News

Some sore heads today after yesterday’s lab Christmas get together. Also nice to welcome back some recent lab members who recently fled the nest. The picture is taken in the Bell in Harborne. Very lucky to have such a great bunch of people in the lab.

Big congratulations to Charles and Ksenia who both graduated today. Charles is off the educate the next generation and Ksenia is now a post-doctoral researcher in Doug Browning’s lab at Aston University.

In a turn of events to rival the relationship between transcription initiation and termination, Andrew and his partner Hannah only went and won this year’s strictly Brum dancing! Well done from everybody in the lab 🙂  

Dave is at the International Meeting on the Biology of Vibrios in Lima, Peru. He’ll be presented the lab’s work on gene regulation in Vibrio cholerae… including Matt’s most recent observations for VpsR and CRP.

Ksenia defended her thesis today in an examination with Jess Blair and Yulia Yuzenkova. Ksenia’s next destination will be a post-doctoral position in Doug Browning’s lab in Aston, where she’ll team up with another former lab member, Ali Trigg.

Big congratulations to Charles who had his viva today with Carsten Kröger and Jess Blair acting as examiners. After tonight’s lab celebration Charles will be continuing his training as a teacher at Albemarle College.

‘Ow bin ya! Last wik we ‘ad a day ahrt at the Black Country Museum. It wuz bostin’ wor it! We ‘ad sum good snap at the chippy an’ a gew on a boat dahrn the cut. Went in a myen an’ all…  ‘ave ter watch yow dow bost yer bonce if yow’m as long as Andrew… the roof aye very ‘igh! Tara

Well done and thanks Dr. Ali Trigg. A very hard working PhD student with lots of perseverance (you know exactly what we mean!).  

A few of us were lucky to attend the second GRC on Mechanisms of Microbial Transcription. A fantastic meeting and we were lucky to be able to present work across all areas of the lab.

A big well done to Dr. Ali Trigg who defended her PhD work today in a viva with Jess Blair and James Connolly. Ali has been working on newly identified regulatory targets for the multiple antibiotic resistance activator protein, MarA. She has found a link between outer membrane and cell wall regulation that’s important for maintaining cell barrier function to reduce antibiotic uptake.

  Today it was finally time to say farewell to Alistair after his graduation ceremony. Thanks for all the hard work and good luck in your new position at GSK.

David Forrest today got news from the Microbiology Society that he was successful in his application for a Research Visit Grant. David will be travelling to Cardiff in the new year to work with Dr Mike Beeton on Mycoplasma species. David wants to try and understand how these organisms utilise DNA with an extremely high AT-content.

This week we (finally) held the 7th Molecular Microbiology conference in Birmingham. The meeting attracted close to 200 delegates over 2 days with talks covering diverse topics in mechanistic microbiology. The lab had great news when David was selected for one of the 3 poster prizes. You can read about his award here. 

Well done to Alistair, who successfully navigated his PhD viva today. Al has worked on transcriptional regulators MarA, SoxS, Rob and RamA in Salmonella. His work identified new roles for these factors in controlling the production of biofilms in response to antibiotic and other stresses.

April was a busy month with lab members attending conferences for the first time in over two years. Lucas and David Forrest presented our work on V. cholerae gene regulation and B. subtilis gene silencing at the microbiology society annual conference before heading to the UK RNA polymerase workshop in Newcastle where Ksenia, Charles, David and Ali all presented their recent research. Next stop, Berlin in May.

Lucas became the 9th lab member to defend their PhD last week in a viva with Profs Andy Roe and Pete Lund. Lucas’ work on the V. cholerae regulator HapR is currently being prepared for publication and Lucas will be presenting his findings at the Microbiology Society annual conference next week in Belfast.

Last Friday Tom became the latest member of their lab to defend their PhD thesis. Tom’s work on cyclic-di-GMP signalling and gene regulation in V. cholerae was examined by Mark Buttner and Damon Huber. We wish Tom every success in his new post-doctoral position with the Cava lab in Sweden.

Big congratulations to lab member David Forrest who won the “most promising science” poster prize from Microbial Genomics at the Microbiology Society Annual meeting. 

Emily presented her PhD work in the Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the year finals last week. Emily gave a great presentation and handled the questions excellently to take second place. A big well done from everyone in the lab.

The annual Biosciences Graduate Research School (BGRS) symposium ran last week. Alistair presented his work PhD work funded by the Wellcome Trust AAMR doctoral training programme and won the prize for best talk in the area of microbiology and infection. Well done Al.

