🚨 Save the Date | JAMS15 Symposium 🚨

🎉For the first time ever, the JAMS Symposium lands in Brisbane!🎉

📅 31 July 2026
📍 Translational Research Institute (TRI), Brisbane.
🧪 Call for abstracts opening soon — start thinking about what you’d love to present!

New paper out in @pnas.org, and it made the cover! 👁️

We represent plasmids as circles and mutations as dots, resembling an eye, because in this paper we literally 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ plasmids evolve.

‼️Check Paula’s 🧵 and the paper👇

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

As we culture our way into another year, we’re incubating big ideas, strong collaborations, and plenty of scientific curiosity.

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and scientifically successful New Year! 🧪🥂🦠🔬

Serving facts, fun, and a little friendly contamination. 🤩
End-of-year micro trivia = success! 🎉😄

Shout out to our amazing sponsors for the amazing prizes 🤩
@eppendorf_official @illuminainc @agrf_genomics @bmglabtech @nikonaustralia We are so grateful! 🧪

Thank you to everyone for coming🫵🏼😌

BrisJAMs End of Year Trivia Get tickets on Humanitix - BrisJAMs End of Year Trivia. The Burrow, 52 Russell St, West End QLD 4101, Australia. Thursday 4th December 2025. Find event information.

📅 Thursday 4 December
⏰ 6:00–7:30 pm
📍 The Burrow, Beer Garden Room, West End
👥 Teams up to 6 | $5 per person
🍟 Registerations include a bowl of chips per team.
🔗Follow the link (events.humanitix.com/brisjams-end...) to sign up.

Its been amazing being part of Bris-JAMS :)

#microsky

Genome sequencing for prevention of health-care-associated bacterial infections Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 10 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41579-025-01254-yMicrobial whole-genome sequencing is an important element of health-care-associated infection (HAI) prevention strategies. Focusing on specific high-priority antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens, this Review outlines the epidemiology and microbiology of HAIs and discusses the role of whole-genome sequencing in HAI prevention and surveillance.

New online! Genome sequencing for prevention of health-care-associated bacterial infections

The pathogenic bacteria Shigella avoids detection inside host cells by degrading RNF213, the protein responsible for sensing the presence of intracellular pathogens.

Read more in the eLife Insight Article: buff.ly/1mIc6m0

🚀 Thinking about life beyond academia?
Join BrisJAMS and Australian Society of Microbiology Qld Branch, this November for an inspiring evening of stories, insights, and real-world advice from scientists who’ve successfully built careers outside the academic path!🌟
6 November 2025, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Enhanced virulence and stress tolerance are signatures of epidemiologically successful Shigella sonnei
@sydneylmiles.bsky.social @katholt.bsky.social
🙏to transformative collaborative effort

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you everyone for attending last night's BrisJAMS session and our three wonderful speakers for sharing valuable insights into their research.
🔬💡🧫🙌 😎 😁
#MicrobiologyForAll #BacterialInfections #ViralPhylogeny #AntibioticDevelopment #Biofilms #Microbiology2025 #jamsbrisbane

The 2024 rankings of bacterial threats

Hello BrisJAMS Community 😎

BrisJAMS returns this September with some scintilating talks featuring three fantastic speakers.

📅 Wednesday, 3 September 2025
🕕 6:00–7:30 PM
📍 The Burrow, West End

This free event is open to all in microbiology: students, researchers, and industry pros alike.

Superbugs could kill millions more and cost $2tn a year by 2050, models show Exclusive: Research on burden of antibiotic resistance for 122 countries predicts dire economic and health outcomes

Superbugs could kill millions more and cost $2tn a year by 2050, models show www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Dont forget to join us for our Antimirobial resistance special JAMS session this Wednesday, 23rd July (6-7.30 pm)😎

Hello BrisJAMS Community :)

BrisJAMS returns this July with an Antimicrobial Resistance Special featuring three fantastic speakers.

📅 Wednesday, 23 July 2025
🕕 6:00–7:30 PM
📍 The Burrow, West End
🍽 Free food provided!
This free event is open to all in the microbiology community.

