Bash the bug

1/ A child in a lab coat holding a stick with a sweet on it. Text reads: ‘Spark curiosity this British Science Week’. Download free teaching resources at e-bug.eu’

2/ A close-up of hands glowing green against a dark blue background. Text reads: ‘what if every surface showed glowing fingerprints? Download free teaching resources at e-bug.eu’

3/ A close-up of a blue and white capsule with nothing inside it. Text reads: ‘what if antibiotics stopped working? Download free teaching resources at e-bug.eu’

4/ A blue background with white text reading ‘at e-bug.eu every week is science week’

Science is everywhere: in our bodies, our food, our classrooms.

This #BritishScienceWeek, meet e-Bug: UKHSA's free health education programme, which helps teachers bring infection science to life from early years to KS3.

Curious? Find out more at 🔗 https://www.e-bug.eu/british-science-week

International Day of Women and Girls in Science 👩‍🔬

Proud to work alongside the scientists in our #microbiology lab whose work in antimicrobial resistance, public health and diagnostics has real-world impact!

#WomenInScience #AMR #PublicHealth @medsci.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

MMM has an exciting UNIQ+ project running this summer -apply now!

Bacteria, microplastics & resistance — what’s the connection?

#Microplastics are everywhere, even in hospitals. But what happens when bacteria stick to them? Come and find out!

@afswinkels.bsky.social @nstoesser.bsky.social

Happy our preprint is out🦠:

"Evaluation of an Oxford Nanopore sequencing workflow for mycobacteria from primary MGIT culture"

We developed and tested a workflow for long-read sequencing of #mycobacteria, including optimising DNA extraction and assessing how #ONT performs compared with #Illumina.

Our project "Sardinia’s Invisible Marine Microbiome" is one of six 2026 #PartArt4OW participatory art initiatives! Excited to do this with the brilliant @annadumitriu.bsky.social (image credit), Sardinian scientists, citizens of Alghero, and colleagues in @modmedmicro.bsky.social @bashthebug.net

What is UNIQplus? | University of Oxford The UNIQplus programmeThe UNIQplus programme is aimed at supporting talented undergraduates from under-represented groups, who would find continuing into postgraduate study a challenge for reasons

Univ of Oxford UNIQ+ scheme applications open: 7-week research internship this Summer www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/g.... Lots of projects - one in our lab on microplastics & AMR & hospital environments at @modmedmicro.bsky.social led by Aram Swinkels www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/g... (Clin Med 04). Join us!

Nanopore adaptive sampling for bacterial identification from periprosthetic joint replacement tissue Metagenomic approaches to the diagnosis of prosthetic joint infections promise more accurate and more rapid diagnosis. However, the high host DNA to bacterial DNA ratio is a challenge. Nanopore adapti...

Read the full paper here: tinyurl.com/2a5z6tt8

🔬 New blog post!

Infections after joint replacement are serious, and identifying the bacteria quickly is crucial for patient care. We explain our research into metagenomic sequencing—reading all DNA in a sample to identify bacteria without needing lab growth.

👉 tinyurl.com/mrh8ukha

#AMR #Genomics

Characterizing the performance of an antibiotic resistance prediction tool, gnomonicus, using a diverse test set of 2,663 Mycobacterium tuberculosis samples Tuberculosis remains a global health problem. Making it easier and quicker to identify which antibiotics an infection is likely to be susceptible to will be a key part of the solution. Whilst whole-ge...

Our paper is out in Microbial Genomics! 🧬

We evaluate gnomonicus, an open-source AMR prediction tool, using 2,663 Mycobacterium tuberculosis genomes—showing how WGS can deliver faster, scalable TB resistance predictions.

Read the full paper here🔗 bit.ly/4iZepd1

#TB #AMR #Genomics

Diagnosing infected replacement hip or knee joints

When patients suffer infections related to replaced knee or hip joints, medical teams need to know which bacteria are causing the problem. A promising new method called metagenomic sequencing reads all the DNA in a sample and can identify bacteria…

Plant sale for Oxford Hospitals Charity Last week the MMM Unit held a plant sale to raise some money for Oxford Hospitals Charity. The work had started some weeks before with lots of propagation of spider plants and sourcing of paper coffee pots (so we didn't have to buy any plastic pots). The stall was staffed all day -- by Katie Hopkins and Valentina Pennetta in the photo -- and a grand total of £212 was raised. It's the first year we've run an event like this and the team are already looking forward to next year!

Plant sale for Oxford Hospitals Charity

Last week the MMM Unit held a plant sale to raise some money for Oxford Hospitals Charity. The work had started some weeks before with lots of propagation of spider plants and sourcing of paper coffee pots (so we didn't have to buy any plastic pots). The…

Our team wore blue for World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2025💙

Research into how resistance emerges, spreads and can be prevented is vital. Our group works to understand these processes and develop better tools to detect, monitor and combat antimicrobial resistance.

#WAAW @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

Dr Bernadette Young talking about Fluoroquinolones

You can listen to our very own Dr Bernadette Young talking about fluoroquinolones -- these are a very valuable and widely-used class of antibiotics -- on Episode 32 of the Communicable podcast. This prestigious podcast is published by the European…

Follow us to find out more about antimicrobial resistance this World Antimicrobial Awareness Week!

#WAAW #WAAW2025 #AMR @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

An infographic stating that between now and 2050, 39.1 million people globally will die from infections attributed to antimicrobial resistance. This number is equivalent to over half the current UK population.

An infographic stating that taking your full course of antibiotics can help reduce antimicrobial resistance and save lives.

