Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Closing date for this is in a week (october 7th)!

Senior Bioinformatician role at UKHSA Porton tinyurl.com/vwfpza8a

We are looking for someone with a strong background in metagenomics and epidemiology to join our team for ~2 years at UKHSA to work on the mSCAPE programme. Please see (and share) the link below and feel free to message me with any enquiries. www.healthjobsuk.com/job/Canary_W...

Last few days to register to attend our Biotic Control of Bacteria workshop in Nottingham, September 8th. We have some great talks on phage therapy, bacteria-bacteria warfare, microbiome augmentation and more! microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...?

Coming close to the abstract deadline (July 1st) for our conference on Sept 8th at Nottingham Trent University! If you work on phage, microbiomes relating to pathogens, antibiotic alternatives or anything related, submit an abstract. Please spread the word! microbiologysociety.org/event/biotic...

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 #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

‪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

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

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)…

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!

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

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...

The deadline for abstracts for the BSAC Antibiotic Resistance and Mechanisms workshop in November is closing October 10th. Come join us for a packed 2-day programme in Birmingham! bsac.org.uk/antibiotic-r...

BBSRC Fellowships 2025 Triage Outcome Decisions were today. 277 applications, 42 put through to peer review and interview. A fellow I was supporting didn't get selected and BBSRC now offer *no feedback*. Months of work and not a single iota of feedback for the applicant. Honestly, disgraceful.

For those interested in taxonomy/nomenclature, a nice paper on the use of sub-genus rank to 'resolve' taxonomy/naming disputes (like we saw in Mycobacterium recently) www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Equitable data sharing is paramount, and this article outlines a framework for fairly attributing datasets to authors. Would be great to see this widely implicated! It was great being part of the consortium led by @lhug.bsky.social @alexjprobst.bsky.social and others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols. Thread 1/n

Our paper on the pangenome of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex is now out in its final form (version of record) in eLife! elifesciences.org/articles/97870

I reread this over and over again and this absolutely breaks my brain

That's correct! Read the full details about #Microbio26 attendance rates here - microb.io/425T0Yc We will also be offering grants for the event. Applications for the Society Events Grant will open on 12 December 2025 and close on 2 January 2026 at 23:59 GMT.

The @microbiologysociety.org conference next year will have a 2 day attendance rate again! So happy with this, especially as this year I can only make 2-3 days.

I went to work on my lecture over some ramen and the server asked if I worked in healthcare, because she’s a cancer bioinformatician who can’t find a job and is in now in tenuous visa territory. I’m so sad and angry about this country, and it keeps hitting me at the moments I don’t expect it

Dr. Emilyn Costa Conceição, a remarkable Brazilian-African scientist, is making waves in the field of genomics with a purpose-driven approach. From the Amazon to Africa, she advocates for the importance of diverse voices in science. Read more about ceri.org.za/news/?token=...

VACANCY - We’re recruiting for a visionary group leader to lead fundamental research on Discovery Plant Science as part of our vibrant research community Successful candidate will be offered a six-year tenure-track position with the opportunity to apply for tenure: www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/gr...

🚨 New preprint 🚨 My phage annotation tool, Phynteny, finally has a preprint and a brand new version powered by a cool AI transformer architecture and protein language models! #phagesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Submitted a Welcome Trust Discovery grant yesterday. Probably biggest application I've ever done with a great team of collaborators. Proud of this at least, no matter what happens next. Is anyone needs me I'll be joining my cat Nebula in this pose.

Some guidance and overview of current data on Doxy-PEP for STI control journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...