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Freya Harrison

@friendlymicrobe.bsky.social
3.4K followers 936 following 5.6K posts

Reader (Associate Professor) in Microbiology at the University of Warwick, UK. Biofilm, chronic infection and ancientbiotics. www.youtube.com/@BreakingBiofilm

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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 1h
Für jeder die Deutsch sprecht, und interessiert sich für #Ancientbiotics. @tosinorababa.bsky.social war der Kopf hinter dieser Forschung! #MIcroSky
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 1h
Ich hoffe sehr, dass es "nicht der jüngste viral gegangene Tiktok-Selbstmedikationstipp" ist 😆 Ein schön Artikel, danke!
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 5h
Is anyone else unable to upload files to NCBI SRA via the web or FTP right now, or is it just me?
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Thank you to the Dermasphere podcast for discussing some of our work on the antibacterial activity of Bald's eyesalve #Ancientbiotics #MicroSky #biofilm podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1...
podcasts.apple.com
193. SCoRCH syndrome to TMP/SMX - An ancient remedy ("Bald's eyesalve") for biofilms - Leg-length discrepancy in CMTC - GLP-1s reduce the risk of psoriasis and HS
Podcast Episode · Dermasphere - The Dermatology Podcast · September 28 · 41m
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This will be a brilliant post with a super team #MicroSky
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ooop www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Ancient sheep virus found hiding in medieval parchment
Newly recovered sheeppox sequences reveal when and how the virus emerged
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Kate Baker @ksbakes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We have an open Assistant/Associate Professor position in Pathogen Biology at the Department of Genetics - come and join us! 🦠 🧫 🧬https://www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assistantassociate-professor-in-pathogen-genetics-pc51175
cam.ac.uk
Assistant/Associate Professor in Pathogen Genetics
Applications are invited for an Assistant or Associate Professorship in Pathogen Genetics to be held in the Department of Genetics. We are searching for a talented individual with a track record of fu...
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What‘s the biggest, most exciting or nagging unanswered question in biology? What do you really, really wish we knew the answer to? I’m crowdsourcing responses to these Qs for my welcome talk to new Biology undergrads next week. I’d love to know your thoughts - thank you in advance!
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I helped a little with this cool study of molecules inspired by hipposudoric acid - one of the components of the red "sweat" that hippos secrete from their skin. Part of Munib Uddin's PhD with @moleculesunlimited.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #MicroSky
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The Preparation of Novel Fluorenes Inspired by Hipposudoric Acid
In this research we report on the design and synthesis of a series of fluorene-based derivatives loosely inspired by the tricyclic framework of hipposudoric acid. Preparation of sixteen novel N-alkyl....
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I was wondering this - 15ish years ago I was asked to give out awards at my old school, and there were kids doing HNCs alongside GCSES. What’s better/different about the new GCSEs? Is this GNVQs again, or something sustainable?
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Ellie Jameson @elliejameson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
MScRes bursary of £2000 available at Bangor University to study Bacteriophages as natural biocontrols for plant pathogens. Deadline is 19th October. Please contact me for more details #PhageSky #MicroSky
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Excellent lab news - congratulations to @kadeayomikun.bsky.social, who has won a Warwick PATHWAY fellowship to stay on for several months after handing in his PhD and develop publications & funding applications 🥳
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Chris Millard @chrismillard83.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
“Universities have managed staff costs significantly below inflation,[between 2016-17 and 2023-24] increasing only 14% compared to the 41.2% increase in RPIX [measure of inflation]” Substantial real terms pay cut, which continues a trend existing years before that…
gov.uk
Cost of undergraduate provision and qualifications in England
A study of the full economic cost of providing undergraduate-level higher education and other qualifications in England.
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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 19/09/2026
This is why I think it's so important to push back against the personification of LLMs. If a person shoots someone while wearing a hand puppet, they can't claim the hand puppet did the murder.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
“The #phage space is developing very rapidly in the UK, and it’s an exciting time to be a part of it.” #MicroSky
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
1/17 Submissions are now open for the 2027 Microbial Population Biology GRC! We expect this meeting to be extraordinarily oversubscribed. If you want to come, time is of the essence--apply ASAP! June 27–July 2 • Andover, NH www.grc.org/microbial-po...
