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Lauren Cowley

@laurencowley.bsky.social
165 followers 123 following 6 posts

Senior Lecturer in Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics at Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath

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Reposted by Lauren Cowley
Ben de Bivort @debivort.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hello friends, the Harvard Life Science departments have banded together to hire a new colleague working at the intersection of Life Sciences and AI. Could be primarily an experimentalist, or could be primarily a compute/theorist. academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16773
academicpositions.harvard.edu
Tenure-Track Professor in Life Science and AI
The Life Sciences Departments in Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences seek to recruit a tenure-track professor whose research is at the interface of AI and life sciences, from methodological developme...
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Nick Loman @pathogenomenick.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Folks - if you're interested in how machine learning/AI can be used for microbial genomics, microbiome and metagenomics studies - please join us for a workshop in Birmingham on Thursday 8th October organised with CLIMB & NVIDIA. www.climb.ac.uk/blog/2026/09...
climb.ac.uk
Call for Applications: GPU-Accelerated Computing for Microbiome and Metagenomic Research · CLIMB
CLIMB is a cloud computing infrastructure for microbial bioinformatics — notebook servers, shared storage and reproducible workflows for genomics, metagenomics and pathogen surveillance researchers ac...
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Will Matlock @wtmatlock.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Does an AMR gene on a plasmid diversify differently to an AMR gene on a chromosome? We are looking for a PhD student to work on this question in Bath!
gw4biomed.ac.uk
Turning up the volume: plasmid copy number and gene duplications as drivers of antimicrobial resistance evolution - GW4 BioMed MRC DTP
Project Code IIAR27Ba Matlock Project Type Wet lab Research Theme Infection, Immunity, and Antimicrobial Resistance Project Summary Download Summary Plasmids are important drivers of antimicrobial res...
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Curtis Suttle @virosphere.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Professor in Bacteriophage Biology & Evolution at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Closing date 1 October, with an expected start date no earlier than January 1, 2027, and a salary within the range of $200,000 to $270,000 per year. For details: ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/ubcfac...
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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Brown University has a widget that tracks the cost of the Iran war to American consumers (as contrasted to whatever the Pentagon is spending). Per-household cost now exceeds $600. iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu
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The Lancet Infectious Diseases @thelancetinfdis.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
New Research The spread of sexually transmissible drug-resistant shigellosis in England: a genomic epidemiology study www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
thelancet.com
The spread of sexually transmissible drug-resistant shigellosis in England: a genomic epidemiology study
Our study shows the distinct and intensifying sexual transmission of shigellosis, highlighting the urgent need to address sexually transmissible shigellosis as a distinct health threat. Traditional in...
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Josie Bryant @josiebryant.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Very proud of this preprint out of my lab, our first (of hopefully many) host-microbe spatial transcriptomics paper. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Amazing insights into P. aeruginosa biology and chronic airway disease @cysticfibrosis.org.uk @sangerinstitute.bsky.social @asthmaandlung.org.uk
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Lauren Cowley @laurencowley.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Have you registered for Genome Science yet? www.genomescience.org.uk Its going to be in mad for it Manchester September 14th-16th 2026. Lots of great microbial genomics and bioinformatics speakers so make sure you secure a place. Early bird registration ends on 31/7/26.
static.klipy.com
Liam Gallagher: Oasis Rooftop Walk
ALT: Liam Gallagher: Oasis Rooftop Walk
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com
Three cool scientists introduce their work "Our new theory has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, but we feel its depths and intricacies are best appreciated on the limited-edition vinyl release."
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James Connolly @ruamicro.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Early bird registration for VTEC 2026 ends this Friday (February 27th). Please share with your networks and consider registering for this great One-health conference covering all topics VTEC related, taking place in Aberdeen on the 10-13th of May.
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 02/02/2026
Sir Paul Nurse PRS writes in today's Times on cuts to UKRI funding: "If [discovery-driven science] is not properly supported, we lose the seed-corn of discovery research, harming subsequent science translation, societal improvement and economic growth." Read more(£): www.thetimes.com/comment/lett...
thetimes.com
Times letters: Relevance of the Church in the 21st century
Sir, AN Wilson’s article (“More liturgy, fewer lectures please, archbishop”, Jan 31) is rather like the curate’s egg — good in parts
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James Connolly @ruamicro.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Still lots of time to apply for this exciting project with us. Please share and encourage interested students to get in touch.
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Ed Feil @edfeil.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
It has been a long road, but our paper on Klebsiella plasmids is finally out in Lancet Microbe. Thanks to all co authors but especially Marjorie Gibbon and Natacha Couto www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Convergence and global molecular epidemiology of Klebsiella pneumoniae plasmids harbouring the iuc3 virulence locus: a population genomic analysis
Klebsiella pneumoniae is an important pathogen of humans and animals. In the past five years, increasing reports of convergent strains that carry both…
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 06/12/2025
A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...
doi.org
Redirecting
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Mat Beale @typemat12.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
New #MicroSky study showing extensive transmission of #AMR E coli transmission in East Africa under One Health framework, led by Patrick Musicha www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/an...
sanger.ac.uk
Antimicrobial resistant bacteria and genes move freely between people, animals and the environment
By analysing Escherichia coli (E. coli) genomes, researchers have shown that antimicrobial resistant bacteria and the genes that confer resistance move between bacterial hosts and across ecological co...
