Sean Booth

The hidden danger of Biorender (& the death of scientific illustration) A short thread 🧵

Excited to share our latest paper where we explore how bacteria use weaponry. We analyse >2500 E. coli genomes and find that bacteriocins are associated with virulence factors and antimicrobial resistance. @NatureComms nature.com/articles/s4146…

@AdrianoAguzzi @eloarana Just to confirm the thinking here, biorender is greedy, unethical, and parasitic but not OpenAI/ChatGPT?

New paper alert! Complex interactions between Pseudomona aeruginosa and Staph aureus involved in tolerance to silver of Staph. @MicrobioSoc @ImDrBooth microbiologyresearch.org/content/journa…

(1/6) Really jazzed to have this out - my first @wellcometrust fellowship paper! biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Can bacteria evolve resistance to competitors' T6SS weaponry? We find that the answer depends on **how many toxins** competitors are using. A thread:

I am thrilled to start my lab @Helmholtz_HZI this fall. I will continue my research in Bacterial Infection Ecology.

1/ Thrilled to share my final PhD project out as a preprint! A simple regulatory network coordinates a bacterial stress response in space and time. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Fabulous work by my colleagues @ImDrBooth, @willpjsmith, Kevin Foster - Stick'em with the pointy end ... UNLESS ... ?!?! "The evolution of short- and long-range weapons for bacterial competition" nature.com/articles/s4155…

New pre-print! My first research project with @saramitri is now live. Interactions underpin our understanding of ecosystems, but can change in hard-to-explain ways. Here, we show that many of these variations can be predicted from underlying mechanisms: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

See the paper for details! nature.com/articles/s4146…

These cells then burst, releasing their attack and red-stained DNA, which accumulates over time, filling the biofilm.

In time for Halloween... These bacterial cells are bursting, leaving their red-stained DNA behind. #BiofilmCreate #BiofilmAware @ukbiofilms

In this colony biofilm, we can see the amounts of three different species (each in a different colour) changes as the biofilm develops (starting in the top left, spiralling around to the center).

The interactions between different kinds of bacteria change the composition of biofilms over time. I made this piece to show the complexity of biofilm ecology. #BiofilmCreate #BiofilmAware @ukbiofilms

Our manuscript on FAST is now out (with a few new results and analyses) at PLOS Computational Biology! It's been a joint effort with Mack Durham - co-author and mentor par excellence - to get this over the finishing line: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a…

@OlayaRendueles These are really nice colony images, how did you take them?

2/ Whilst evolving K. variicola in nutrient poor media, including artificial urine, we observed that rough and dry morphotypes emerged. Mutations in the type 3 fimbriae regulator, mrkH, or in nitrogen assimilation gene nac, were responsible, by reducing pili expression

Specially glad to see our latest paper out in @microLifeJrnl. We followed a new colony morphology in #Klebsiella variicola We pinned the mutations, showed that it is under negative frequency-dependent selection and increases fitness in urine #KlebClub academic.oup.com/microlife/arti… 🧵

Two years ago BioIcons was launched and the database has grown by almost 800 icons thanks to many scientists contributing illustrations ☺️ Now we're looking to grow more and need your feedback and support... 1/2

@fsantoriello Cool, thanks! I have an impending Gibson I'll try this with the Top10 derivative chemical competent cells in the freezer

@ImDrBooth Also, I’ve only tried chemically competent cells, not electro. And when I say it’s worked for 10 vectors, that’s out of 10 vectors attempted (100% success). I’ve verified half of them so far. The other half go out today.