Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

UKRI pauses several funding calls amid priorities shake-up

The applicant-led MRC funding calls on pause include research grants, partnership grants and new investigator research grants made available through the council’s research boards.

www.researchprofessional.com/news-article...

Congratulations to our poster prize winners at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms meeting 🎉 #MicroSky

I had a great time at the @bsacandjac.bsky.social ARM workshop! I met some wonderful scientists and had great discussions about my work! Also, I walked away with a poster prize!! Thanks for organising @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social @conmeehan.bsky.social

Ending @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms with @astridpm.bsky.social talking about GARDP's work to advance antimicrobial R&D through their REVIVE programme. They have superb resources & webinars, linking academic/clinical/industry stakeholders revive.gardp.org #MicroSky

Participate in the EUP OHAMR survey to strengthen AMR research capacity! - EUP OHAMR We are launching a survey to identify gaps in strengthening research capacity in the field of AMR. Your input is valuable!

Participate in the EUP OHAMR survey to strengthen AMR research capacity #AntibioticResistance #MicroSky ohamr.eu/2025/11/18/o...

Now at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms:
@reepkpd333.bsky.social is telling us how her hospital PK/PD lab is exploring suitable models to evaluate #phage + abx combinations scholar.google.com/citations?us... #MicroSky

More evolution at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms: @dralhubb.bsky.social exploring how order of antibiotic cycling affects selection, incl. for collateral resistance/susceptibility: order may affect specific mutations selected scholar.google.com/citations?us... #MicroSky

Danna Gifford School of Biological Sciences | Faculty of Biology Medicine and Health | University of Manchester

‪Evolution at @bsacandjac.bsky.social
#AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms: @dannagifford.bsky.social found E. coli mutator genotypes don't just increase probability of resistance evolution, they increase probability of aa substitution vs. frameshift/indel - lower costs? dannagifford.com #MicroSky

Now at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms, @cgmargarida.bsky.social is showing us how she uses zebrafish to find ways to induce trained immunity against respiratory pathogens - a high throughput model with key homology with humans warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/life... #MicroSky

90% of infections begin in the mucosa, but most vaccines are intravenous - so don't activate mucosal immunity. At @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms, Ruth Griffin is showing her work developing mucosal vaccine delivery strategies www.nottingham.ac.uk/life-science... #MicroSky

Salmonella cancer therapy metabolically disrupts tumours at the collateral cost of T cell immunity | EMBO Molecular Medicine imageimageAttenuated Salmonella show promise as cancer therapeutics, yet T cells play no role in efficacy, limiting combined checkpoint blockade therapies or induction of immune memory. Improving T ce...

Something totally new to me at @bsacandjac.bsky.social
#AntibioticResistance & mechanisms: Kendle Maslowski shows that attenuated Salmonella Typhimurium can infect tumours and kill cancer cells via metabolic competition www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... #MicroSky

'Bacterial dietitian' @danybeste.bsky.social is telling @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms workshop how switching C sources affects Tb antibiotic tolerance - can we use this info to design adjuvants that increase sensitivity? www.surrey.ac.uk/people/dany-... #MicroSky

Flash talk 4 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! Caleb Marsh is designing dual efflux inhibitor-abx molecules, then testing them in @ukhsa.bsky.social's open innovation platform for abx development. Very promising drops in MIC & spontaneous resistance rates. #MicroSky

Flash talk 3 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! @mwilde.bsky.social on AMR gene silencing via mutation & reversion: engineering in SNP in a carbapenemase alters AST profile, but effect depends on genetic background. #MicroSky

Flash talk 2 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! @taylorwr.bsky.social found that E. coli damaged but not killed by b-lactams die when they try to divide on abx-free solid medium, but not in liquid - so do plate count assays overestimate b-lactam killing? #MicroSky

Flash talk 1 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! Ahmed Alomar selected E. coli for colistin resistance: clinical isolates evolved higher MIC than MG1655, associated with mutations in pmrA/B, many of those in pmrA not previously described. @imibirmingham.bsky.social #MicroSky

Synthetic teixobactin development: Ishwar Singh is telling @bsacandjac.bsky.social #antibioticResistance & mechanisms meeting about the long and winding road to promising new molecules with good bioactivity www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/ishwa... #MicroSky

Now at @bsacandjac.bsky.social, @sykhalid.bsky.social explains that, while the outer leaflet of the Gram- OM is a calm sea anchored by OmpA to the cell wall, the phospholipids of the inner leaflet are paddling about madly beneath the surface. #MicroSky khalidlab.web.ox.ac.uk/publications

What drives the acquisition and loss of #AntibioticResistance in Salmonella? @flashton.bsky.social kicking off the @bsacandjac.bsky.social resistance & mechanisms meeting, talking about pathogen genomic surveillance around the world, particularly in Africa www.psi.ox.ac.uk/our-team/phi... #MicroSky

Next at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms, @jodywinter.bsky.social is explaining how a partnership between academics, clinicians & health workers in Nottingham & Makerere is is sharing best practice in stewardship between UK & Uganda jodywinter.wixsite.com/waaw/cop #MicroSky

BARNARDS Causes and impacts of sepsis in new-born babies

Now at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms workshop, Kirsty Sands @ineosoxford.bsky.social stresses the dominance of Kleb pneumoniae in neonatal sepsis, and how the work she leads is quantifying the impact of AMR on neonatal sepsis in LMICs: www.ineosoxford.ox.ac.uk/barnards

Apart from the AI junk part… the notion that one should not offer a potential mechanistic explanation for an observation, without first spending years & (unavailable) $$ trying to test possibilities before sharing the observation with others (who may be better equipped to investigate the mechanism)…

If you’re interested in metals, microbes and maths 🤘 - please check out this PhD on the impact of metals on microbial communities with @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social @blindmath.bsky.social Denis Patterson and myself, you’d be based in Durham & be part of a vibrant interdisciplinary research group

With sessions on global antimicrobial healthcare, drug/resistance mechanisms, bacterial vaccines & immunotherapy, and antimicrobial combinations & interactions. @conmeehan.bsky.social & I have enjoyed putting the schedule together, hope to see lots of you in Birmingham next month! #MicroSky

Hands down my favorite conference for meeting people in my field and hearing great science (and I don't just say thay cause I no co-chair). Come join us next month!

Hepatitis C virus infection - Nature Reviews Disease Primers Hepatitis C virus infection can cause acute and chronic hepatitis C, which are both characterized by inflammation of the liver. In this Primer, Manns et al. describe the latest developments against th...

I'm trying to do some background reading on Hep C virus for a lecture. My first port of call tends to be 'Nature Disease Primers' to begin. So I find this one: www.nature.com/articles/nrd...
Why write a primer, which I assume you want people far and wide to read, and then have it behind a paywall???

After a short website glitch, the applications are now open again - three #PhD opportunities; featuring (in no particular order) #Klebsiella, #protists, #biofilms, #microscopy, #bioinformatics, #mosquitoes, #midges and #microbiomes, see below!
#MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky #ProtistsOnSky #evobio 💻🧬🧪🦠🦟🔬

Reminder: no one is safe until everyone is safe. And Americans are now significantly less safe

Statistics in the era of AI How do we mentor, teach, and do stats when AI can do so much of the work?

Y'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook.

How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't?

scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...

A reminder that the PhD program for EMBL is open for winter recruitment round. If you want to understand life at a molecular level and have a quantitative science (you don't have to have done biology - we love our mathematicians/physcists/chemists!) apply www.embl.org/about/info/e...