Shaw Lab @ Bristol

We are a research group at the University of Bristol, led by Liam Shaw. We study the evolutionary biology of bacteria using computational approaches.

Our work focuses on understanding how bacteria evolve. Some of the types of questions we work on include:

• Antibiotic resistance - how do resistance genes spread between bacteria? How do they evolve as they spread?
• Plasmid biology - how does plasmid evolution differ from chromosomal evolution? What are the main selective pressures acting on plasmids?
• Defense systems - how should we make sense of the many new forms of bacterial ‘immunity’ against viruses that have been discovered over recent years? What is their impact on bacterial evolution and the distribution of mobile genetic elements?
• Wastewater metagenomics - how should we analyse the complex bacterial communities found in wastewater, sinks and other settings? What is the relevance of these communities for human health?

For more of an introduction to our work, see our research.

Banner photo credit: Several Circles by Vassily Kandinsky (1926)