MERMan Research Group (University of Manchester)

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: https://appliedmicrobiology.org/advocacy-policy/horizon-awards.html

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

Alekseis title slide up on the projector.

Image of Aleksei answering questions following his talk.

Sophie starting her presentation next to her title slide.

The last seminar of the year was another set of exciting talks from visitor @alekseiagapov.bsky.social and merfolk @sophiesomerville.bsky.social !

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

Have a happy and safe holiday! 🤶🏻 🎅🏻 🎄

Was so fun! Got so much feedback and tips for troubleshooting. Always a pleasure meeting MerMAN folx, I come back feeling appreciated 😊

Snacks + great science = our favourite combo 😄 🍪

Great to see such exciting science getting shared, thanks for having us involved 🙌

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!

And that’s a wrap for #MicroEvo25! Thank you to @microbiologysociety.org for organising such a fantastic event & to everyone in attendance for sharing such exciting science! Let’s do it again soon?

Massive congratulations to our own @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social for winning the poster prize at #MicroEvo25!! Her poster describes coalescence dynamics in hot spring microbial communities, and featured wonderful photos from Icelandic field work

Another fantastic poster presented by @knhanga.bsky.social at #MicroEvo25

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

Incredibly insightful talk this afternoon by @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social speaking about within-patient ciprofloxacin resistance in P. aeruginosa #MicroEvo25

Starting day two of #MicroEvo25 strong with our first MERMan speaker of the day! An amazing talk by @mattjago.bsky.social about mutational bias in E. coli 🧬