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Ben Temperton

@btemperton.bsky.social
47 followers 22 following 53 posts

Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Exeter. Proudly Canadian.

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Reposted by Ben Temperton
Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
How do we fix this mess?
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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Labour's cowardice in the face of extremism iandunt.substack.com/p/labours-co...
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The Gold Lab @the-gold-lab.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
We are recruiting 2 postdocs to work on bacterial motility using a combination of cryoEM, FLM and MD. An exciting collaboration with Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social Wolfram Moebius @wolframmoebius.bsky.social and Daniel Kattnig. Please see links in the thread below!
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David Sünderhauf @davvi36.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Please share! 🦠 Workshop on Phage Therapy in Liverpool on 25th November organised by Stineke van Houte, @jojofoth.bsky.social, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social, & Edze Westra. Limited FREE tickets & more info here: sites.exeter.ac.uk/vanhoutelab/... #MicroSky
Conference flyer, all info is on link too
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Rob Edwards @linsalrob.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
🌟 Exciting news! We’re launching three fully-funded postdoc positions for "New Horizons for Synthetic Phages” Join us in tackling antimicrobial resistance with cutting-edge synthetic biology + AI bioinformatics. Based at Flinders Uni in vibrant Adelaide. 👇 Read on for details! #Phage
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Meaghan Castledine @mcastd.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
How do macrophages influence the evolution of phage resistance? We show that macrophages reduce the efficacy of a bacteriophage cocktail 🦠, resulting in greater bacteria population densities which, in-turn, facilitate greater rates of phage resistance. Pre-print 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Antagonism between bacteriophages and macrophages decreases efficacy of a bacteriophage cocktail and increases bacteriophage resistance
Phage therapy, the use of viruses that infect bacteria (bacteriophages), is a promising complement to antibiotics during the antimicrobial resistance crisis, but treatment success is very variable. Ev...
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
you'd think given the UK is led by a lawyer, we would have more respect for international law.
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
At long last, the MHRA have released their much promised guidance document for phage therapeutics in the UK: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/683ed3... Early impression is it's either as hard as it was to access phage therapeutics, or they've closed the door on the one route we did have.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
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PhageExe @phagexe.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
If you want to improve promiscuity and yield of Pseudomonas aeruginosa for production of phages, start by taking out its restriction modification system: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Eliminating the type I restriction endonuclease from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 for optimised phage isolation
Phage therapy is a promising treatment for multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. Due to their high host specificity, phages must be matched to the target clinical strains. Efficiently identifying ...
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Carla Denyer @carladenyer.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
When will Starmer learn that no matter how good his Nigel Farage impression gets, it won't save him from wipeout at the hands of Reform? Here's another idea - how about doing the work that's needed to actually make people's lives better? 🧵
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Led By Donkeys @ledbydonkeys.org · 07/05/2025
TANK vs TESLA "We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again" - ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank
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SusanHR 🇨🇦 @susanrankin.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
I hope we deserve this beautiful piece by Journalist Victor Kravchuk, writing from the Ukraine: #cdnpolitics #canadasky
“I'VE NEVER WALKED YOUR STREETS. Never seen your beautiful lakes. I don't really know your provinces, your debates, or your daily worries. But this morning, from a war zone half a world away, I was reading about your election. And for the first time in days, I exhaled. A small, almost invisible breath. Relief. Because what you chose is not just a leader. You, my Canadian friends, you chose goodness in a collapsing world. And you saved more than just your country. You saved a piece of hope for all of us.”
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Great paper out by Ben Chan, Jon Koff and co at Yale highlighting compassionate use of phage therapy in nine patients with CF with multi-drug resistant strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Personalized inhaled bacteriophage therapy for treatment of multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis - Nature Medicine
A novel personalized phage therapy strategy that selects phages for a predicted evolutionary trade-off may represent a viable alternative approach for the treatment of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria...
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KaminskiMed @kaminskimed.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
A phage therapy using naturally occurring bacteryophages that not only kill but also selects for less resistant bacteria, shows promise in Cystic Fibrosis patients infected with drug resistant Pseudomonas. Kudos Dr. Chen, Stanley, Turner and Koff!!! #ScienceMatters www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Personalized inhaled bacteriophage therapy for treatment of multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis - Nature Medicine
A novel personalized phage therapy strategy that selects phages for a predicted evolutionary trade-off may represent a viable alternative approach for the treatment of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria...
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Ulf R. Dahle @ulfdahle.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Outdated approval model slows access to phage therapy, which doesn’t fit the "one-size-fits-all" drug process. We need flexible guidelines to be prepared to deploy phages when we need them. #AMR #InfectiousDisease www.independent.org/article/2025...
independent.org
FDA Regulation in the Age of Superbugs: News Article – Independent Institute
In a 2014 report, a committee formed to study antimicrobial resistance warned that superbugs would soon kill more people every year than cancer. These
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PhageExe @phagexe.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Remy Chait's super-cool paper on phage lasers is now up on Biorxiv. A beautiful collaboration between modelling and experimental work, driven by passionate curiosity about unusual features Remy observed on some spot assays. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Stable coexistence and transport of lytic phage infections with migrating bacterial hosts
Bacteriophages (phages), viruses that exclusively infect bacterial hosts, are the most abundant living entities across diverse environments, coexisting with their bacterial hosts at densities exceedin...
