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Zannah Salter

@zannahdu.bsky.social
363 followers 206 following 153 posts

Pathogen genomics, Ornithobacterium hominis, microbiome (and contamination of course!) at University of Cambridge

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Reposted by Zannah Salter
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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Willem van Schaik @wvschaik.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Amazing opportunity for post-doctoral researchers to move to the UK 'MOBILITY offers 6 outstanding postdoctoral researchers a 5-year opportunity to develop their own ambitious research programme at University of Birmingham' www.birmingham.ac.uk/about/colleg...
birmingham.ac.uk
MOBILITY - University of Birmingham
Retaining Europe's brightest researchers to drive the next generation of life science breakthroughs.
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Kate Baker @ksbakes.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Some old friends on this one which has taken a long time to come together. Congratulations to what I remember as a wonderful community of researchers on this incredible effort 🦇 🧬
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David Cleary @bacterioskeptic.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Two sessions that I am involved with and coming up at next years Microbiology Society Conference to keep an eye out for: 'AI in Microbiology' and 'Microbes in the respiratory tract: interactions and infections'. Get those abstracts ready! #Microbio27 tinyurl.com/3tynjmst
tinyurl.com
Annual Conference 2027
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Julian Parkhill @julianparkhill.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Chair in Bacteriology in Cambridge Department of Medicine. A great opportunity. Please circulate. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...
cam.ac.uk
Research Professor in the field of Bacteriology
Strengthening Cambridge's leadership in bacteriology research Bacterial infection and antimicrobial resistance remain among the most pressing global health challenges of our time. At Cambridge, the De...
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John Lees @johnlees.bacpop.org · 03/09/2026
I am hiring in this round – please do apply if you are interested in: machine learning (protein/genome/gene language models), methods for pathogen data analysis, pangenomes (or share with any students who might want to work with us)
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William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 25/08/2026
[Exit Queen.]
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Beautiful views from Magog Down @magogdown.bsky.social
A partial eclipse as the sun nears the horizon, seen from Magog Down in South Cambs. The crescent is only actually visible in the lens flare! The direct sunlight is still dazzling.
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Reposted by Zannah Salter
Nabil-Fareed Alikhan @happykhan.mstdn.science.ap.brid.gy · 11/08/2026
Howdy, In my spare time I have been working on a modern web version of BRIG, and it is now in a state fit for public consumption. Please share with your team + students. And If they have feedback they can reach me on email. brigx.genomicx.org BRIGX is a modern implementation of BRIG […]
mstdn.science
Original post on mstdn.science
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Caitlyn Cardetti, PhD @caitlyncardetti.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
👀 should I have my micro students read this before or after their unknown lab assignment?
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Many years ago me and my husband went to a gig, and when we arrived the support act was already on. This support act was, honestly and literally, a dude with a keyboard screaming into a toilet. Eventually the music stopped and the screaming stopped and some people started tentatively clapping,
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Max Stammnitz @maxstammnitz.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Wow! A fourth class of transmissible cancers. CONTAGIOUS FISH MELANOMA, discovered in Lake Memphremagog (Vermont / Quebec) 🎣 🧬 😷 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @uvmvermont.bsky.social
nature.com
Brown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer - Nature
Whole-genome sequencing analysis of tumour and matched non-tumour host tissues of the brown bullhead catfish reveals a type of naturally occurring transmissible cancer.
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Lewis C. E. Mason @lewiscemason.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
By Julia Marshall as first author and led by Professors Kate Baker and Henrik Salje as co-leading authors (@hsalje.bsky.social @ksbakes.bsky.social), please see our new article about the genomic epidemiology of the spread of sexually transmitted #Shigella: 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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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Do not use AI generated images to guide you in packaging your biohazard shipments 😱 This UN3373 diagram was on a british hazardous goods logistics company's website. It's not good.
An apparently AI generated illustration of packaging instructions for shipping UN3373 and Cat A biological substances from Logicom Dangerous Goods Logistics. There are multiple errors, including typos, nonsensical icons, and genuinely misleading depictions of primary/secondary/outer packaging requirements.
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇
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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)
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Kym Deyn @kymdeyn.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Ignoring the rest of my life to post my eldritch Garfield poem, specifically its Garfield-as-Eldritch-Sea-God-of-Late-Capitalism with all of us unknowingly partaking of his microplastic communion. Originally published in Broken Sleep Book's 'Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry' 2022
Ask Not For Whom the Garfield Phone Rings
Since the 1980’s fragments of novelty Garfield phones have been washing up along a stretch of coastline in Brittany, France. It is suspected they come from a submerged tanker lost overboard during a storm.

