Michael Brockhurst

Phage therapy offers a powerful tool against AMR infections—but only if we move from isolated cases to coordinated systems. The first initiative of the ASM Health Unit, led by Colleen Kraft and Dev Mittar, will tackle this. Delighted by this scientific leadership, join us!

asm.org/about-asm/as...

New preprint out on bioRxiv!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread?

Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵

Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins - Nature A common mechanism of inhibition of the essential lipid II flippase MurJ by three distinct phage-encoded single-gene lysis proteins provides insights into potential new targets for antimicrobial devel...

Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Co-occurrence is associated with horizontal gene transfer across marine bacteria independent of phylogeny Abstract. Understanding the drivers and consequences of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a key goal of microbial evolution research. Although co-occurring

Now out & nicely formatted in @isme-microbes.bsky.social

A big analysis of ocean genomes & metagenomes co-led by former postdocs, now PIs, @gmdouglas.bsky.social & @cyanophage.bsky.social along with co-PIs @lbobay.bsky.social & Samuel Chaffron.

A few highlights... 🧵 (1/n)

doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE!
#BOTD in 1988.
Keep on evolving!

#science #evolution #microbiology

Now published: our work using phylodynamics from surveillance data to quantify and experimentally validate the fitness impact of antibiotic resistance determinants & how this changes with patterns of antibiotic use: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you Mike! I encourage your colleagues to join the new initiative from ASM Health to develop and execute on synergies with phage therapy. Would be great to involve multiple societies and NGO's here as appropriate, as we share common goals.
asm.org/about-asm/as...

Thanks for the heads up Vaughn — will check it out and sign up 🙌

Two cartoon images of children with plasmids for faces about to fight. Commentators are saying "Plasmid-borne CRISPR-Cas systems provide significant defensive benefits" and "Yes, but toxin-antitoxin systems on competitor plasmids constrain the offensive CRISPR-Cas benefit"

Out now in @plosbiology.org : our big joint effort on the role of #CRISPR in plasmid competition. Read on for a really fun (I’m biased ok) analysis of how a defence system has new selective pressures when it’s mobile
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... 1/6

Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social :
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Up to what degree of interspecific genetic distance is it possible to form viable and fertile hybrids? A strange species of paramecium breaks the record:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Burmeister Lab: Studying Microbial Evolution and Extinction ​Our research integrates evolutionary biology and microbiology, using bacteria and phage as study systems to address fundamental questions in both fields. ​ ​We study microbial evolution, a...

Alita Burmeister (@aburmeister.bsky.social) is looking to hire a postdoc (or potentially a PhD student) for projects on phage resistance and evolution. The position description is posted to the Eco-Evo Jobs wiki and also available on her lab's website (arburmeister.weebly.com).

MENI is back! Join us in Dublin this August 2026 for our 3rd Meeting for Microbial Evolution in Ireland. We are delighted to have @rachelmwheatley.bsky.social @drrebeccajhall.bsky.social @jpjhall.bsky.social and @tweethinking.bsky.social join us as keynote speakers this year. miniurl.com/MENI

Cancer therapies exploit DNA repair defects to kill tumours. We asked whether the same logic could constrain antibiotic resistance evolution...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

Thanks Zam 🙌

But some ways skin the cat faster and more predictably than others… More on the evolvability of different lineages coming soon(ish)!

Thanks Rich! 🙌

Thanks Jesse!

Thanks Alan 😮‍💨

Key take-aways:
There are lots of insights here for how to diagnose and manage resistance more effectively… but most important #1 for chronic infections is finding out if resistance is there BEFORE you start to treat! - doable, cheap, likely to delay resistance

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Continuing to treat already resistant infections tends to drive ever higher resistance: evolution doesn’t stop at the breakpoint folks!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

But, in low diversity infections costs pose no barrier to increasing resistance, driven by recurrent selective sweeps of costly resistance mutations. As such, fitness trade-offs can be leveraged to reduce resistance provided there is ecological competition.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Key take-aways:
Resistance is costly. In some patients with high diversity this leads to oscillating resistance levels as susceptible and resistant subpopulations alternate driven by antibiotic selection on a resistance:growth trade off.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Key take-aways:
Selection of pre-existing resistance predominated and accelerated emergence of breakpoint resistance relative to more stochastic processes of spontaneous mutations or strain immigration

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Key take-aways:
Cipro resistance emerged by 3 main eco/evo mechanisms
1. Selection for pre-existing resistance
2. Spontaneous mutations
3. Immigration of resistant strains
OR complex combinations of multiple of these mechanisms

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Super interesting - many roads lead to #AMR in different patients #IDSky

🚨 New pre-print! 🚨 In the largest study of its kind to-date, we investigate the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms driving within-patient evolution of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Read here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... , and follow along with this thread, discussing our findings (1/21)

How does treatment induced antibiotic resistance happen in real-world infections? We analysed 25k Pseudomonas isolates from 180 patients in a clinical trial to find out! TLDR: The ecological and evolutionary paths are surprisingly diverse & complex even in patients receiving identical treatment…

A One Health study of Klebsiella pneumoniae species complex plasmids shows a highly diverse and ecologically adaptable plasmidome Plasmids play a pivotal role in the horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and virulence determinants among bacteria. Members of the Klebsiella pneumoniae species complex (Kp...

Fascinating and important study on Klebsiella plasmid diversity

'Plasmids from human, animal and marine [Klebsiella pneumoniae complex] isolates formed shared genetic clusters spanning ecological boundaries'

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...