Rob Edwards

#phagesky

Highly stable bacteriophages PIN1 and PIN2 have hallmarks of flagellotropic phages but infect immotile bacteria npj Viruses - Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that kill bacteria, with potential as antibacterial agents in industrial settings, agriculture, and human health. Here, we identified two phages,...

We have been working on ways to find #phage with long shelf-life and this one is a winner. 12 months freeze-thawing as much as you like, no loss of viability
#phageSky #microSky

rdcu.be/ewnzT

A two year post-doctoral position at the BacterialGenome Plasticity Unit starting October 1st - Research

Postdoc position to work at the Institut Pasteur with Alex Kaminski and Didier Mazel on Z-DNA phages ! research.pasteur.fr/en/job/a-two...

Excited 🥳 to share our latest work on gut phages!
Big thanks to @epcrocha.bsky.social, Erick D, Camille d'H, @fplazaonate.bsky.social, Quentin LB, and all others involved for support and contributions! 🙌
Out in Cell Reports @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Here's what we found 🤓

#PhageSky #ProtistsOnSky

endosymbionts have "their" phages, too. cyanos of sponges (below), 𝘞𝘰𝘭𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘢 of insects, and then we have the piñata 👇

schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2...

Kiwa is a membrane-embedded defense supercomplex activated at phage attachment sites Zhang, Todeschini, and Wu et al. show that the bacterial defense system Kiwa senses phage attachment at the membrane and assembles a transmembrane complex that halts infection by blocking phage DNA re...

Thrilled to see our Kiwa story out today! A membrane-associated supercomplex that senses infection and blocks replication and transcription.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Huge congratulations to Yi and Zhiying for bringing it home, to Thomas for starting us off, and to all the collaborators.

Postdoctoral Research Positions in Adelaide, Australia | Rob Edwards Postdoctoral Research Positions in Adelaide, Australia We will be recruiting three new postdoctoral researchers to Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, starting early 2026. These are amazing opp...

EOIs are open already and we are just waiting for the paperwork to be completed to post the job ads. Email me to get on the notification list.

More details:

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

📍 All positions are in Adelaide, South Austalia recently named Australia’s most liveable city.
🌱 Join the FAME group at Flinders University: an interdisciplinary hub of microbiologists, bioinformaticians & synthetic biologists driving global innovation.

🤖 Postdoc #3: AI for Genome Annotation
Take on the viral dark matter: use deep learning, protein language models & HPC to predict protein function from structure. Create tools for phage & microbiome analysis!
For candidates in bioinformatics/AI/CS.
Perfect for @abacbs.bsky.social members!

💻🧬

🧪 Postdoc #2: Molecular Microbiology & Phage Regulation
Ever wondered how phages sense their environment? Develop protein-DNA interaction assays, functional screens & bioinformatics pipelines to uncover their regulatory networks.
Ideal for candidates in molecular biology/biochemistry.

#microbiology

🔬 Postdoc Position 1: Synthetic Phage Design
Build new phages from scratch using synthetic biology! Apply DNA assembly, plasmid engineering & electroporation to bring phages from genome to reality.

Perfect for grads in microbiology/genetics with hands-on molecular work.

#Phage #SyntheticBiology

🌟 Exciting news! We’re launching three fully-funded postdoc positions for "New Horizons for Synthetic Phages”

Join us in tackling antimicrobial resistance with cutting-edge synthetic biology + AI bioinformatics. Based at Flinders Uni in vibrant Adelaide.

👇 Read on for details!
#Phage

Illustration depicting the ways in which fungi can exchange genetic material with each other. Starship mediated HGT is confirmed experimentally in this preprint.

We did it! We caught Starship #transposons moving between #fungal species in the lab, including between species separated by ~100my. We think Starships are a mediator of HGT in fungi, akin to conjugative elements in bacteria. Check out the preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fold first, ask later: structure-informed function annotation of Pseudomonas phage proteins Phages, the viruses of bacteria, harbor an incredibly diverse repertoire of proteins capable of manipulating their bacterial hosts, inspiring many medical and biotechnological applications. However, t...