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Good news	from the abyss:
there are no more Mondays
other days are suspect		and
we are waiting for it’s decision.



						In the ocean’s penumbra	dial tone
						unmoving eye		fragments of self
						a dozen, two dozen, innumerable
						pieces worn to sand, held in the bellies
						of gulls, mouths of fish		 their language 
						returns to his.

Microplastics, in the right circumstance
have occult properties. Imagine
being everywhere at once. Having
a copyrighted face. Everyone knowing
of you and speaking of you, partaking
of body		being consumed. 
						Cats always were gods. 		Whats
						one more apotheosis? Meow.	fear
						everything you do not know		fear
								 everything.


2.
The shuttered-in numerations
of our dark god lasagne.
demand
What medium holds the line? What angels ping through the wire
like silver minnows? Operator?
Operator?
The dial tone is the same - a sea’s hush.
Is there anything there?
As a child, you held shells up to your ears
to listen something other than human noise. That chatter, radio, cluttered invention. The thrill of hearing an ocean mutter,
secret left by the ghost of some pink
mollusc
You are part of it. The bizarre
orange eucharist. Scrubbed your face, flossed your teeth. Those hydrocarbons have something to say, John.
You are our disciple, John.3.
Ring ring. Ring ring.
Are you going to answer?
Ring ring.
Are you going to beg for forgiveness? It will not bring back their children.
Ring ring. Ring ring.
Fathoms below are their full number. A tanker overturned. They were not so strange new. But algae flourishes, hermit crabs die in the circuitry,
the petroleum’s ancient life fills with descendants.
Ring ring. Last chance.
No answerphone, no answers.
Your terrified voice drumming in your small human ears. H-hello?
Who’s there?4.
Our gods no longer fit
inside their comic strips.
They have come out to play.		
						