1. Prof. Greg Cook (QUT)
The role of efflux pumps in multi-drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

2. Michelle Novais de Paula (UQ)
Breaking bacterial resistance with synergistic combinations.

3. Dr. Jiarui Sun (UQ)
Antimicrobial resistance genes in pristine Antarctic soils.

This is wild!
Engineering E. coli bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol (Tylenol)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Don’t forget to sign up for the PacBio & AGRF special free event this Wednesday at 6 PM! We sure can do a lot at a good old pub! 😎 So join us this time for some scintillating microbiology talks at Burrow, Beer Garden Room, Brisbane 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬🧬🧪🧫🔬🎤

Don’t forget to sign up for the PacBio & AGRF special free event this Wednesday at 6 PM!

We sure can do a lot at a good old pub! 😎
So join us this time for some scintillating microbiology talks at Burrow, Beer Garden Room, Brisbane 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬🧬🧪🧫🔬🎤

Introducing 2025 EMCRA Committee Member - Dr. Tanuka Sen!

😀 What is your role in EMCRA?
EMCRA Retreat Coordinator 🧘‍♀️

🤪 Any fun fact you would like to share with us?
I love exploring new restaurants🍽️ & cafes ☕️ and secretly rating them as a professional food critic💯 :P

😋 What is your favourite food?
Chicken Biryani 🥘

🧐 Favourite quote?
"Set your heart upon your work but never its reward" ❤️💼

🎤 Featured Talks & Speakers:
🔹 Dr. Axayacatl Gonzalez
Senior Bioprocess Engineer – IDEA bio, The University of Queensland.
Talk Title: Building Communities: A Synthetic Biology Approach to Assemble Robust Microbial Communities to Restore Soil Health and Productivity

Zoom into a human cell infected by Shigella, the bacteria behind dysentery. Using cryo-EM, @leaswistak.bsky.social and team revealed how it pierces cells with molecular syringes. Stunning science at the nanoscale.

@enningalab.bsky.social @jytinevez.bsky.social @nanoimaging.bsky.social

#CryoEM

Representative images showing DAPI, and rbmA, rbmC, bap1, and vpsR smFISH fluorescence signals and heatmaps of per-cell-volume fluorescence signal as a function of x, y position for n = 5 replicate WT V. cholerae biofilms with the largest biovolumes. Scale bars represent 5 µm.

Bacterial biofilms are important for disease development. This study develops imaging tech to probe spatiotemporal patterns of #Vibrio cholerae #biofilm gene expression, showing that temporal & spatial patterns are established by QS & c-di-GMP, respectively @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3Fga1GX

The nucleoid of rapidly growing Escherichia coli localizes close to the inner membrane and is organized by transcription, translation, and cell geometry - Nature Communications The mechanisms underlying bacterial chromosome configuration are not fully understood. Here, Spahn et al. show that the Escherichia coli nucleoid adopts a condensed, membrane-proximal configuration du...

I forgot to post about this recent paper - exciting work led by @michriscopy.bsky.social showing clearest evidence yet for transertion strongly tethering the bacterial nucleoid to the membrane during fast growth. It was a pleasure to contribute a little 🔬🦠🧫 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Shigella flexneri evades LPS ubiquitylation through IpaH1.4-mediated degradation of RNF213 - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Naydenova, Boyle and Pathe et al. report that Shigella uses the ubiquitin E3 ligase IpaH1.4 to evade lipopolysaccharide ubiquitylation in infected cells by degrading the host E3 ligase RNF213. Using c...

RNF213, a host E3 ligase, ubiquitylates LPS to mark cytosol-invading bacteria for autophagy. But how do cytosol-adapted bacteria escape? We found that Shigella's E3 ligase IpaH1.4 blocks LPS ubiquitylation by degrading RNF213 via the proteasome.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We use these as well here at Blaskovich lab, IMB, University of Queensland, plus at Tang lab, Dunn School University of Oxford.

🛠️ ’SICKO’ – presented in January's most-read Tools and Resources paper – lets researchers quantify the C. elegans microbiome: elifesciences.org/articles/102...

Learn more about publishing your tool…