Last week we had to say farewell to our star technician Gemma Warren. After joining the lab in 2016 Gemma worked across all of our project areas and has completely overhauled our health and safety documentation. We’re very sorry to lose her expertise but wish Gemma well in her new position at Nestlé back in her native north east.

Yesterday Emily successfully defended her PhD thesis under examination by Pete Lund (Birmingham) and Bianca Sclavi (Paris). Emily’s PhD has been very successful, including winning multiple prizes and producing two papers, the second of which is currently in review. Emily has already start a Wellcome Trust funded post-doctoral position in the lab.

As part of writing up her PhD Emily made a short presentation for the Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the year prize. We thought it was too good not to put on our website! 

The lab are just back from the awesome, and first, Mechanisms of Microbial Transcription Gordon Research Conference, held in Lewiston, Maine, USA. The meeting is a reworking of a long running prokaryotic transcription conference previously organised by FASEB. Emily and James presented posters on their horizontal gene transfer and Vibrio cholerae projects. Dave gave a talk about the lab’s work on promoters inside genes.

A big well done to Rachel who graduates today as the lab’s sixth successful PhD student and first to work on the multiple antibiotic resistance system. We’ll be plundering Rachel’s freezer box for years to come!

The last few weeks were very busy with members of the lab attending the Microbiology Society annual conference in Belfast, the RNA polymerase conference in Oxford, and the MIBTP meeting in Warwick. All of our research areas were presented but a special well done goes to Emily, who won the poster prize from Microbial Genomics for best poster on the topic in Belfast.

Today Rachel successfully defended her PhD thesis on the molecular mechanisms coupling biofilm production to antibiotic treatment. She was examined by our very own Robin May and Thamarai Dorai-Schneiders from the University of Edinburgh.

Today Dave gave his inaugural professorial lecture. The topic was understanding what goes wrong in regions of bacterial genomes acquired by horizontal gene transfer.

It’s a sad day today as Rachel will be leaving us to take up a post-doctoral position at the University of Manchester. Rachel joined the lab just over four years ago as a BBSRC MIBTP student and has been working on understanding how transcription factors that regulate antibiotic resistance also control the ability of cells to form biofilms. Rachel has been a great member of the team and will be missed. We all wish her good luck in her new position.

Emily has travelled to University of Wisconsin-Madison this month to do some work in Bob Landick’s lab. Experiments are currently on hold with temperatures below -30 ºC closing the University! Hang in there Emily!

This week Dave is heading for Oslo to present the lab’s work on toxic DNA sequences at the 5th Genome Maintenance Meeting. On this occasion this is a joint conference with TTA3 (turning the tide of antimicrobial resistance) and aims to understand how genome maintenance systems impact on the development of AMR.

All of the research areas running in the lab will get a public airing this week. Dave and James are presenting our work on toxic DNA sequences and Vibrio cholerae at the VAAM symposium on gene regulation in Tutzing, Germany. Prateek is presenting our work on antibiotic resistance at the Young Microbiologist’s symposium held by the John Innes Center in Norwich, UK.

A big congratulations to Jai who graduated today with her PhD. Over the past four years Jai has worked closely James to set up Vibrio cholerae work in our lab. This has required a huge amount of dedication on her part and she’s done a fantastic job. Coincidentally, Jai’s first publication came out today in mBio so you can read about what she’s been doing over the past few years here.

Dave is at the Humboldt University of Berlin’s ZIBI centre this week attending the “Infection Biology for the 21st Century” conference. He’ll be presenting work done in the lab over the last few years on intragenic transcription and the toxic consequences for the cell.

This week three of the group (Dave, Rachel and Emily) were in the Netherlands to present our work at the 4th Biology and Physics of Bacterial Chromosome Organisation meeting. Emily did a fantastic job of presenting her work on intragenic transcription within horizontally acquired genes.

A short trip to the annual Microbiology Society conference this year that was held at the ICC in Birmingham. Prateek, Rachel, and Dave gave talks on the lab’s work in the areas of antibiotic resistance, biofilms, and toxic DNA. In other news for April 2018, Wolves got promoted to the Premier League, which made Dave very happy!

Today Jai successfully defended her PhD thesis in a viva conducted by Steve Busby and Jenny Ritchie. Jai is the lab’s first PhD student working on Vibrio cholerae and so had to do a lot of work setting the system up. She’s done a great job and we are very proud of her.

Dave will be discussing Prateek’s paper with the Naked Scientists on BBC 5Live tonight. You can catch up with the conversation by downloading their podcast here.

Prateek’s paper identifying new mechanisms of antibiotic resistance has been published. The research as received attention in the press with the Independent, Yahoo News,  and Science Daily picking up the story among others. The story behind the paper is posted at the Nature Microbiology Community page.

