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Peter Hill

@peterwshill.bsky.social
836 followers 1.2K following 12 posts

Group Leader at KCL working on relapsing invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella infections. Wellcome CDA Fellow. 🇨🇦🇬🇧

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Reposted by Peter Hill
Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Using AI as a teaching partner: enhancing critical thinking and digital literacy in microbiology journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... #jcampubs
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Inés @ines-ddo.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Our paper is finally out! 🥳 If you want to know how a single Salmonella effector rewires the whole macrophage transcriptional landscape by hijacking one host transcription factor, check our latest research! Thanks to the @thurstonlab.bsky.social and @peterwshill.bsky.social labs for an amazing work!
sciencedirect.com
Salmonella effector SteE reprograms the macrophage regulatory network to drive specific hyperactivation of STAT3 target genes
The ability of Salmonella Typhimurium to exploit macrophages as a niche for survival, replication, and dissemination is central to its pathogenesis. T…
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
#microsky
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Huge congrats to first author @ines-ddo@bsky.social and the whole team across both labs. A model for how bacterial effectors don't just tweak host signalling — they can hijack it in ways the host's own cytokines can't, with consequences cascading from kinase activity to chromatin loops. 10/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
And this hyperactivation reshapes chromatin architecture. CUT&RUN and 3C at the IL4RA locus revealed enhanced H3K27ac at distal enhancers and long-range enhancer-promoter contacts (~50kb) that simply don't form during IL10 stimulation. Bypassing feedback rewires 3D genome organisation. 9/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Why? IL10 signalling is tightly restrained by canonical negative feedback mechanisms. SteE bypasses much of this. GSK3 is reprogrammed into a tyrosine kinase that phosphorylates STAT3 directly, sidestepping the JAK-dependent feedback loops that normally dampen the response. 8/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
The most striking finding: SteE doesn't just phenocopy IL10 signalling. It hyperactivates STAT3 target genes well beyond what canonical IL10 stimulation achieves, with sustained pY705-STAT3 in the nucleus where IL10 shows the expected oscillatory feedback dynamics. 7/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
What about STAT1? Despite being phosphorylated downstream of SteE in some contexts, STAT1 knockout had no effect on SteE-driven transcription. A nice reminder that effector "targets" aren't always the biologically relevant ones. 6/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Genetics confirmed it. In STAT3-KO macrophages, not a single SteE-activated gene was differentially expressed between WT and steE-infected cells. Reconstitution with phospho-dead or DNA-binding-deficient STAT3 failed to rescue, while wild type STAT3 fully restored the phenotype. 5/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Unbiased motif analysis, footprinting, and TF co-occurrence all pointed to one transcription factor: STAT3. STAT3-STAT3 homotypic interactions dominated SteE-opened regions. STAT1 motifs — despite prior reports — were not enriched. 4/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Combining RNA-seq and ATAC-seq across WT, ssaV (no SPI2 effectors) and steE mutant infections, we found SteE drives activation of hundreds of anti-inflammatory genes — coupled to coordinated opening of chromatin at cis-regulatory elements. Repressive effects? Largely secondary. 3/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
The question: how does the Salmonella effector SteE reprogram macrophages into an anti-inflammatory state? SteE is known to hijack host GSK3, converting it into a tyrosine kinase that phosphorylates STAT1 and STAT3. But what does it actually do to the macrophage gene regulatory network? 2/10
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Peter Hill @peterwshill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Thrilled to share the first paper from the lab, out now in Molecular Cell! A wonderful collaboration with @thurstonlab.bsky.social bridging Salmonella host-pathogen interactions and regulatory genomics - two of my favourite things in one story. www.cell.com/molecular-ce... 🦠 🧵1/10
cell.com
Salmonella effector SteE reprograms the macrophage regulatory network to drive specific hyperactivation of STAT3 target genes
Diaz-del-Olmo et al. reveal how a Salmonella virulence protein alters the transcriptional layout of infected macrophages through hyperactivation of a transcription factor and coordinated chromatin rem...
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Reposted by Peter Hill
Zeynep Baharoglu @zeynepbaharoglu.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠 #AMR
science.org
Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance
Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...
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Reposted by Peter Hill
James McInerney @jomcinerney.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
New preprint reveals bacteria can't just collect all resistance genes like Pokemon cards. We found mutually exclusive evolutionary pathways to multidrug resistance in E. coli & P. aeruginosa - some resistance mechanisms actively prevent others from coexisting www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Genomic constraints shape the evolution of alternative routes to drug resistance in prokaryotes
Background Variation within the prokaryotic pangenome is not random, and natural selection that favours particular combinations of genes appears to dominate over random drift. What is less clear is wh...