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merr-itt came from outer space @merrittk.com · 15/09/2026
god, i was born in the wrong era. imagine being around in the Cambrian period. you could just evolve something simple like shell or legs that nobody had thought of before and coast on that your whole life
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Microbiology Society @microbiologysociety.org · 15/09/2026
There’s still time to join us at our Publishing Fundamentals webinar—An Introduction to Peer Review on 16 September! Register now to secure your spot: microb.io/4wJUeEY
microb.io
Publishing Fundamentals – An Introduction to Peer Review
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 13/09/2026
Ten years ago Tami, Roy, and I released a movie we made of antibiotic resistance evolving in real time. I thought maybe a couple thousand people tops would see it. I couldn't have imagined it would be seen millions of times, and be taught from middle school through the graduate level worldwide
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I show it in my antibiotic discovery & prescribing lectures 💜
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Microbiology Society @microbiologysociety.org · 10/09/2026
Join us during #PeerReviewWeek for a Publishing Fundamentals webinar dedicated to the peer review process. This event will take place on 16 September and is free for members; for non-members: £10. Register here: microb.io/4wJUeEY
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David Sünderhauf @davvi36.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Please share! We are looking for a PhD student excited about gene transfer, and tackling Antimicrobial Resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae. 🧬 More details & applications on funder website by 21st Oct 👇🏻 gw4biomed.ac.uk/developing-c...
gw4biomed.ac.uk
Developing CRISPR-Cas antimicrobials to tackle antibiotic resistance spread in Klebsiella pneumoniae - GW4 BioMed MRC DTP
Project Code IIAR27Ex van Houte Project Type Wet lab Research Theme Infection, Immunity, and Antimicrobial Resistance Project Summary Download Summary Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a major thre...
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
So (if I understand this correctly), the way AI (companies) will "solve" all the major problems in maths, biology, and medicine in the next 5 years will be by stealing and building on the ideas of researchers naive enough to think their chats with AI companies would be private.
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Rafal Mostowy @rafalmostowy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
🧬 Postdoc ad is now live: evolutionary genomics of Klebsiella pneumoniae phages. How do prophage depolymerases vs SGNH-esterases shape phage host range? Krakow, Poland. Deadline 21 Sept: mostowylab.com/job-postdoc-...
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Prof Jenny Rohn @jennyrohn.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Thrilled our latest paper out @natureportfolio.nature.com Nature Comms, lead author @microberamon.bsky.social, who developed P-FLO, a urine-flowing human micro-bladder model in collab with Oxford & Leicester to understand #UTI biology & treatment failure 1/4 #UTISky www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Effect of human urinary microenvironment and fluid flow on antibiotic and phage therapy efficacy against uropathogenic Escherichia coli - Nature Communications
Maset et al. show that bladder conditions strongly influence how urinary tract infections respond to antibiotics and bacteriophages, highlighting the need for more realistic lab models to improve diag...
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Thank you!
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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 31/08/2026
At this point, it might be easier to make a list of Dan Ariely papers that do not use suspect data 
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Thank you!
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Anyway, we will have one further chapter of this wild ride to share with you, hopefully fairly soon. But for now thank you to the stellar team who made this possible. And to my recent sabbatical for letting me contribute one new experimental figure to the paper! #Microsky [4/4]
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Perhaps the most surprising result was that we attempted to select for resistance to the reconstructed eyesalve using different experimental evolution protocols, but utterly failed - it seems relatively difficult for resistance to happen. Graph below is from a ramp experiment. #MicroSky [3/n]
S. aureus Newman, A. baumannii ATCC 19606, and P. aeruginosa PA14 were selected for resistance to Bald’s eyesalve or antibiotic using an evolutionary ramp approach for 14 days. The y axes show the higher of two tested concentrations in which cultures grew at each time point, expressed as a multiple of the ancestral MIC. Each line shows one of three independent populations.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The reconstructed "ancientbiotic" has multiple effects on Gram+ & Gram-, from membrane damage to effects on quorum sensing, nucleotide metabolism & biofilm matrix production. Found using a plethora of techniques with the input of colleagues (many ECRs) with different expertise 💜 #MicroSky [2/n]
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It's taken 12 years and a lot of work from many fantastic people, but we have published an analysis of how our reconstruction of Bald's eyesalve kills bacteria. This was driven by @tosinorababa.bsky.social & Jess Furner-Pardoe through their PhD work #MicroSky journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... [1/n]
Jess in the lab, holding an onion and a garlic bulb and talking; Tosin in the lab holding a petri dish and inspecting it; two glass bottles labelled "eyesalve 33/6/14"
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
@rachelmwheatley.bsky.social and I really enjoyed putting together a special issue of Essays in Biochemistry on the social lives of bacteria. All the papers are now out, and here's our editorial :D @biochemsoc.bsky.social #MicroSky portlandpress.com/essaysbioche...