Fold first, ask later: structure-informed function annotation of Pseudomonas phage proteins

Structural predictions to improve #phage genome annotation!

@hannelorelongin.bsky.social @gbouras13.bsky.social y.social @susiegriggo.bsky.social @veravannoort.bsky.social

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

Fold first, ask later: structure-informed function annotation of Pseudomonas phage proteins Phages, the viruses of bacteria, harbor an incredibly diverse repertoire of proteins capable of manipulating their bacterial hosts, inspiring many medical and biotechnological applications. However, t...

📣 New preprint alert!

Happy to share the first results from our effort to reannotate Pseudomonas #phage proteins of unknown function, using structural bioinformatics.

📄 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The view of the Adelaide Oval, site of the 2025 Australian Biology and Computational Biology Society (ABACBS) conference, from across the River Torrens. The conference will be held in Adelaide from 24 to 28 November and celebrates 10 years of ABACBS.

The 10th anniversary #ABACBS conference will be held in Adelaide from Nov 24-28. If you're thinking of coming, get in quick, as it's going to be a big week: A fantastic #bioinformatics conference with outstanding national and international speakers, and we're wrapping up the ABACBS week an AC/DC gig

A person in the US has died from pneumonic plague. It’s not just a disease of history But today it’s rare – and can be effectively treated with antibiotics.

My latest Conversation article is about #plaque !!! theconversation.com/a-person-in-...

Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful’ DNA Experiment

Here's the NYT article
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/s...

We've folded a lot of proteins! You can see some of them here @linsalrob.bsky.social @gbouras13.bsky.social

We made structural predictions of representatives of each #PHROG from #phage genomes, and put the whole lot online. You can browse through montages or go to your favourite phrog directly and download its PDB.

💻🧬 #phagesky

linsalrob.github.io/PHROG_struct...

PhD Project: Discovering Novel Mechanisms of Phage Genome Evolution We are looking for an awesome PhD student to join our research team to investigate how bacteriophages (phages) generate targeted mutations that enable them to evolve and infect new bacterial hosts. Yo...

PhD opportunities at @flindersuniversity.bsky.social in Adelaide, Australia's most liveable city, to study genetics in #phage

We will also have genetics #postdoc positions too!

#microsky #phagesky

www.linkedin.com/pulse/phd-pr...

Usually fastp

Tagging 🖥️🧬

ABACBS 2025 Conference Adelaide, South Australia. Nov. 24-

Finally joined Bluesky! Follow along to stay connected with ABACBS. Keep an eye out in the coming days, we’ll be releasing more details for 2025 conference, including opening abstract submissions and announcing invited speakers!

www.abacbs.org/abacbs2025

A new milestone in our phage research program. Our latest paper is now out #msystems @asm.org where we dig deeper into the systems biology of phage/host interactions using a multi-omics approach. We studied the P100-like #phage CKA15 infecting #Listeria mono

Great work and great thread

#phagesky

👩‍💻 We’re hiring! Lê Cao Lab at Uni Melbourne @mig-unimelb.bsky.social needs an R dev to power the next-gen of mixOmics 🚀
Love #RStats, #Bioconductor & multi-omics? Help expand mixOmics, run workshops & publish cutting-edge methods.
Apply: unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UoM_Ex...

Very honoured and excited to have been awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship today. Exciting things to come!

#FL25

rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/D...

In about a week we (Biological Sciences @ Monash Uni in Melbourne, Australia) will be opening a search for 3 (!!!) permanent academic positions (40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service) at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. 1 Genomics, 2 Ecology. Please share, email me, DM, follow, send carrier pigeons…

DECRA assessor reports come out tomorrow (normally about 11am AEST).

Here's a thread of advice from previous years 👇

Summary:
🔹Always submit a rejoinder
🔹Get help
🔹 #ARC3DayRule
🔹 Think like a College of Experts member
🔹 Look for "faint praise" in assessor reports

And finally, take tonight off!