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Epigenome Technologies @epigenometech.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Epigenetics Update - Regulation of inflammatory responses by pH-dependent transcriptional condensates bit.ly/4kJ2Ju0 Ruslan Medzhitov and Xu Zhou reporting in Cell #Epigenetics #Condensates #Chromatin --- Perfect for cancer, immunology, and aging research; epigenometech.com
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Germán Bonilla-Rosso @germusthermophilus.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
🧫🦠🔬🧬🖥 A much needed review on #plasmids from @eprocha.bsky.social lab!
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Teresa Thurston @thurstonlab.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
We have a new preprint on Salmonella effector SteE! Here we describe how kinase reprogramming drives transcriptional remodelling of the infected macrophage www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... - work led by @ines-ddo.bsky.social and fantastic collaboration with @peterwshill.bsky.social
biorxiv.org
Salmonella Effector SteE Reprogrammes the Macrophage Regulatory Network to Drive Specific Hyperactivation of STAT3 Target Genes
The ability of Salmonella Typhimurium to exploit macrophages as a niche for survival, replication and dissemination is central to its pathogenesis. The effector SteE, which polarises macrophages into ...
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Reposted by Peter Hill
Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
🌟 paper tweetorial! 🌟 check out my first first-author paper from my Ph.D! We wrote a small (=easy-to-read) Perspective piece trying to bridge the gap between #evolutionarybiology and the expanding world of #genomic assays, specifically #chromatin conformation capture (3C and related approaches) 🧵1/7
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Adlung Lab @adlunglab.com · 30/06/2025
🧬🖥️ scAtlas of CD34+ cells from 148 people reveals how circulating hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (cHSPCs) shift with age, sex & disease. Reference model enables myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) diagnosis. From great Liran Shlush & Amos Tanay ‪@natmed.nature.com‬: doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🧪
doi.org
A reference model of circulating hematopoietic stem cells across the lifespan with applications to diagnostics
Nature Medicine - A large single-cell transcriptomic-based reference model for hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells from 148 age- and sex-diverse individuals identifies physiological and...
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TRAstonDrs @castltrastondrs.medsky.network · 07/06/2025
#Medsky🧪 #IDsky #immunosky Macrophages are versatile innate immune cells that act as sentinels, warriors & healers in virtually every tissue. This review on current insights into their developmental origins and the organ-specific cues that imprint diverse tissue-resident & monocyte derived programs
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Epigenetics Podcast @epigeneticspod.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, Petra Hajkova from the @mrc-lms.bsky.social‬ discusses her research on mammalian development, focusing on DNA methylation, histone modifications and TET enzymes. #podcast #epigenetics 🎧 Listen here: activemotif.com/podcasts-pet...
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Nature Reviews Immunology @natrevimmunol.nature.com · 23/04/2025
NEW Highlight of @nature.com paper by @davidjlynn.bsky.social and colleagues @sahmri.bsky.social reporting a prospective observational study of human immune responses to #vaccination after early-life #antibiotic exposure. #immunology #immunosky #medsky #IDsky #pedsky #publichealth
nature.com
Neonatal antibiotics impair infant vaccine responses - Nature Reviews Immunology
A prospective observational study of human immune responses to vaccination after early-life antibiotic exposure shows that neonatal exposure reduces the immune response to several vaccine antigens and...
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Francesca Cesari @francesari.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Reporting in Nature, Eitan Yaffe and colleagues demonstrate that resistance to an antibiotic can rapidly emerge in commensal gut bacteria in vivo, and that such resistant lineages can persist for a long period following cessation of the antibiotic. 👇 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Brief antibiotic use drives human gut bacteria towards low-cost resistance - Nature
Brief ciprofloxacin exposure in humans drives antibiotic resistance evolution in gut bacteria through selective sweeps, particularly involving DNA gyrase mutations, which persist long after exposure a...
