄️

🚨PhD Opportunity - please share!🚨

We’re hiring a PhD student to start Sept 2025: how do bacteria ‘tame’ phage parasites, and turn them into deadly Tailocins?

Come join me, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social, Patrick Cai &
@raveentank.bsky.social as we study ZOMBIE PHAGES!

findaphd.com/phds/project...

The spread of these effector loss variants is currently limited, and they appear unlikely to cause more severe symptoms than the current population. We recommend ongoing genome biosurveillance in orchards to enable early detection and management of variants of interest.

We carried out pathogenicity and competition assays to understand the risk of these HopF1c loss variants spreading & revisited the orchards these isolates emerged in for further surveillance.

While effector loss is rare in commercial orchards, we observed the loss of the effector HopF1c, mediated by the integration of (increasingly widespread) copper resistance-encoding ICEs!