The undiscovered natural product potential of Actinomycetes
The Journal of Antibiotics - The undiscovered natural product potential of Actinomycetes
Recommended reading for those of us who study actinomycetes using untargeted metabolomics. Incredible work by @amcaraballor.bsky.social, @pieterdorrestein.bsky.social, and collaborators. rdcu.be/eSRxT
03.12.2025 22:40 — 👍 12 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 1
Sunset 15:40
06.12.2025 16:10 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
If you or someone you know is looking for a post-doctoral position working on mycobacterial envelope biology, please get in touch. I am recruiting here at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.
02.12.2025 15:21 — 👍 19 🔁 33 💬 1 📌 2
Fantastic to have Prof Matthias Wilmanns from EMBL Hamburg hosted by @kshbeckham.bsky.social to give a @mhd-newcastle.bsky.social seminar on mycobacterial infection #dreamtheme
02.12.2025 12:13 — 👍 8 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 1
Panorama - The Truth About Forever Chemicals
Reporter Catrin Nye reveals how PFAS can affect health and contaminate the environment, and she asks if the UK government is doing enough to keep us safe.
Watch Panorama tonight on BBC One and iPlayer: “The Truth About Forever Chemicals”.
Our policy advisor Stephanie Metzger shares expert insights on how to tackle these persistent pollutants found in food, water and products...
Catch up: bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
#ForeverChemicals #Panorama
01.12.2025 15:12 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Today, we are lucky to have Imane El Meouche from IAME, France to give a MCM seminar @medicalsciencesncl.bsky.social (chaired by @henrikstrahl.bsky.social) on antibiotics tolerance in E. Coli
01.12.2025 13:07 — 👍 23 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0
Now properly published at @natcomms.nature.com with few additional experiments incl. demonstration of Daptomycin's ability to depolarise non-growing cells.
See the original preprint-thread for a summary of our findings.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#microsky
24.11.2025 20:20 — 👍 78 🔁 28 💬 0 📌 2
Top: (Top row) Sensitivity of S. coelicolor mutants to GlcNAc. Spores (5 × 105 CFU) of S. coelicolor M145 and its mutant derivatives ∆nagB, SMA11, ∆nagB∆nagS, ∆nagB∆nagSC (∆nagB∆nagS expressing nagS) and ∆nagB∆nagSE (∆nagB∆nagS with empty plasmid pSET152) were streaked on MM agar plates with 1% mannitol (Mann) and 1% mannitol plus 10 mM GlcNAc (GlcNAc). (Bottom row) NagS and its role in GlcNAc sensing. Spores of M145 and ∆nagS were plated on MM and R5 with 0, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 150, and 200 mM GlcNAc. Note that nagS mutants hardly respond to GlcNAc. Bottom: Model for the metabolic control of development by GlcNAc and NagS. During late vegetative growth of streptomycetes, the old vegetative or substrate hyphae are degraded in a process of programmed cell death (PCD), to produce the nutrients required to build the aerial mycelium (see mycelial drawings on the right). Mycelial lysis results in breakdown of the cell-wall, leading to the accumulation of GlcNAc-6P, which is a major nutritional signal for the onset of development and antibiotic production. NagS converts GlcNAc-6P into 6P-chromogen I (denoted as X-Ac-6P), which in turn is deacetylated by NagA into a toxic metabolite (denoted as X-6P) that resembles ribose. The toxic metabolite promotes cell lysis, thus releasing more GlcNAc-6P that serves as substrate for NagS and NagA. A salvage pathway then switches off the toxic pathway again. For this, GlcNAc-6P is converted by NagA and NagB into Fructose-6P (Fru-6P), which enters the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), thereby producing 6-phosphogluconate (6-PG), a metabolic inhibitor of NagS. Thus, production of toxic metabolites ceases and the transition to aerial growth can be initiated. Arrows with round ends represent inhibition, dashed arrow shows proposed activity.
GlcNAc build-up acts as a key metabolic signal in #Streptomyces, but how does it triggers developmental responses? @gillesvanwezel.bsky.social &co show that the enzyme NagS dehydrates GlcNAc-6P into a reactive intermediate, triggering a toxicity-based checkpoint @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/44pE08I
28.11.2025 14:00 — 👍 9 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
Last Monday Dr Zach Maw @zmaw.bsky.social joined the Duncan lab (all the way from Canada 🇨🇦) as a postdoc - Zach will be setting up small molecule metabolomics in the mass spec facility @medicalsciencesncl.bsky.social and working on natural product drug discovery - welcome Zach!
28.11.2025 09:38 — 👍 11 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
Marla was funded by CONAHCYT Mèxico on an international PhD scholarship along with a @unistrathclyde.bsky.social global research scholarship - research truly is global and we look forward to continued collaboration with her in México 🇲🇽 #proudsupevisor #marinenaturalproducts #actinomycetes
26.11.2025 15:34 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A huge congratulations to Dr Marla Macias! PhD student number 6 for the Duncan lab - what a privilege it’s been to have such a wonderful human & scientist be part of the group for the last 3.5 years. Many thanks to Dan Walker (Strathclyde) & Rainer Ebel (Aberdeen) for acting as Marla’s examiners 🥂
26.11.2025 15:28 — 👍 11 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 1
‼️Research update - the last-resort 💊antibiotic daptomycin attacks🧫bacteria through two independent mechanisms & IM30 protein LiaH helps remodel membranes under stress. Great work by @henrikstrahl.bsky.social & @jbuttresssci.bsky.social @newcastleuni.bsky.social team
#microsky #BBSRC #sLoLa ⬇️
25.11.2025 14:39 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1
High-throughput DNA extraction from soil: experiences? best kits? best tools? If you had a decent chunk of money to throw at it, what system would you set up to make it fast and high quality? 🌾 🧪 🔬 🦠
24.11.2025 13:15 — 👍 4 🔁 6 💬 4 📌 0
MP biomedicals spin kit for soil is what we’ve used - it’s not high throughput but seems to be consistently yielding good results (high quality) even for problematic soil / sediment. Would be interested to see the responses you get for making it fast!