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Charlotte Odendall @codendall.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
🚨 Exciting news for #UKCellMicro2025! The meeting is now supported by the EMBO Young Investigator Programme We’re thrilled to have their backing for this year’s meeting. 🌟 🔗 Full details & programme: www.ukcellmicro.org #CellMicro #ECR #EMBO
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Nature Reviews Genetics @natrevgenet.nature.com · 11/03/2025
Adapting systems biology to address the complexity of human disease in the single-cell era go.nature.com/3XBo6Vh #Review by @davidsebfischer.bsky.social, Martin A. Villanueva, Peter S. Winter & Alex K. Shalek @broadinstitute.org @mitofficial.bsky.social @ragoninstitute.bsky.social
go.nature.com
Adapting systems biology to address the complexity of human disease in the single-cell era - Nature Reviews Genetics
Differences between humans and experimental models create a translational gap that makes it difficult to extrapolate research findings. The authors review systems-focused approaches to identify and co...
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Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de · 12/03/2025
🚨 New paper on ArXiv: “Uncertainty quantification and posterior sampling for network reconstruction” TL;DR; We present an efficient method to sample the entire ensemble of possible network reconstructions that are compatible with an indirect observation, e.g. a dynamics. Short thread: 1/N
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Michael Brockhurst @brockhurstlab.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Given hyperbole about this paper www.nature.com/articles/s41... in the news today (eg www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...) it is a good day to post this classic from >20 years ago: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
microbiologyresearch.org
Arming the enemy: the evolution of resistance to self-proteins
A remarkable range of novel antibiotics is attracting increasing interest as a major new weapon in the campaign against bacterial infection. They are based on the toxic peptides that provide the innat...
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Sarah Ross @sarahhross.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
#Immunology out now @science.org Machine learning, using the sequences of an individual's B and T cell receptors, has the potential to diagnose immune-related diseases. buff.ly/3QvxSVf By Maxim Zaslavsky, Erin Craig, @anshulkundaje.bsky.social , @scottboydlab.bsky.social et al.
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Lucas A. Meirelles @la-meirelles.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Are you interested in bacterial pathogen physiology 🧫 and their interactions with our tissues during infections? Alex and I wrote about how organoids + microbiology offer a powerful, tractable way to decode these interactions. Check it out! 👇 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s443... @embojournal.org  #MicroSky
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 21/02/2025
Legitmately thrilled to share our latest work, in which @fernpizza.bsky.social solved an experimental challenge in plasmid biology as old as the field: measuring how plasmids compete and evolve within individual cells!
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Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Nature whispering (from Crow & Casanova, Human life within a narrow range: The lethal ups and downs of type I interferons) #Immunology www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...
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#SingleCell preprints @prepub-singlecell.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Identifying perturbation targets through causal differential networks #SingleCell 🧪🧬🖥️ arxiv.org/abs/2410.03380
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Filipe Carvalho @ffchcarvalho.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
#MicroSky
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Nick Banovich @nebanovich.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Fun to share our experience using tissue micro arrays to lower cost and increase throughput in spatial transcriptomic studies.
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Evelina Tutucci @anilevetu.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Awesome data from the Moffit lab! #spatialbiology www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...
science.org
Highly multiplexed spatial transcriptomics in bacteria
Single-cell decisions made in complex environments underlie many bacterial phenomena. Image-based transcriptomics approaches offer an avenue to study such behaviors, yet these approaches have been hin...
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Olivier Neyrolles @oneyrolles.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
How cool! Amit Singh lab shows M. tuberculosis exploits macrophage metabolism to dodge drugs. Flipping macrophages from OXPHOS to glycolysis with FDA-approved meclizine subverts redox heterogeneity & cuts drug tolerance 🚀 #TBResearch #DrugResistance #MicroSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Westermann Lab @westermannlab.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Is it anything Hfq-like (RNA chaperone)? Or similar to CsrA (global translation modulator)? We don't know yet. But as it stands, Bacteroidota RRM proteins appear as excellent candidates to map post-transcriptional networks in a substantial fraction of the microbiota. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Michael Wagner @michiwagner4.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
🌟 Exciting news! Our latest collaborative research with team @aarhusuni.bsky.social introduces pH-FISH, a novel technique combining pH ratiometry and FISH to simultaneously unravel microbial identity and local biofilm pH. 🔬 🧪 #MicroSky link.springer.com/article/10.1... #Microbiome #Biofilms
link.springer.com
pH-FISH: coupled microscale analysis of microbial identity and acid–base metabolism in complex biofilm samples - Microbiome
Background Correlative structural and chemical imaging of biofilms allows for the combined analysis of microbial identity and metabolism at the microscale. Here, we developed pH-FISH, a method that co...
