Maggie Smith

So happy to see Mark recognised for his incredible work. Over a ~40 year career he and his group discovered ECF sigma factors, characterised many key developmental regulators of the Streptomyces lifecycle, and identified new mechanisms of bacterial gene regulation, antibiotic action and resistance.

Highlights from our recent participation!

Members of the Multi-Defence Consortium presented both talks and posters on phage defence systems — showcasing exciting progress across the field.

Great discussions, great science, and we’re excited to share more soon!
#MicroEvo25

Congratulations to all the Microbiology Society Prize winners!

Congratulations!

Exciting news! I have two positions open in my lab at the UoManchester: one PDRA and one Research Tech.
Join our team to study evolutionary mycology and help us understand antifungal resistance in fungal pathogens. A fantastic opportunity to join the brilliant Manchester Fungal Infection Group!

Improved LSRs for integrating DNA into the human genome. Great work!

Thanks Emm! Very interesting read! And soooo much work! Good to see progress on efficiency and specificity of LSRs as genome integration tools.

All the world’s a phage | PNAS A renewed interest in bacteriophages has emerged from the explosive discovery of the complex pan-immune bacterial defense system and a revival of t...

#microsky #phagesky
Mycobacterium #phage review by Graham Hatfull covering the state of the art

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

R.I.P Hamilton Smith, 1978 Nobel Laureate for the discovery of type II restriction-modification systems (HindII).

Expanding the Landscape of BREX Diversity: Uncovering Multi-Layered Functional Frameworks and Identification of Novel BREX-Related Defense Systems Despite extensive scrutiny of BREX systems, several overarching questions persist regarding the functional modalities of individual components and the collective mechanistic framework underlying their...

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

#phagesky on BREX #phage defence

CHRIS ADDISON'S INCOMPLETE GUIDE TO CHAMBER MUSIC CHRIS ADDISON'S INCOMPLETE GUIDE TO CHAMBER MUSIC - Music in the Round %

TONIGHT! Come along if you’re within reach of Sheffield and/or on a mercy dash from the south to get some Hendo’s. This is going to be fab. I’m (a) super excited; (b) on my way!

musicintheround.co.uk/events/chris...

Thanks Sheffield, that was a super fun evening!

This was really fun. See it if you can.

VOM-UK Conferences - NU-OMICS Viruses of Microbes UK (VoM-UK) Conference The Virus of Microbes UK (VoM-UK) Conference is hosted by Microbiome Excellence Peak of Excellence at Northumbria University. This two-day conference takes place annually at the end of January/beginning of February and is a chance for researchers to gather and share their knowledge. The VoM-UK conference is designed to […]

hosting.northumbria.ac.uk/nu-omics/vom...

#phagesky #phage #microsky

Come and join us for Viruses of Microbes UK 2026 at @northumbriauni.bsky.social ! Fantastic chance for ECRs to showcase their work 🙂

Huge congratulations to Emma Davis, the winner of 2025's Early Career Microbiologist of the Year prize! We agree with Emma that all of the finalists' talks were brilliant and a massive well done to everyone involved!

Come and work with me and @ariannebabina.bsky.social on #Streptomyces evolution and antibiotic production

Origins of a tangled bank: Adaptation and evolution in antibiotic-producing Streptomyces

www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate...

please repost

Congratulations! Good choice by REF.

Prophages block cell surface receptors to preserve their viral progeny - Nature Zip promotes the accumulation of free phages in bacterial lysogen communities, safeguarding phage progeny.

Nature research paper: Prophages block cell surface receptors to preserve their viral progeny

go.nature.com/3IwINxb

Ouch! Wishing a fast recovery!

My humble offering: Evolutionary relationships among diverse bacteriophages and prophages: all the world's a phage pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10051617/

Happy Birthday, mucker!! I hope you have a lovely day. You too Geertje!!

Super proud of amazing lab alumnus @mbottery.bsky.social who has been awarded a prestigious @wellcometrust.bsky.social fellowship to grow his lab @officialuom.bsky.social studying the evolution of fungal pathogens!

Mike has multiple postdoc positions available on his exciting project (details 👇)

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯

Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below.

This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

Sign the Petition Not in our name: Women in support of the trans+ community

Please support this…

chng.it/q4t8VxQgSf

It is!!

If you enjoy single takes, I recommend the film ‘Boiling Point’ with Stephen Graham. Love ‘The Studio’ too.

Fellow Detail Page | Royal Society Explore the history of the Royal Society, including our motto and discover our timeline of key events.

Congratulations to Professor Graham Hatfull on being elected as a Royal Society Fellow!! So pleased to see this. royalsociety.org/people/james...

I thought immediately of your work on antibacterial peptides when I read the hype.

Like antibiotics, we know antimicrobial peptides select for resistance in bacteria, but worse that peptide resistance can also cross-protect against host peptides, potentially undermining immunity. Caution required, not talk of “goldmines” on R4 Today

Arming the enemy: the evolution of resistance to self-proteins A remarkable range of novel antibiotics is attracting increasing interest as a major new weapon in the campaign against bacterial infection. They are based on the toxic peptides that provide the innat...

Given hyperbole about this paper www.nature.com/articles/s41... in the news today (eg www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...) it is a good day to post this classic from >20 years ago: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...