24.11.2025 13:21 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Yes it was, the way home was worse! 🧊
21.11.2025 06:59 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Bacteriologists - save the date for the next BacNet meeting in September 2026 #BacNet26 organised by @lalouxlab.bsky.social
20.11.2025 08:58 — 👍 22 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
As part of the WHO World AMR Awareness Week a group of engaged undergraduate students, led by Eloise Nelson, have organised a @microbiologysociety.org sponsored seminars:
Dr Ishwar Singh (University of Liverpool) & Dr Tom Hellyer (Newcastle University) @medicalsciencesncl.bsky.social #antibiotics
20.11.2025 15:25 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
First snow of the year - love it!
20.11.2025 07:07 — 👍 14 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Congratulations to Dr Adam Hunt for a very successful PhD defense! Adam was supervised at the University of Warwick by Dr Lona Allhalaf, Prof Greg Challis and Prof Chris Corre (internal examiner Dr Fabrizio Alberti) ✨🎄🎓🥂 #naturalproducts #streptomyces
19.11.2025 16:05 — 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Congratulations Jess and team, excellent news!!
18.11.2025 13:11 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Theres still time to apply for our PhD project on UPEC/immune cell interactions. Deadline December 4th
16.11.2025 20:22 — 👍 7 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
The walk home
17.11.2025 16:43 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Exciting Opportunity: Biomolecular Science Fellowship Day
The School of Biology at the University of St Andrews is inviting applications from outstanding visionary Research Fellow and Future Leader candidates to attend the Biomolecular Science (BMS) Fello…
📣 Calling all senior microbiology postdocs! The University of St Andrews is inviting applications from outstanding visionary Research Fellow and Future Leader candidates to attend a Biomolecular Science Fellowship Day. Applications due by 12th Dec, see link for full details: tinyurl.com/4n3na8vn
05.11.2025 09:57 — 👍 11 🔁 14 💬 0 📌 0
Brilliant to have Prof Malcolm White from the University of St Andrews giving a Newcastle University Biosciences Institute seminar (hosted by @heathmurraylab.bsky.social) #microbiology #phage #bacteriology
12.11.2025 13:11 — 👍 14 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
Multiscale molecular dynamics, biological membranes interactions, CNRS researcher, group leader at @cbitoulouse.bsky.social
We are a respiratory microbiome research group at the University of Birmingham in the Department of Microbes, Infection and Microbiomes; we are also part of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection. Run by Dr Mike Cox 🏳️🌈.
Research scientist @inserm
@IAME_Center
interested in bacterial (single cells and populations) antibiotic resistance and tolerance
https://www.iame-research.center/eq2/research-interests/
PhD in Biochemistry and Biotechnology
Research Fellow in van Schaik Lab, University of Birmingham. AMR, functional genomics, evolution, drug discovery
Burrows Lab McMaster U 🧫 -> Lewis Lab Northeastern U 💊 -> Cowen Lab U Toronto 🍄 Natural Product Antimicrobials and Microbial Cell Envelope Genetics
#BBSRC #sLoLa project: Understanding the function of an Ancient universal membrane effector.
University of York, Newcastle University, University of Cambridge & University of Nottingham
Queer scientist mom r nerd gardner she/her
MRC DTP PhD student at the University of Warwick in the Perrier and Harrison groups. Working on the development and testing of dual action antimicrobial/anti-biofilm polymers. Warwick sports scholarship athlete.
Scientist and believer in facts that are actually facts• Dad• Sports fan
Yoga bunny. Cake guru. Scientist by day. Assistant Professor at @unibirmingham.bsky.social
Interested in fungal ‘omics and One Health, evolutionary biology and popgen, epidemiology and promoting women in STEM
🏳️🌈
Postdoc @kathrinrousk.bsky.social | moss-cyanobacteria interaction🌱🧪| biological N fixation | Alumnus - Limiting factor in @rousklab.bsky.social | love 🌳🍄🪐
Futures AMR Network (FAN) is an ECR-led UKRI funded Transdisciplinary Network to tackle antimicrobial resistance #AMR. Our mission to is build the #next #generation of #AMR #leaders for #innovative #solutions to the #AMR challenge through expert support.
VICAR ⚡️ bringing robotics and AI to the frontlines of Caribbean coral reefs
Director: @reefecologist.bsky.social 🪸
Funded by Nat’l Science Foundation 🇺🇸
🔗 tr.ee/vicar
Senior Lecturer at the University of York. DNA, protein-DNA, biophysics, modeling, supercoiling, and much more
Lab news and updates for the Emmott lab, RNA virology & proteomics at the Centre for Proteome Research, University of Liverpool, UK
Lab website: emmottlab.org
