Great opportunity to say thanks to Evangelos, Billy and Ben. Three brilliant colleagues who accompany me on our new adventure and are making a splash with new friends! Thanks Chaps. Sam

ECDC report shows halted increase in over all antimicrobial usage but the use of broad-spectrum last line of defence drugs continues to rise:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/antibiotic-resistant-superbugs-bigger-killer-flu-hiv-tb-europe/

Following recent unprecedented outbreaks of the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus concerns have been raised to protect wildlife from livestock diseases. Sam spoke to the Guardian and was quoted as part of their article on disease spillovers between livestock and wildlife.

Sam has been promoted to Editor-in-chief of the Microbiology Society journal, Microbial Genomics. Read all about it here!

The Sheppard Lab will be moving to @oxfordbiology and the new @ineosoxford in September this year. We are very excited and hope to get lots of visitors. Sam will also take up a new role at @stannescollege

Last week our lab appeared on Channel 4 news to discussion the impact of the intensification of livestock production on the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistant zoonotic pathogens. Full link:

https://www.channel4.com/news/activists-call-for-judicial-review-of-intensive-farming-to-combat-another-pandemic

Biel is visiting our lab from Barcelona University to carry out bioinformatics projects to understand the genomics of pathogen emergence in livestock.

A few years in the making, but we’re finally pleased to see our paper on the emergence of virulence in avian Ecoli (APEC) published in Nature Communications.

University press release [link]

Referenced in Guardian article on Chicken disease [link]
Twitter thread [link]

Sam Sheppard from the University of Bath presents at the ARTICnetwork & CLIMB-BIG-DATA workshop on COVID-19 data analysis, motivating why we should use genomics in an epidemic. He gives background on typing schemes, different ways of sequencing and challenges such as how you can analyse large mounts of genomic data.
Micro binfie podcast [link]

CLIMB-NG Workshop: www.climb.ac.uk/artic-and-climb-b…a-joint-workshop/

The group’s latest paper investigating the emergence of cattle specialist strains of Campylobacter jejuni associated with intensive animal agriculture was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [Abstract below]