A scarlet polyp pushes out of the receiver
	as if in answer to some unspoken prayer,
	the anemone sticks to the cavern
	of your ear.
Good god!	No, not quite. 
Everything is a funeral in the years
before the drowning. This:
the first hymn.					
The soft tissue of your brain is the tail
	of a new species of hermit crab. His pincers
	reach out of your mouth,  Eyestalks
	glint behind your wet gums.
Our bodies will return to sediment.
Algae and plankton and mycelium
in a groupchat without you.			
Plastic orange cats and plastic orange cats
	flowing, fragment 	by 	fragment
	into everything.
Washed up, they begin to ring.
They ring for thee.
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Quote with a fictional band that's not Spinal Tap
Scooby Doo (wearing a blonde wig) sings with the band Sunday Around Noonish in the episode "Art Of Darkness"
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Camila Gazolla Volpiano, PhD @gazollavolpiano.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
New preprint! The first first-author work of my postdoc at the Baker! So, babies' airways are colonised from birth, and our group has shown that early colonisers shape respiratory health. 1/7 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Gabe Moshenska @gabemoshenska.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Penny found in soil above air raid shelter. Archaeological evidence that WW2 took place sometime before 1946. But when exactly? We’ll have to keep digging to find out.
Hand holding a one penny coin dated 1946, grass lawn behind
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
The Devils Dyke morris men here for May Day 💚🌞
The Devils Dyke morris men dance the Bonny Green Garters, as the sun rises over the trees at Wandlebury. The sky is clear blue and the sun illuminates their hankies that are waved overhead. There is a crowd gathered around.
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
When I was little I heard the phrase "rainy day fund" or "saving for a rainy day" and deduced that the rainy day in question was a time when you were really bored and needed a little treat, like being stuck inside because it's raining. Rainy day fund = little treat fund.
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Freya Harrison @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
My super department @warwicklifesci.bsky.social is hiring 6 assistant profs in the wake of recent retirements. We're looking for people in microbiology/infection, cellular disease / immunity; environmental biology; and plant/crop science. #MicroSky warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/lang-en-G...
warwick-careers.tal.net
Assistant Professor x6 (111522-0426) - University of Warwick
Title: Assistant Professor x6 (111522-0426). Application Deadline: . Position Type: Permanent
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Simon Hammann @simonhammann.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.
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Auke-Florian 🪹 @aukeflorian.nl · 09/04/2026
Hi! I'm a scientist studying artificial stuff in animal nests, and I'm looking for a #Pokémon expert. 🌍 Yup, I found some Pokémon in a nest!! 😲 Specifically, the question concerns dating pieces of packaging, which might be tricky. Who knows EVERYTHING about Pokémon? Who can I send a DM to? 😅
media.tenor.com
a cartoon pikachu with a surprised look on his face .
Alt: a cartoon pikachu with a surprised look on his face .
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Commuting on a bike across the city of Cambridge involves more cows than you might think 🐄
A herd of young brown cows graze alongside a bike path, on a sunny morning. The path ahead crosses a cattle grid onto an iron bridge that crosses the river Cam.
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Rachel Salvidge @rachelsalvidge.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Huzzah! Tomorrow's Sewage Spill Day when the full stats are released on how much was discharged into rivers, lakes and coasts last year. To whet your appetites I’ve mapped the 2025 spills at outfalls affecting bathing waters. Here are the top 10 worst offenders in reverse order:
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Department of Veterinary Medicine is open for the #CambridgeFestival West Campus open day! Come and explore our activities and talks! @camvetschool.bsky.social @cambridgefestival.bsky.social
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
#Microbiology question for the masses! Why might a bug grow on Columbia w blood, but barely survive on Columbia chocolate format? The base medium is almost identical, just slightly less peptone I think. No abx in either. 🧐
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John Lees @johnlees.bacpop.org · 17/03/2026
You can now view a tree of 2,399,238 bacterial genomes we made from AllTheBacteria (on the great Taxonium): taxonium.org/atb That's a big tree! (unless you're used to SC2 trees)
taxonium.org
Taxonium
Interactive exploration of large phylogenetic trees
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Fishbourne Roman Palace 🐬 Everyone went there!
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Gabe Moshenska @gabemoshenska.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
The destruction of short courses and continuing education departments in UK universities did enormous harm to the ability of these three realms of archaeology - amateur, academic, professional - to overlap and interact, and destroyed longstanding alternative career paths.
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Phil Rodgers @philrodgers.co.uk · 23/02/2026
Statement from the University on the future of the vet school. www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news...
cam.ac.uk
General Board meeting about veterinary education at the University of Cambridge
Statement on veterinary education at the University of Cambridge
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Ben Fenton @benfenton.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Cambridge University has just announced that the proposal to close its undergraduate course in veterinary medicine, which would have led to the end of its Vet School and Hospital, has been dropped. The vets will carry on with the reforms they had already launched and the course continues. Victory!!