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Josie Bryant @josiebryant.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Really pleased to share the first paper to come out of the lab. We found that hospital patients were frequently colonised with P. aeruginosa and that the same clone was shared between the gut and the lung. The phylogenies indicate that the clones moved from lung->gut www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
High frequency body site translocation of nosocomial Pseudomonas aeruginosa - Nature Communications
Here, the authors report within-host diversity and body site translocation dynamics in hospital samples of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and reveal that body site sharing was likely due to within-patient tra...
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EMBL-EBI @ebi.embl.org · 18/11/2025
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing health threat, making infections harder to treat and complicating routine medical care. EMBL-EBI’s new AMR portal brings together laboratory resistance data and bacterial genomes in one open platform. #WAAW2025 #ActOnAMR www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t... 🧬💻
ebi.ac.uk
A new gateway to global antimicrobial resistance data
New online portal connects bacterial genomes with experimental resistance data to support antimicrobial resistance research.
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Dr Selena Wisnom @lswisnom.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
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Lauren Cowley @laurencowley.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
In case anyone who follows me on here lives in Bristol and loves beer, my husband is opening his brewery in a railway arch next to Temple Meads on Saturday 22nd November. Come down for a pint of crisp beer! Follow here www.instagram.com/unwinsbrewery/ for more details on the event and the concept
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
(With apologies to Randall Munroe)
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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
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
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John Lees @johnlees.bacpop.org · 17/09/2025
The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026): www.embl.org/about/info/e... We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
embl.org
EMBL International PhD Programme – Unique in the world and waiting for you!
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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians. It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical. While here, he developed a new way of aligning to millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology
LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.
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David Pfau @davidpfau.com · 28/05/2025
The war on science in the US is already having an effect on private sector research like AlphaFold. Bears repeating but the private sector builds on top of things created by academic research for the public good. This hurts everyone.
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Lauren Cowley @laurencowley.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Come to Newcastle this summer to hear about all the latest cool research in Genome Science www.genomescience.org.uk. The programme is hotting up! Get registering and see you there
genomescience.org.uk
Genome Science UK 2025
Newcastle University
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 14/05/2025
Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab
A screenshot of the termination notice showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants"A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted
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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
So glad this is finally out. The method has been instrumental in allowing us to compress the AllTheBacteria data - ~2 million bacterial genomes shrink from 3Terabytes (gzipped) to 100Gb using phylogenetic compression. Great work by @brinda.eu
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Nanami Kubota @nanamikubota.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Preprint out! Bacteria w/ hyper-replicative filamentous phage lead to overnight emergence of cheater phages. Bacteria w/ both phages can outcompete wildtype, then rapidly lose phage via a phage Tragedy of the Commons @shellyscrib.bsky.social @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness
Many bacteria carry phage genome(s) in their chromosome (i.e., prophage), and this intertwines the fitness of the bacterium and the phage. Most Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains carry filamentous phages ...
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. Find out how your community may be impacted. Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org a 🧵
US map via scienceimpacts.org visualization of economic loss due to IDC cuts to 15% as part of Feb 7, 2025 executive order, with shading denoting intensity of cuts.
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Matt Loose @minomatt.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
UK Genome Science 2025 is going live for this year - www.genomescience.org.uk - get registering!
genomescience.org.uk
Genome Science
9th - 11th July 2025, Newcastle University
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Josie Bryant @josiebryant.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
If you have experience in sc/spatial transcriptomics with an interest in microbes....come and join our team as a computational postdoc: sanger.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/WellcomeSang... Incredibly exciting datasets on host-microbe interactions in the lung. Pls RT and reach out if you are interested.
sanger.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com
Postdoctoral Fellow - Computational
Do you want to help us improve human health and understand life on Earth? Make your mark by shaping the future to enable or deliver life-changing science to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenge...
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Willem van Schaik @wvschaik.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Remember that Europe (@ebi.embl.org) has mirrored all these services and they will keep on running. They look and feel a bit different but do the same thing. I think @ewanbirney.bsky.social should be able to confirm. www.europepmc.org www.ebi.ac.uk/jdispatcher/...
europepmc.org
Europe PMCHome - Europe PMC
Europe PMC is an archive of life sciences journal literature.
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Kate Baker @ksbakes.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Really enjoying having @atjcagan.bsky.social in the @geneticscam.bsky.social who drew this fab piece at our recent research day. Contains some exciting teasers for our next awesome piece of work landing before Christmas! Thanks Alex!
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Lauren Cowley @laurencowley.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Very exciting piece of work to be involved in, the stuff microbial GWAS dreams are made of! Please read @ksbakes.bsky.social excellent thread bsky.app/profile/ksba...
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Lauren Cowley @laurencowley.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Jumped ship. hello blueworld.
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