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Sadly not surprising. Let's accelerate access to phages that will help protect our existing arsenal of antimicrobials and buy us some time to develop new ones.
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
How to boost your citations to insane levels: forbetterscience.com/2025/04/15/a...
forbetterscience.com
An unethical guide to 100.000 citations
“”A number of leading researchers have published their research contributions at this Journal among them Zhanhu Guo, Zhanhu Guo, Zhanhu Guo,….”
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Bravo Mark Carney. Maintenant vient le plus dur : montrer au monde que la politique progressiste peut servir les intérêts du peuple en s’attaquant aux inégalités qui alimentent le populisme.
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
I'm starting to wonder whether economics and astrology have roughly the same degree of evidence to support decision making.
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
I don't know how I missed this story: scienceintegritydigest.com/2024/02/15/t...
scienceintegritydigest.com
The rat with the big balls and the enormous penis – how Frontiers published a paper with botched AI-generated images
A review article with some obviously fake and non-scientific illustrations created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the talk on X (Twitter) today. The figures in the paper were generated by the …
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
PM Starmer offers “peace in our time” tax cuts to megarich US tech companies, while cutting benefits to UK’s poorest to balance the books. Do. Better. Labour. This is not what we voted for. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
theguardian.com
Starmer offers big US tech firms tax cuts in return for lower Trump tariffs
Exclusive: UK willing to placate Trump with lower digital services tax rate also encompassing non-US companies
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
In 2023-2024, 122.6 million people were forcibly displaced. That's 1 in 67 of every person on Earth. www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/...
unhcr.org
Figures at a glance | UNHCR
At least 122.6 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of June 2024. View the latest statistics and graphs of the number of refugees and other people forced to flee.
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Reposted by Ben Temperton
Led By Donkeys @ledbydonkeys.org · 28/03/2025
We took over the giant screen at Farage’s big rally in Birmingham
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Seems Keir Starmer channels his Neville Chamberlain more every day. Democracy, science and the Rule of Law is under attack because of Trump. Appeasement never works. It's time to develop a spine and stand with our allies. #ElbowsUp. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Keir Starmer says he ‘likes and respects’ Donald Trump
PM agrees with US president that Europe must bear greater burden for its collective self-defence
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Musk is now paying people to sign petitions to remove 'activist judges' who have the audacity to not just let him do what he likes. Everyone knows if you're looking for an extreme leftwing nutter, it's the judiciary where you'll find them... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Elon Musk lashes out at US judges as they rule against Doge
Musk lambastes judges as leftwing activists in more than 20 posts as Trump administration’s judiciary clash intensifies
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Apparently due to some Microsoft issue, I can no longer receive emails from external domains. If it stops working for internal people too, this'll be the best day ever.
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
My favourite lecture of the year: The evolutionary marvel that is T7 infection and hijacking of E. coli cells in the big lecture theatre (at 0830 in the morning, but can't have everything).
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Very cool paper using engineering of T4 to deliver protein payload that reduces inflammation in a mouse model of colitis www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Sustained in situ protein production and release in the mammalian gut by an engineered bacteriophage - Nature Biotechnology
Biologics are delivered to the gut using phage that infects resident commensal bacteria.
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
www.uk-cpi.com/blog/phage-t...
uk-cpi.com
Phage Therapies: The Best Weapon To Fight Antibiotic Resistance | CPI
What are phage therapies, and how can we use them to fight the crisis of drug-resistant bacteria that threaten our global health?
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Reposted by Ben Temperton
The RESISFORCE Network 🇳🇴🇨🇦🇮🇳🇧🇷🇺🇲 @resisforce.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
New study maps ~6,000 antibiotic resistance gene transfers across 1M+ bacterial genomes & 20K metagenomes. HGT is widespread, but co-host detection gaps mean we may be underestimating ARG transmission especially between humans & wastewater. #AMR #OneHealth www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Genetic compatibility and ecological connectivity drive the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes - Nature Communications
The dynamics of antimicrobial resistance gene transfer remain unclear. Here, by integrating bacterial genome and metagenome data with machine learning the authors show that genetic incompatibility is ...
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
We desperately need better phages to treat drug resistant Burkholderia. If you're interested in a postdoc position making that happen, I highly recommend this position. Great group and part of the awesome CF-Trailfinder consortium: krb-sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Powerful speech by @claudemalhuret.bsky.social. Europe including the UK needs to unify and step up in the face of tyranny. Even if the US gives security guarantees, the promises of liars are worthless. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkPL...
youtube.com
French Senator Claude Malhuret Speech (English Subtitles)
YouTube video by Karl
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Ben Temperton @btemperton.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Amazing few days with collaborators at Mowi and PhD student @mrliambh.bsky.social understanding where phage therapeutics could have the greatest impact in salmon farming in Scotland.
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Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Beyond belief. Is this really the man we’re going to fawn over with a State Visit? It’s time for our PM to pick a side
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The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy @bsacandjac.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
A new article exploring important historical case studies that shaped the development, use and long-term efficacy of β-lactam #antibiotics. www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
microbiologyresearch.org
Reflecting on Fleming’s caveat: the impact of stakeholder decision-making on antimicrobial resistance evolution
Antimicrobial resistance poses one of the greatest and most imminent threats to global health, environment and food security, for which an urgent response is mandated. Evolutionary approaches to tackl...
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citizenphage.bsky.social @citizenphage.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
On a day where the National Audit Office reported that the government was not doing enough to combat the threat of untreatable bacterial infections (www.theguardian.com/society/2025...), we met with legislators to highlight the power of phage therapy to provide new treatments to patients.
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