News

New paper out on plasmid biology

17 August 2026
A paper of Liam’s has been published in Nucleic Acids Research. In it, we show that the leading region of plasmids - the first part that enters a new cell - has a special form of adaptation to defence systems that has previously gone unnoticed. The earliest genes in the plasmid seem to have been selected to use the genetic code in a way that maximises the speed at which they make proteins to combat host defences. You can read the paper here.

Resistance potentiators

6 July 2026
Together with Craig MacLean and Adam Mulkern (Oxford), an essay in PLOS Biology arguing that antibiotic resistance is often catalyzed by what we call ‘resistance potentiators’. Introducing a new concept is always tricky, but we think that this one does useful work in uniting together an assortment of different mechanisms by which bacteria can accelerate evolution in a trait-specific manner. Read the paper here.

MGE-UK-4

24 June 2026
Both Liam and Matt presented at the 4th UK Mobile Genetic Elements conference in York. Thanks to the organising committee for a great conference.

DNA modifications in Durham phages

12 June 2026
A pleasure to play a minor role in this paper from Jenny Readshaw (Durham) on DNA modification in a collection of phages in Durham (collected by undergraduates!). This collaboration dates from Liam’s time visiting Tim Blower’s group. Congratulations to Jenny! Read the paper here.

New preprint out

11 June 2026
New preprint published on patterns in plasmid copy number. You can read more here.

Strain-level profiling in metagenomes

19 May 2026
Matthew Galbraith, a PhD student co-supervised by Liam, has published his first pre-print comparing different methods for recovering strain-level diversity in the gut microbiome. Congratulations Matt! The preprint is here.

Hello world/Bristol!

1 February 2026
The research group has officially started at Bristol, with both Liam and Matt starting on the same day.