Conor (Conchúr) Meehan
Researching WGS/Epi/Taxonomy of pathogenic mycobacteria and evo of microbiomes. Irish-born, Nottingham-working. Call me Conchúr if you can pronounce it. He/They
ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/scie…
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanUKRI pauses several funding calls amid priorities shake-up The applicant-led MRC funding calls on pause include research grants, partnership grants and new investigator research grants made available through the council’s research boards. www.researchprofessional.com/news-article...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanCongratulations to our poster prize winners at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms meeting 🎉 #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanI had a great time at the @bsacandjac.bsky.social ARM workshop! I met some wonderful scientists and had great discussions about my work! Also, I walked away with a poster prize!! Thanks for organising @friendlymicrobe.bsky.social @conmeehan.bsky.social
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanEnding @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms with @astridpm.bsky.social talking about GARDP's work to advance antimicrobial R&D through their REVIVE programme. They have superb resources & webinars, linking academic/clinical/industry stakeholders revive.gardp.org #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanParticipate in the EUP OHAMR survey to strengthen AMR research capacity #AntibioticResistance #MicroSky ohamr.eu/2025/11/18/o...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanNow at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms: @reepkpd333.bsky.social is telling us how her hospital PK/PD lab is exploring suitable models to evaluate #phage + abx combinations scholar.google.com/citations?us... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanMore evolution at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms: @dralhubb.bsky.social exploring how order of antibiotic cycling affects selection, incl. for collateral resistance/susceptibility: order may affect specific mutations selected scholar.google.com/citations?us... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanEvolution at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms: @dannagifford.bsky.social found E. coli mutator genotypes don't just increase probability of resistance evolution, they increase probability of aa substitution vs. frameshift/indel - lower costs? dannagifford.com #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanNow at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms, @cgmargarida.bsky.social is showing us how she uses zebrafish to find ways to induce trained immunity against respiratory pathogens - a high throughput model with key homology with humans warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/life... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan90% of infections begin in the mucosa, but most vaccines are intravenous - so don't activate mucosal immunity. At @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms, Ruth Griffin is showing her work developing mucosal vaccine delivery strategies www.nottingham.ac.uk/life-science... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanSomething totally new to me at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms: Kendle Maslowski shows that attenuated Salmonella Typhimurium can infect tumours and kill cancer cells via metabolic competition www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan'Bacterial dietitian' @danybeste.bsky.social is telling @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms workshop how switching C sources affects Tb antibiotic tolerance - can we use this info to design adjuvants that increase sensitivity? www.surrey.ac.uk/people/dany-... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanFlash talk 4 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! Caleb Marsh is designing dual efflux inhibitor-abx molecules, then testing them in @ukhsa.bsky.social's open innovation platform for abx development. Very promising drops in MIC & spontaneous resistance rates. #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanFlash talk 3 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! @mwilde.bsky.social on AMR gene silencing via mutation & reversion: engineering in SNP in a carbapenemase alters AST profile, but effect depends on genetic background. #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanFlash talk 2 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! @taylorwr.bsky.social found that E. coli damaged but not killed by b-lactams die when they try to divide on abx-free solid medium, but not in liquid - so do plate count assays overestimate b-lactam killing? #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanFlash talk 1 @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms! Ahmed Alomar selected E. coli for colistin resistance: clinical isolates evolved higher MIC than MG1655, associated with mutations in pmrA/B, many of those in pmrA not previously described. @imibirmingham.bsky.social #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanSynthetic teixobactin development: Ishwar Singh is telling @bsacandjac.bsky.social #antibioticResistance & mechanisms meeting about the long and winding road to promising new molecules with good bioactivity www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/ishwa... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanNow at @bsacandjac.bsky.social, @sykhalid.bsky.social explains that, while the outer leaflet of the Gram- OM is a calm sea anchored by OmpA to the cell wall, the phospholipids of the inner leaflet are paddling about madly beneath the surface. #MicroSky khalidlab.web.ox.ac.uk/publications
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanWhat drives the acquisition and loss of #AntibioticResistance in Salmonella? @flashton.bsky.social kicking off the @bsacandjac.bsky.social resistance & mechanisms meeting, talking about pathogen genomic surveillance around the world, particularly in Africa www.psi.ox.ac.uk/our-team/phi... #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanNext at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms, @jodywinter.bsky.social is explaining how a partnership between academics, clinicians & health workers in Nottingham & Makerere is is sharing best practice in stewardship between UK & Uganda jodywinter.wixsite.com/waaw/cop #MicroSky
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanNow at @bsacandjac.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance & mechanisms workshop, Kirsty Sands @ineosoxford.bsky.social stresses the dominance of Kleb pneumoniae in neonatal sepsis, and how the work she leads is quantifying the impact of AMR on neonatal sepsis in LMICs: www.ineosoxford.ox.ac.uk/barnards
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanApart from the AI junk part… the notion that one should not offer a potential mechanistic explanation for an observation, without first spending years & (unavailable) $$ trying to test possibilities before sharing the observation with others (who may be better equipped to investigate the mechanism)…
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanIf you’re interested in metals, microbes and maths 🤘 - please check out this PhD on the impact of metals on microbial communities with @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social @blindmath.bsky.social Denis Patterson and myself, you’d be based in Durham & be part of a vibrant interdisciplinary research group
- We're advertising a PhD at the intersection of mathematical ecology, metallobiology, and microbiology to study the impact of metals on microbial communities with @thecopperdoctor.bsky.social @kateduncan.bsky.social and Denis Patterson. Come join us in lovely Durham! iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanWith sessions on global antimicrobial healthcare, drug/resistance mechanisms, bacterial vaccines & immunotherapy, and antimicrobial combinations & interactions. @conmeehan.bsky.social & I have enjoyed putting the schedule together, hope to see lots of you in Birmingham next month! #MicroSky
- Hands down my favorite conference for meeting people in my field and hearing great science (and I don't just say thay cause I no co-chair). Come join us next month!