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Dr. Headbutt 🌈🧪 @nicoleackermans.com · 19/02/2026
I don't think that the reviewers asking me for higher animal numbers really understand how many 40 goats are. Do you know the CHAOS that comes with dealing with 40 GOATS in an experimental setting! Mice people cannot comprehend. 3 goats alone ate a tarp, a clock, and 2 expensive accelerometers!
media.tenor.com
a group of goats standing in a grassy field looking at the camera
Alt: a group of goats running towards the camera
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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
[Lindisfarne] Me: (chanting) teeth, teeth- Other fossil hunters: teeth, TEETH British Geological Society: [pounding its clipboard] TEETH, TEETH, TEETH!
bbc.com
'Smiling' fossil discovered in Northumberland
The unusual looking fossil is estimated to be a few hundred million years old dating to the Carboniferous period.
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Alan McNally @alanmcn1.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Bit different from our usual work A PhD applying metagenomics to identify microbial plastic degradation and metabolism, fully funded studentship (UK students only). www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
A metagenomics approach to discover novel plastic degrading microbial pathways at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - A metagenomics approach to discover novel plastic degrading microbial pathways at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
My brother draws and prints custom cards and they're always amazing. This one apparently honours my taste in books
A card imitating the cover of a book. The background has a monstrous cartoon face. The title is in a 1920s style: "THE TERROR that came to town AND NOW ITS ON MY FACE and I'm INSANE because THE TERROR is on MY FACE and it's not a METAPHOR" by Otis Plonkerton.
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David Cleary @bacterioskeptic.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
New paper out with colleagues from Malaysia www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #microsky
microbiologyresearch.org
Dynamics of a large multidrug-resistant plasmid encoding New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 and oxacillinase-58 carbapenemases in Acinetobacter baumannii clinical isolates from a tertiary hospital in Mal...
Acinetobacter baumannii carrying the bla NDM-1 gene, which encodes New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 (NDM-1), exhibits resistance to nearly all β-lactams and is not affected by β-lactamase inhibitors, l...
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Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
The collapse of curiosity driven research has occurred in STEM too. Everything has to be outcomes focused - cure disease, grow better crops, etc. But so much of what humanity has discovered is from "basic" curiosity-driven science. I'm hugely in favor of funding curiosity in every discipline.
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
🚨Submissions open for the Cambridge Journal of Science and Policy (CJSP)! 🚨 CJSP invites submissions for Volume 7, Issue 1 under the theme "Infectious disease policy: research, surveillance, and resilience". Manuscripts for the themed issue must be received by 6th March 2026.
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Now that is an excellent idea
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
"Metascience Novelty Indicators" sounds super scammy? Does anyone know what it's all about? The paper of mine they cite qualifying me to contribute seems... pretty unlikely
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Rebecca J Hall @drrebeccajhall.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
PhD projects in microbial engineering now up, including one with @whelanfj.bsky.social @willpjsmith.bsky.social and me! 🦠 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
(CODE M) The use of synthetic communities to understand how the cystic fibrosis microbiome responds to perturbation at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - (CODE M) The use of synthetic communities to understand how the cystic fibrosis microbiome responds to perturbation at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
'to treat peer review as a throughput problem is to misunderstand what is at stake. Review is not simply a production stage in the research pipeline; it is one of the few remaining spaces where the scientific community talks to itself.' 1/3
timeshighereducation.com
AI is not a peer, so it can’t do peer review
If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines, says Akhil Bhardwaj
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Zannah Salter @zannahdu.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
I only just wrote to reviewers "so sorry the underlying taxonomy changed since submission" 🙈
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London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine @lshtm.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
BREAKING NEWS: UK loses its #measles elimination status @benk-d.bsky.social highlights failure to reach 95% measles #vaccine coverage target in UK + need for secure funding for vaccine outreach efforts & joined-up #PublicHealth response Read more: www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/n...
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Dr Sam Leggett @samleggs22.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
If you’re in/around London next week & want to hear me speak about lots of fun early medieval isotopes + aDNA come along on Tuesday! ⚛️🧬☠️
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Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex @smutclyde.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
The publishers of Frontiers are very proud of their fraud-detection software and have appointed themselves as "Guardians of Research Integrity". Also, they publish stuff like this.
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