Honour McCann

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

🚨PhD opportunity alert!!! Come work with us on this new cool NERC DTP PhD project Investigate How Bacterial Hosts Control Domesticated Viral Machines to Drive Horizontal Gene Transfer in Marine Environments. Retweet = nice. Thank you!!! aries-dtp.ac.uk/studentships...

How do "friendly" rhizobia build a legume nodule? @albinteulet.bsky.social found that Type III effectors of symbiotic Rhizobia include diverse predicted transcriptional and post-transcriptional modulators. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Now @plosbiology.org More information below.

A new plant-bacteria immunological connection in the first preprint of our group at @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social @plantevolution.bsky.social! Straight from the top of Mt. Olympus ⛰️🦅 Led by Eirik @eiriklag.bsky.social, in collaboration with @geminiteamlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

My final postdoc project is out today in Nature! We show microbes co-migrated with humans out of Africa; three independent methods agree, and timing matches archaeological / genetic evidence (Fig. 4c). Seeing Fig. 4c for 1st time was one of my most memorable "eureka" moments! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Postdoc opp; the Katherine Esau Fellowship @UC Davis funds 2–3 years of work on plant structure and function. Curious how plant structure shapes plant-microbe interactions? Get in touch! Due Nov 1, international applicants welcome. www-plb.ucdavis.edu/about/fellow...

We are hiring! Start at a #MaxPlanckInstitute with your own independent Max Planck Research Group. This position is equivalent to a W2 Professorship at a German university, or Associate Professor internationally. 🔗Apply until October 14th! www.mpg.de/career/max-p... #ScienceCareer #MPRG #TenureTrack

Excited that our new paper with @henrylabsymbio.bsky.social and Kerry Oliver is out @pnas.org! We show that mobile genetic elements can spread adaptive host-benefiting traits across heritable insect symbionts on eco-evolutionary timescales.🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Two announcements regarding AccuSNV, which calls high precision SNVs across microbial genomes: Version 1.1 is now incredibly easy to install, run, and perform downstream analyses with (see image of typical output!). The manuscript was also published this summer in Genome Research! Links next...

Ever wondered how plasmid mobility differs across natural environments? In our new ISME Commun paper, Sebastian Bonhoeffer, @jhuisman.bsky.social and I ask: do F-like plasmids in E.coli associated with cows, pigs and poultry differ in their ability to transfer? [1/6] doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Very excited to share the first preprint from my PhD with the community! This is also the first paper from the Plant Immunogenomics group with @galofir.bsky.social, so stay tuned for more! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n 🧵

That must hurt. The part where they talk about two different models as though it's supposed to be somehow reassuring is just an extra kick in the teeth: "We read both tea leaves AND entrails for robustness".

Postdoc position available in my group to work on ERC funded project on evolutionary biology of antibiotic resistance. Looking for someone with expertise in bacterial genetics, AMR, and evolutionary biology. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSZ416/p...

🚨 Please share! 🚨 I'm recruiting a fully funded 4-year Gatsby Sainsbury PhD studentship at Durham! 🌱🤖 Designing plant immune receptors from scratch, combining AI protein design with structural biology and plant immunity. If you're interested please get in touch! benthamlab.org shorturl.at/U2PdV

Strains from the clove-infecting lineage grow more slowly than the banana infecting ones and are only found at higher elevations. Since we were under some time pressure to get them onto plates as early as possible to inform later sampling decisions, we sampled at nightfall and processed that night.

After a long drive into Central Java, we set up the mobile lab in the plantation office

Within four days of landing lab HQ was set up, hundreds of plates were poured and we were in the field sampling for Ralstonia on clove.

Lab HQ for this trip is in the brand new Agrotropica Learning Center at UGM 👌

Landed in Indonesia to continue the hunt for Ralstonia syzygii! After piles of paperwork, the real work begins..

Preprint alert! It is my great pleasure to announce the first manuscript from the lab, a story that started @gmivienna.bsky.social and was mainly accomplished by the intrepid @gesahoffmann.bsky.social at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social. A brief thread with our findings www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What is the best strategy to win any contest? Eliminate your opponents of course. Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I will be so chalant when they tell me off for snacking in the new lecture hall 😅😂

There’s a leak - and a conceptual artist - at the Max Planck 👌

It was an amazing sciences day at #2025ISMPMI! Right after the “Population, biology, ecology and genomics” session, I had the opportunity to have lunch and discuss about this topic with the co-chair @honour.bsky.social

#phagesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One of my favourite serendipitous results from the lab came about because we were long-read sequencing bacterial: Vibrio cholerae, which is "supposed to" have TWO circular chromosomes (3 + 1 million base pairs) often has just ONE fused chromosome (4 Mbp). www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

Cell-type-specific execution of effector-triggered immunity Our new preprint is online, 1 July⬇️ With @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social @leonardojo.bsky.social Amey Redkar @kaisakajala.bsky.social @jonathandgjones.bsky.social For early readers & community feedback🙏🏼 #openscience @erc.europa.eu

This is what a multi-floor meeting looks like at the @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social. Love a good science lobby 😁

New Paper out! apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/epdf/10.... We wanted to know how much genetic variation exists for Zymoseptoria in a single wheat field.

Congratulations to @hassansalem.bsky.social on the #ERC Consolidator Grant! 🎉 The project explores how beetles use symbiotic relationships w/ microbes to digest plant material, & compare this to gene transfer for digestive enzyme acquisition. 🪲tinyurl.com/bdhrdnes Evolutionary insights to come!

📢 Excited to share our work out now in @nature.com! 📢 We present the phased pan-genome of tetraploid European potato, based on 10 historical cultivars representing 85% of European potato diversity. Learn more below! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/7

Pseudomonas syringae secretes the iminosugar glycosyrin to block plant immune recognition. It mimics galactose to inhibit β-galactosidase, disrupt flagellin sensing, and rewire host glycobiology! doi.org/10.1126/scie... Huge congrats to Tee and everyone involved! #PlantImmunity #PlantChemeticsLab

New postdoc position in our lab (2 y+): evolutionary genomics of integrons and MGEs with focus on vibrio-phage interactions. Great environment @pasteur.fr for science, career building. Super collaborators @celineloot.bsky.social @amazeld.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social 3 weeks to apply!

It was a great honor to give a seminar yesterday @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social. Thanks for inviting me and for all the great & stimulating chats I had throughout the day! So inspiring to learn about the newest research done in the Ley lab, and on the S-layer and on plant pathogens ! #microsky

The classic Tübingen photo 😄 @olayarendueles.bsky.social visited the @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social and told us about the impact of extracellular polysaccharide on phage and plasmid-mediated HGT 👌