The journal cover, showing a CLASI-FISH image of a structured bacterial community.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Oh it was. If you get the chance to see them, definitely take it. I am in awe of how they sustained so much energy for an entire set.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The use of Galleria mellonella to study microbial interactions, immune responses, & substrate interactions - super, comprehensive review from Evgenia Maslova, Ciaram Staber & @ronanmccarthy.bsky.social portlandpress.com/essaysbioche... #MicroSky
Schematic representation of G. mellonella applications for investigating interbacterial interactions
The upper half (A) of the figure depicts experimental methods in which bacteria are introduced to G. mellonella larvae. These include force-feeding, injection, and burn models. The lower half (B) shows example interactions described in the literature within the G. mellonella model, including antagonistic, competitive, and cooperative co-infection outcomes.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The social lives of bacteria as revealed through CLASI-FISH - thank you @jmarkwelch.bsky.social for this lovely review, covering the structure of bacterial communities in the human mouth, mouse gut and associated with kelp portlandpress.com/essaysbioche... #MicroSky
Bacteria in a cross-section of the mouse colon. The colonic epithelium (gray) is at right and at the bottom of the image; bacterial cells appear as colored dots, and food particles appear bright yellow. Some regions are rich in Bacteroides spp.; others have all five labeled cell types, but in all regions, bacteria are mixed.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Argh how could I forget that I've seen Bloodywood and they were stunning? Sorry Pulp, you are removed and Bloodywood go on the list 🤘
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Great piece from Marvin Whiteley. But it can be impossible or near-impossible to access the samples needed to benchmark models properly. I spent over a decade trying and failing to source resected CF lung, and we’re in year five of trying to access another sample type for one of our projects.
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Prof Jenny Rohn @jennyrohn.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Cool study – #Mtb is notoriously slow growing, but inside macrophages, a subpopulation replicates fast and in doing so, actually evade #antibiotics better than the slow-growers - which is counter-intuitive (multiple theories discussed) #MicroSky #Tuberculosis #Tb www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Fast-growing intracellular Mycobacterium tuberculosis populations evade antibiotic treatment - Nature Communications
The slow growth displayed by Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been historically associated with pathogen’s persistence and drug tolerance. Unexpectedly, here the authors identify a rare subpopulation of...
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The ten artists I’ve enjoyed seeing live the most, in no particular order and from various phases of life: Blind Guardian VNV Nation Rachel Stamp Apocalyptica AntiProduct Public Service Broadcasting Sisters of Mercy Manic Street Preachers Epica Pulp
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The possibility that accidental or unofficial releases of big cats led to self-sustaining populations in the UK countryside has been contentious. @warwicklifesci.bsky.social’s Robin Allaby is one of the people who’s been assessing the evidence, using DNA: www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...
discoverwildlife.com
Black leopards are quietly thriving in the British countryside – here’s the whole incredible story | Discover Wildlife
Sightings and DNA tests suggest that large cats such as black leopards are quietly naturalising in Britain. Here’s the whole story.
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
HIRING MICROBIOLOGIST: effective start asap! The PDRA/PDRF (per xp) will investigate the interactions of bumblebee antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with the gut microbiota & more. Our work has shown AMPs have striking specificity for ecological microbes. careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/13... 1/2
careers.exeter.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Researcher Associate or Fellow in Cornwall | University of Exeter
View details and apply for this Postdoctoral Researcher Associate or Fellow vacancy in Cornwall. Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow This job is part of an Advanced Research + Inventio...
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I’ve worked with creative, intelligent, driven black colleagues, met exceptional ones at the same frequency as exceptional white/Asian/other scientists - and been shocked by how rare it is to meet Black British scientists. The idea they somehow have it easy is bollocks.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Whatever Arday and his employers did or didn’t do, the person pushing the story is an open white supremacist (full video available in the linked thread).
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Looking forward to reading this! #MicroSky
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
We have some impressive undergrad students at @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social @warwicklifesci.bsky.social 💜 Access, equity, and ambition: rethinking early careers in the life sciences portlandpress.com/biochemist/a...
portlandpress.com
Access, equity, and ambition: rethinking early careers in the life sciences
Abstract. For many students eager to pursue a career within the life sciences, the transition from education to employment is marked by uncertainty and fragmentation. This comes as a result of a lack ...
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
bioRxiv/medRxiv have been dealing with endless bot attacks recently (plus usual DDOS stuff, etc). Tricky to address without impacting genuine users - many of you affected. Apologies. We're working with our hosting service on solutions & think we're getting there [he shouts in his Red Queen costume].
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Preprint from @tosinorababa.bsky.social and a crack team he assembled to explore the mechanism of action of tEDTA against P. aeruginosa #MicroSky
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Rachel M. Wheatley @rachelmwheatley.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Excited to share this perspective article from my group - how can the interactions between microbes shape the spread of antibiotic resistance mutations? Thank you @microbiologysociety.org for inviting us to submit this 🦠 www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
microbiologyresearch.org
Microbial interactions as key players shaping the emergence and spread of de novo resistance mutations
Antibiotic resistance and the microbiome are two of the most prominent and highly active research areas currently in microbiology. However, these studies are commonly siloed. Research into antibiotic ...
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