This wee the entire lab has been presenting their work at the 5th Mol Micro conference here at the IMI in Birmingham. Both James and Prateek gave excellent oral presentations whilst posters were presented by the rest of the group. Well done everyone!

Last week Prateek successfully defended his PhD thesis during examination by Matthew Avison and Apoorva Bhatt. Next up is Jai!

Jai is on her way to New Orleans to present her Vibrio cholerae story at ASM microbe 2017.

The lab headed to Edinburgh for the annual Microbiology Society meeting. Jai gave an oral presentation of her Vibrio cholerae work whilst, James, Rachel, Prateek and Lisa gave poster presentations.

Today Jai is en route to Andrew Camilli’s lab in Boston (Tufts University). Andrew is supporting our recently funded BBSRC project on lifestyle switching in Vibrio cholerae and Jai will receive training in the application of Andrew’s MuGENT technology outlined in his recent PNAS paper here.

The 80th Harden conference, Machines on Genes IV, was held at ShrigleyHall Hotel near Manchester. Dave was honored to accept the Colworth medal in recognition of the lab’s work and presented recent stories lead by Shivani and Lisa.

Congratulations to Jai for winning the best poster prize at the Midlands Molecular Microbiology Meeting (M4). Jai presented her work on lifestyle switching in Vibrio cholerae.

Lisa and Shivani have jetted off to the east cost to present their work on spurious transcription associated with toxic DNA sequences.

Yesterday Lisa successfully defended her PhD thesis during examination by Remus Dame and Mark Webber.

We’re off to York this week for the annual RNA polymerase meeting. Jai is presenting her work on V. cholerae virulence regulation, Shivani is talking about spurious transcription, and Prateek will speak about his new project on deciphering novel antibiotic resistance mechanisms.

James will be presenting his PLoS Pathogens paper from last year and Dave will be giving the Fleming prize lecture.

Congratualtions to Prateek for winning the Bacterial Expressions II best poster prize. Prateek attended the meeting, held at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, last week. You can read about the work he presented here.

Dave has been awarded the Fleming Prize for 2016 by the Microbiology Society.

The lab spent the first part of this week at the second Midlands Molecular Microbiology Meeting (M4) in Nottingham. This year’s meeting included talks from Mark Pallen (Warwick) on microbial archaeology, Gadi Frankel (Imperial) on modelling bacterial infections, and  Mike Ibba (Ohio) on translation regulation. A personal highlight was Liz Sockett’s  (Nottingham) fascinating overview of Bdellovibrio and the tricksthey use to invade and consume prey bacteria. Particularly pleasing for our group was Lisa’s prize for the best talk from selected abstracts. You can see a shorter version of Lisa’s winning presentation here.

Our newest recruit, Rachel Kettles, has been trying to find out how academic success equates to influence on the social media giant Twitter. She concludes that the only way to be a successful Tweeter is to fully embrace the medium; you can’t rely on your H-index! You can read about Rachel’s analysis, done for the IMI as part of her BBSRC funded professional internship for PhD students, here.

The Institute of Microbiology and Infection has launched its new website. Take a look at it here.

Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) is a research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland in 2008, in which doctoral researchers have just three minutes to deliver an engaging presentation on their thesis topic, its originality and its significance watch it here.

Over the last two days Lisa, Shivani, James and Prateek all did a great job of presenting their work at the 27th annual RNA polymerase workshop. Overall a great meeting with much exciting new information about transcription and its control in all domains of life.

The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) is an international program of research support, funding frontier research on the complex mechanisms of living organisms. In 2015 we started work an HFSP reseach programme with Remus Dame (Leiden), Grant Jensen (CalTech) and Dieter Hermann (Heidelberg).

The goal of BacNet15 is to cover most recent advances in key areas of bacterial network research, including information processing and signal transduction, uni- and multicellular behaviour, stress responses, small molecule signalling, cell biology, systems biology and bioengineering.

Lisa and Prateek will both be presenting their PhD research at this year’s Biosciences Graduate Research Symposium over the next two days.

Today Prateek gave a poster presentation at the SGM meeting in Birmingham. The poster, entitled “Regulation of ETEC Heat-Stable Toxin expression in Response to Environment and Host” details work done during the first year of Prateek’s PhD, which is funded by the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh.

Dave has been awarded the 2016 Colworth Medal by the Biochemical Society. Further details can be found here.

After a three hour grilling, from Jeff Green and Andy Lovering, James Haycocks was awarded his PhD subject to minor corrections. James is starting a post-doctoral researcher position with us next week.