News

New paper out on plasmid biology

17 August 2026
A paper of Liam’s has been published in Nucleic Acids Research in collaboration with an international group of authors who first met at a plasmid workshop in Trieste in 2023. 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.

AllTheBacteria preprint

7 July 2026
An open science collaboration led by John Lees and Zam Iqbal has published a new preprint showing what’s possible with over 2.4 million high-quality bacterial and archael genomes from over 11,000 species. The paper has 45 authors who each helped with creating and analysing this mammoth dataset - we played a very small role by looking for defence systems in Enterobacterales, but there are lots of exciting results from analysis at this scale, including the discovery of novel peptides that are active against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Read the preprint here.

Resistance potentiators

6 July 2026
Together with Craig MacLean and Adam Mulkern (Oxford), Liam published 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 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 environmental phages (originally 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 on plasmid copy number

11 June 2026
Plasmids can be present at different numbers of copy in a cell. This preprint addresses patterns in plasmid copy number, exploring the relationship between plasmid copy number and size and what it means. 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 to Matthew! The preprint is here.

Hello world/Bristol!

1 February 2026
The research group has officially started at Bristol!