Why is antimicrobial awareness important?

Antimicrobial resistant infections are rising. In the next 25 years an estimated 39.1 million people globally will die from infections with antimicrobial resistance.

So what can you do to help? Something as simple as finishing your course of antibiotics!

Credit: Nicola Fawcett, Chris Wood, Oxford Medical Illustration (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International – CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). 💙

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi & parasites change over time - leading to medicines being less effective against them.
Here you see bacteria growing and antibiotics (the small discs) which kill the bacteria...unless they are resistant!
#WAAW #AMR @oxfordbrc.bsky.social

Bash The Bug (@BashTheBug) / X Bash The Bug (@BashTheBug) / X

Are you interested in infections, the micro-organisms that cause them and antimicrobial resistance? So are @bashthebug.net and they're looking for new members to join their patient & public group. More info: bashthebug.net/lay-represen... Deadline 27 Nov @ouhospitals.bsky.social @medsci.ox.ac.uk

🔔🔔Post-doc in microbial genomics with @modmedmicro.bsky.social🧬 - deadline tomorrow! Big genomic and clinical datasets to play with, friendly and very multidisciplinary team!

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

We have a fully funded PhD studentship available @modmedmicro.bsky.social in Oxford to work on a really cool project looking at population heterogeneity in bloodstream infections www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/study/dphil-... Please spread the word/get in touch if you'd like to chat.

Read about the work we’re doing to make our research more sustainable Dot Nagy, one of our DPhil students, has written a great blog post about how she and others have got the rest of us in the Unit thinking more about how to reduce the environmental impact of our research.

Read about the work we’re doing to make our research more sustainable

Dot Nagy, one of our DPhil students, has written a great blog post about how she and others have got the rest of us in the Unit thinking more about how to reduce the environmental impact of our research.

From Pipettes to Pipelines — Oxford Climate Society Dorottya Nagy writes about the experiences from the Modernising Medical Microbiology (MMM) Unit research group on engaging wet lab, computer lab, and office teams on the sustainability agenda.

From Pipettes to Pipelines: Greening a Multidisciplinary Research Lab.

@dotnagy.bsky.social writes about the experiences from the Modernising Medical Microbiology (MMM) research group on engaging wet lab, computer lab, and office teams on the #sustainability agenda.

#GreenLab #SustainableScience

Freezer Challenge! We have to keep most of our biological samples at -80°C which is much colder than the -20°C you'll find (hopefully) inside your freezer in the kitchen. This does require a lot of electricity. Valentina put in an application to the Freezer Challenge and we came 19th out of 115 teams and won a Recognition Award! By increasing the temperature slightly on our freezers we estimate we will save 48kWh each day which is enough to boil an astonishing 436 litres of water.

Freezer Challenge!

We have to keep most of our biological samples at -80°C which is much colder than the -20°C you'll find (hopefully) inside your freezer in the kitchen. This does require a lot of electricity. Valentina put in an application to the Freezer Challenge and we came 19th out of 115…

Work experience: what have we been up to? Throughout the past three days doing work experience at MMM we’ve learnt about the different roles within the department, their responsibilities and contributions to research. After being briefed a…

Read what our work experience got up to with a blog post written on their final day! From gram staining to agar art 🦠

bashthebug.net/2025/07/11/w...

#Microbiology #WorkExperience #YoungScientists

Linking life expectancy to the bacteria in our gut: A final year undergraduate project My name is Akika Altman-Chandler, and I just graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Human Sciences. For my undergraduate dissertation, I worked with Teresa Street at the Modernisi…

Updated blog link -> bashthebug.net/2025/08/28/l...

#Microbiology #Microbiome #HealthyAging #GutHealth #StudentResearch

'Linking life expectancy to the bacteria in our gut: A final year undergraduate project'.

Akika investigated how the gut microbiome influences longevity, with fieldwork in Nagano, Japan—home to the country’s longest-living population.

Read the blog post here ➡️ bashthebug.net/2025/08/22/l...

Green Impact Silver Award! This year, our group has achieved Silver in the Green Impact award - a sustainability scheme which supports teams who want to improve their sustainability efforts. As part of the scheme, you are given a toolkit with lots of different activities to complete which encourages people to think more about their environmental impact. Each task is assigned a point value, and you need to collect a specific number of points to achieve Bronze, Silver, Gold and Beyond Gold.

Green Impact Silver Award!

This year, our group has achieved Silver in the Green Impact award - a sustainability scheme which supports teams who want to improve their sustainability efforts. As part of the scheme, you are given a toolkit with lots of different activities to complete which…

Who should own data about you?

We ran a session at the Philosophy in Pubs Oxford group in April 2024, discussing where the moral lines can and should be drawn around the use of data about us. Who does the data really belong to? What are legitimate uses of it? What are the factors that make people…

MMM at the Westgate Shopping Centre.. again This is the third year that the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) held its Showcase at the popular Westgate Shopping Centre in the centre of Oxford. Like last year it was held jointly with the NIHR Oxford Health BRC. Our research software engineers had redesigned and rewritten our dance mat game so now you took on the role of a doctor firing different coloured antibiotics at incoming bacteria.

MMM at the Westgate Shopping Centre.. again

This is the third year that the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) held its Showcase at the popular Westgate Shopping Centre in the centre of Oxford. Like last year it was held jointly with the NIHR Oxford Health BRC. Our research software…

Looping out bacteria (well couscous) is harder than it looks!

@oxfordbrc.bsky.social @modmedmicro.bsky.social