iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Diving into the microverse today! Really looking forward to this wonderful showcase of @manchester.ac.uk MICROBIOLOGY! 🦠🧫💡💊🫀🌤️ Huge thanks @atmicroverse.bsky.social and particularly @flanagella.bsky.social for setting this up

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

#Manchester #MEEhubs26 Day 2 is on! Fantastic talks from @olimeacock.bsky.social @melissalawson.bsky.social @evokait.bsky.social on microbial community interactions with keynote by @dundee.ac.uk's Prof. Sarah Coulthurst 🦠↔️🦠

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I'm not crying, you're crying ❤️🦠

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

It was a huge pleasure to welcome my former mentor, @unimelb.edu.au 's Prof James Osborne, to @mermanchester.bsky.social this week! Here I am seconds after having embarrassingly dropped several of my cryos on the floor

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Outstanding MathBio seminar by @olimeacock.bsky.social today at @manchester.ac.uk! Thanks Carl Whitfield and @mermanchester.bsky.social members for great chats Oli has developed beautiful eco theory on how microbes interact via environmental change 1/2

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

What’s really cool 🧊🧊🧊, however, is that we see resistance trade-offs arising between different types of T6SS toxin. When the lipase-evolved E. coli are confronted with a different toxin, targeting their call wall, they are actually fare worse than the ancestral strain 😱:

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

When we look instead at E. coli cells that have adapted to lipase attacks, the rate of permeabilisation is much lower – i.e. we see strong lipase resistance at the single-cell scale:

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

*In fact*, in some cases it can even make things worse. Here’s what happens when ancestral E. coli (green) is attacked by A. baylyi bacteria (red), secreting a membrane-degrading lipase via the T6SS: [VIDEO TIME!!]

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Congratulations also to MERMan's new Bicentenary Fellows, Dr. @matthewjshepherd.bsky.social and Dr. Ryan R Cochrane! Names on doors!!! 🎉 @mermanchester.bsky.social @manchester.ac.uk

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Huge congratulations to @mermanchester.bsky.social 's latest graduate, Dr. Rana Alruthaya, who passed her PhD viva today! Well done Rana!

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Had a fabulous time at the @wellcometrust.bsky.social ECR meeting today! Thanks for sharing some inspiring science and innovations to improve research culture 🧑‍🔬 and sustainability 🌱

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Why does this bias results most where the Attacker : Susceptible ratio is high? Here's a little cartoon explainer: 11/n

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

We also found that, if cell mixtures are pre-incubated in a liquid antibiotic that selects against T6SS attackers, this reduces the bias, especially for longer pre-incubation times. 10/n

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

We found that there was a strong, T6SS-dependent reduction in the number of E. coli c.f.u.s recovered, compared with the “”ground truth” densities we knew we should be getting (plotted here as a pink zone). The deviation tended to increase with increasing Attacker / Susceptible ratio. 9/n

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

In other words, Kanamycin really isn’t quenching T6SS antagonism effectively in the aftermath of a killing assay, and so you’d predict that you’d get fewer E. coli CFUs as a result. 7/n

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

We found that T6SS-armed A. baylyi ADP1 bacteria (often used to study T6SSs), will transiently still fire their T6SS harpoons under lethal selective conditions. Here we see ADP1 killing some green E. coli when ADP1 is supposed to be dead! 6/n

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Some background: competition assays are common in microbiology. You mix different populations of microbes (normally 2 types for simplicity), allow them to compete, and then measure how many cells survive from each population, compared with some control where the populations don’t interact. 2/n

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Go Team! Deeply honoured that the MERMan lab reps won an @manchester.ac.uk‬ "FMBH heroes" award - thanks ‪@fbmh-uom.bsky.social‬ and @mermanchester.bsky.social for nominating us ❤️❤️❤️

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Had a fantastic time at @pintofscience.uk last night! Here I am wobbling on a chair trying to turn a #Phage into a #T6SS. Thanks @magdalenakurteu.bsky.social‬ for the pic!

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

It is bonkers to me that in 2011 this was my bedroom

A nutcracker figurine standing in front of Balliol College

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Some excellent Xmas #boardgames with @mermanchester.bsky.social tonite. Findings: - it is impossible to express the rules of Wavelength in english - Articulate is the best party game ever Team gold ftw

A meeting room full of smiling people, eating snacks and playing board games

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 02/08/2024

(4/6) Why is this important? T6SSs often secrete multiple toxins at once. Our works shows a useful feature of this 'cocktail' strategy: the ability to suppress resistance. This could be a new factor selecting for diversity in T6SS toxin arsenals.

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 02/08/2024

(3/6) We tested this idea by evolving E. coli 🦠 against single- and multi-toxin A. baylyi T6SS attackers. Multi-toxin resistance evolved frequently against toxins Tae1 and Tle1 alone, but when attackers secreted both together, resistance didn't evolve 🙅

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Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · 02/08/2024

(2/n) In developing computer models of resistance evolution, we found st unexpected 🤯: simulated bacteria rarely evolved resistance when confronted w. multiple T6SS toxins 🙅, but often evolved multi-resistance against single-toxin attackers 🛡️🛡️🛡️(I know, what ????)

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