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Fabian Theis @fabiantheis.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
1/🚀 Excited to share RegVelo, our new cell model combining RNA velocity with gene regulatory network (GRN) dynamics to model cellular changes and predict in silico perturbations. Here's how it works and why it matters! 🧵👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.11.627935v1
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Ed Chuong @edchuong.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
I’m excited to share our latest study led by @giuliapasquesi.bsky.social out today in @cellpress.bsky.social , uncovering a new way transposons have been repurposed for human interferon signaling! Read on for a thread on cryptic splice variants, decoy receptors, and viruses (1/N) 👇🧵 #TESky 🧪
cell.com
Regulation of human interferon signaling by transposon exonization
Transposable element exonization can yield functional protein isoforms as seen for primate-specific IFNAR2.
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Michael Fischbach @mfgrp.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent antibody response against a pathogen. Could lead to topical vaccines that are applied in a cream. @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social led the charge... @natureportfolio.bsky.social 1/55
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Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 11/12/2024
Check out this bombshell publication by Michael Fischbach @mfgrp.bsky.social and coworkers @stanford-chemh.bsky.social @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social, imagine a cancer immune therapy/vaccine where treatment begins and ends with a painless topical skin treatment! 🤯 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Discovery and engineering of the antibody response to a prominent skin commensal - Nature
Nature - Discovery and engineering of the antibody response to a prominent skin commensal
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Gabriele Pollara @gpollara.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
🚨 Delighted to share our paper defining a new role for IL-6 in TB. 🚨 We used genetic variation to show *reduced* IL-6 signalling is causally associated with *lower* risk of TB. Lead author @gushamilton.bsky.social #TBSky #IDSky #ImmunoSky www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... Thread 👇 (1/8)
thelancet.com
Altered IL-6 signalling and risk of tuberculosis: a multi-ancestry mendelian randomisation study
Our findings propose a causal relationship between reduced IL-6 signalling and lower risk of tuberculosis, akin to the effect seen in other IL-6 mediated diseases. This study suggests that IL-6 antago...
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Kimberly Kline 🏔 @kimingeneva.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
This drug repurposing project for the clearance of intracellular pathogens - led by @ronni.bsky.social - is now published in ASC Infectious Diseases. 🤩 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
pubs.acs.org
Bosutinib Stimulates Macrophage Survival, Phagocytosis, and Intracellular Killing of Bacteria
Host-acting compounds are emerging as potential alternatives to combating antibiotic resistance. Here, we show that bosutinib, an FDA-approved chemotherapeutic for treating chronic myelogenous leukemi...
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Di Jiang @dijiang319.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
This week #ScienceMagazine Ribozyme-activated mRNA trans-ligation enables large gene delivery to treat muscular dystrophies #URochesterResearch @urochester.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Ribozyme-activated mRNA trans-ligation enables large gene delivery to treat muscular dystrophies
Ribozymes are small catalytic RNA sequences capable of nucleotide-specific self-cleavage found widespread in nature. Ribozyme cleavage generates distinct 2′,3′-phosphate and 5′-hydroxyl termini that r...
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Andreas Peschel @andreaspeschel.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
rdcu.be/d0Iik
rdcu.be
Post-translational toxin modification by lactate controls Staphylococcus aureus virulence
Nature Communications - The potential roles of post-translational modification of bacterial proteins in pathogenesis are not well understood. Here, Wang et al. show that posttranslational...
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Joram Mooiweer @jorammooiweer.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
New #Preprint from INSERM Paris: 🔬Mucosa isolated #Tcells from #CrohnsDisease patients show increased interaction with AUTOLOGOUS(!) organoids, leading to: - ⚡Enhanced epithelial differentiation - 💥Increased epithelial cell death - 🛡️Cytotoxic T cell activation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Gabriele Pollara @gpollara.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Hopefully DURATION study will eventually inform on whether we may be able to go even lower than 7 days.... (not comparing like with like, i know, as this study inclusion is pyelo, irrespective of bacteraemia) #UTISky #IDSky www.phctrials.ox.ac.uk/recruiting-t...
phctrials.ox.ac.uk
DURATION
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Petter Brodin @petterbrodin.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Recent paper (Nature)-why are males more vulnerable to severe infections (ex acute #COVID), while females suffer more from autoimmunity (SLE, MS etc and also #LongCovid)? X/Y or hormones? We study adaptation of immune systems in gender-affirming testosterone treatment: nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Immune system adaptation during gender-affirming testosterone treatment - Nature
Examination of immunological changes in transgender individuals undergoing gender-affirming testosterone treatment reveals sex hormone-regulated pathways in humans and explains sex-divergent responses...
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