Earth Day 🌍
Supporting plant health and sustainable systems - both in research and in practice - feels more important than ever #earthday

One week left to apply for a plant health vacation studentship 🌱✨

Based in Manchester, working on predatory bacteria and plant health 🦠🍅

Supervised by me!

MEEHubs26 abstract deadline has been extended to April 26th. Come showcase your awesome Microbiology w. scientists worldwide!
meehubs2026.oa-event.com

🦠 What: awesome conference in microbial ecology and evolution, with hubs around the world
🦠 Where: Sunny* Manchester
🦠 When: 3rd-5th August 2026

Congrats University Challenge Winners!!

WINNERS 🏆💜

We couldn’t be prouder of our incredible team for winning University Challenge!

This win marks a special milestone. With five victories, we’re the most successful university in the history of the competition, joint with Imperial College London.

Well done team 👏🏆

📢 Excited to be offering a Plant Health vacation studentship this summer on plant disease biocontrol and predatory bacteria! Supervised by me at Manchester Uni! @manchester.ac.uk

If interested—or know someone who might be—please share and apply! my.rsb.org.uk/services.php... 28th April deadline 🌿🍅🦠

🔊 Looking for a Research Assistant in Bacterial Evolution to join my lab 🦠
🥼Main duties: Research (AMR + microbiome) + lab assistance.
⏲️ Post duration: 30 months
🗓️ Closing date for applications: 20th April 2026
💰 Salary: ~£35k

Details and how to apply: tinyurl.com/2a3v66y7

Please share!

📣 Still time to apply to this bioinformatics postdoc position with us! If you have any questions, please DM me here or send me an email. Deadline 3 April.

A hot vimto is £2.50 from the Michael smith cafe 🤣 the uni must be making an absolute killing from a single bottle of squash 💰

All that time sat next to @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social watching him work away at this - absolutely buzzing it's finally out there!! Well done!

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...

Resistance mutation supply modulates the benefit of CRISPR immunity against virulent phages Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...

New preprint!

Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠

Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare!

An epic effort by Rosanna Wright

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Logan and his title slide

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

This was a brilliant talk, what an amazing career so far - I never knew there were so many different types of placenta!! @evol-molly.bsky.social's work on miRNA and pregnancy outcomes is SO important.

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!

💕

Rebecca presenting a slide introducing bdellovibrio

@bexlowrypalms.bsky.social up next speaking about her work on bdellovibrio #UoM_EEday

I'll believe it when I see it, fortune cookie 😂

It's been a wild week for MERMan! Congratulations Rana, you are incredible ✨✨✨

So proud of @zahraaalbaqsami.bsky.social - you are amazing ✨✨✨✨

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

Rowan standing in front of a title slide reading “defective viral genomes in natural infections”

Lavish standing in front of a title slide reading “trade-offs in bacterial evolution in the context of temperate phage infection”

We had two fantastic visiting speakers today

MERMan alumnus @rowancallumg.bsky.social spoke about his current work with viral cheating in influenza with @asherleeks.bsky.social

And @lavishaparab.bsky.social talked about phage infection trade-offs

Thanks to @microbesng.bsky.social for our snacks!

More amazing posters presented by our researchers @zahraaalbaqsami.bsky.social and Rana at #MicroEvo25!

What a week! Thanks to everyone who attended the UK Phage Therapy workshop and #MicroEvo25 in Liverpool… every talk, poster, question, chat, and round of applause helps to build our microbial evolution community! Thanks to @microbiologysociety.org and @ukri.org for support

So proud of @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social, so much effort goes into everything she does and her presentations always have such amazing hand drawn figures - very well deserved 👏🏼

Jamie Hall on stage opening the conference.

So excited to be here for @microbiologysociety.org ‘s #microevo25 meeting!

Fantastic talk about the impact of inflammation on Pseudomonas aeruginosa evolution by @taoranfu.bsky.social #MicroEvo25

Come and see @willpjsmith.bsky.social at poster 71 to find out more about microbial warfare! #MicroEvo25

Learn about hot spring microbial communities from @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social at poster 62 🌋 #MicroEvo25

Find out more about DNA repair protein single-molecule tracking from @bexlowrypalms.bsky.social at poster 18🔬 #MicroEvo25

Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases Although metagenomic sequencing has revealed a rich microbial biodiversity in the mammalian gut, methods to genetically alter specific species in the microbiome are highly limited. Here, we introduce ...

Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs