James McDonald

Really pleased to be speaking at this event. Come and join us in Switzerland!

Sending my sympathies, that’s rage inducing 😬

Cool paper showing that microbiomes of mature trees can be resilient, with a preview by @zrojer.bsky.social and myself! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks for writing a preview of the work!

@unibirmingham.bsky.social @imibirmingham.bsky.social @marccamb.bsky.social @drcarriebrady.bsky.social @cenococcum.bsky.social @alejandra1909.bsky.social

Microbial communities in semi-mature oak trees are resilient to drought, nutrient limitation, and pathogen challenge Global forest biomes face increasing stressors and disease outbreaks that threaten ecosystem health. Tree-associated microbiota are vital for tree res…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Delighted to see our work on the impact of drought on the oak microbiome featured on the cover of @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social
Link to the article below this post 👇🏻

But what will replace it!? 😬

🎉🎉🎉 New preprint to start the new year 🎉🎉🎉

Patients recovering from bowel surgery may have stomas formed to divert the flow of faeces to the opening on the skin, away from healing intestinal tissue. The visible sign of this process is an ileostomy or colostomy bag. /1

#surgerysky #medsky

Great to see you James, and great presentation!

Great to see you at #MMEG2025 @michiamausz.bsky.social and hear about the cool research being done in your lab!

Very much looking forward to 2 days of great talks at #MMEG2025, and to catching up with @resp-micro.bsky.social and @jamesemcdonald.bsky.social.

Who’s on their way to #MMEG2025 @unibirmingham.bsky.social today?

Now fixed, thanks for flagging this!

Let me check - will be back in touch!

Still time to register for MMEG but book fast to avoid disappointment!

Great to be part of this work led by our collaborators @gathomas12.bsky.social and Jozsef Vuts @rothamsted.bsky.social

📢 New preprint is out on bioRxiv 📢:

How much does virome prep influence our view of the human gut virome?

Short answer: a lot.

Long answer:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Different methods lead to distinct community structures, richness, and major virus-host abundance patterns.

🧵 1/5

Thanks, Sofia! Hope all is well

The pre print of my PhD research is out! 📣 Check it out for some cool results on high-throuhput microbial isolation, #SynComs and #Tree #Microbiome 🌳🧫
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#PhDone 💯

11/ 📄 feedback welcome!
🔬 Huge thanks to our amazing team, collaborators and funders! @marccamb.bsky.social @cenococcum.bsky.social @drcarriebrady.bsky.social @bpettifor.bsky.social
BBSRC, NERC, DEFRA, Scottish Government.

10/ Our work shows the potential of microbiome-based interventions for trees, just like those emerging in agriculture and human health. 🌍

9/ This shows that tree microbiomes can be engineered to suppress disease — a promising strategy for forest health and conservation. 🌲🛡️

8/ We then inoculated oak seedlings and logs with a disease-suppressive SynCom before pathogen challenge. The results were striking:
📉 Brenneria goodwinii (oak pathogen) ↓ 56% (seedlings), ↓ 71% (logs)
📉 Gibbsiella quercinecans (oak pathogen) ↓ 87% (seedlings), ↓ 95% (logs)

7/ Next, we assembled synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) from these isolates. In vitro tests showed they could suppress oak pathogens. 🧪

6/ We screened 22,000 isolates on agar plates for their ability to suppress oak pathogens linked to Acute Oak Decline - 341 of the isolates showed strong pathogen suppression. 💪🌱

5/ These isolates belonged to taxonomic groups that represented 61% of the total bacterial and 87% of total fungal sequences found in oak trees, based on 16S rRNA gene and ITS sequencing, respectively. A major resource for tree microbiome research! 🌳🦠

4/ We processed tree tissue samples for isolation in the field within a few hours of collection to maximise chances of culturing key microbiota, using our mobile lab setup.

3/ We built a culture collection of >30,000 bacterial and fungal isolates from 150 oak trees across 30 sites in Britain — the largest culture collections of its kind🌿

2/ Trees rely on their microbiome for health and resilience, but are increasingly impacted by disease. We asked ‘can we engineer these microbial communities to fight disease?’ 🌳🦠.