- Join us in Birmingham for the annual BSAC #AntibioticResistance & Mechanisms workshop - excellent talks and it’s designed to make conversation & networking between attendees easy #MicroSky bsac.org.uk/antibiotic-r...
- I'm trying to do some background reading on Hep C virus for a lecture. My first port of call tends to be 'Nature Disease Primers' to begin. So I find this one: www.nature.com/articles/nrd... Why write a primer, which I assume you want people far and wide to read, and then have it behind a paywall???
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanAfter a short website glitch, the applications are now open again - three #PhD opportunities; featuring (in no particular order) #Klebsiella, #protists, #biofilms, #microscopy, #bioinformatics, #mosquitoes, #midges and #microbiomes, see below! #MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky #ProtistsOnSky #evobio 💻🧬🧪🦠🦟🔬
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanReminder: no one is safe until everyone is safe. And Americans are now significantly less safe
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanY'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook. How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't? scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanA reminder that the PhD program for EMBL is open for winter recruitment round. If you want to understand life at a molecular level and have a quantitative science (you don't have to have done biology - we love our mathematicians/physcists/chemists!) apply www.embl.org/about/info/e...
- The deadline for abstracts for the BSAC Antibiotic Resistance and Mechanisms workshop in November is closing October 10th. Come join us for a packed 2-day programme in Birmingham! bsac.org.uk/antibiotic-r...
- BBSRC Fellowships 2025 Triage Outcome Decisions were today. 277 applications, 42 put through to peer review and interview. A fellow I was supporting didn't get selected and BBSRC now offer *no feedback*. Months of work and not a single iota of feedback for the applicant. Honestly, disgraceful.
- For those interested in taxonomy/nomenclature, a nice paper on the use of sub-genus rank to 'resolve' taxonomy/naming disputes (like we saw in Mycobacterium recently) www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
- Equitable data sharing is paramount, and this article outlines a framework for fairly attributing datasets to authors. Would be great to see this widely implicated! It was great being part of the consortium led by @lhug.bsky.social @alexjprobst.bsky.social and others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanDelighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols. Thread 1/n
- Our paper on the pangenome of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex is now out in its final form (version of record) in eLife! elifesciences.org/articles/97870
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanI reread this over and over again and this absolutely breaks my brain
- Look at this crazy thing! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanThat's correct! Read the full details about #Microbio26 attendance rates here - microb.io/425T0Yc We will also be offering grants for the event. Applications for the Society Events Grant will open on 12 December 2025 and close on 2 January 2026 at 23:59 GMT.
- The @microbiologysociety.org conference next year will have a 2 day attendance rate again! So happy with this, especially as this year I can only make 2-3 days.
- The @microbiologysociety.org conference next year will have a 2 day attendance rate again! So happy with this, especially as this year I can only make 2-3 days.
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanI went to work on my lecture over some ramen and the server asked if I worked in healthcare, because she’s a cancer bioinformatician who can’t find a job and is in now in tenuous visa territory. I’m so sad and angry about this country, and it keeps hitting me at the moments I don’t expect it
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanDr. Emilyn Costa Conceição, a remarkable Brazilian-African scientist, is making waves in the field of genomics with a purpose-driven approach. From the Amazon to Africa, she advocates for the importance of diverse voices in science. Read more about ceri.org.za/news/?token=...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanVACANCY - We’re recruiting for a visionary group leader to lead fundamental research on Discovery Plant Science as part of our vibrant research community Successful candidate will be offered a six-year tenure-track position with the opportunity to apply for tenure: www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/gr...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan🚨 New preprint 🚨 My phage annotation tool, Phynteny, finally has a preprint and a brand new version powered by a cool AI transformer architecture and protein language models! #phagesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Submitted a Welcome Trust Discovery grant yesterday. Probably biggest application I've ever done with a great team of collaborators. Proud of this at least, no matter what happens next. Is anyone needs me I'll be joining my cat Nebula in this pose.
- Some guidance and overview of current data on Doxy-PEP for STI control journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- Great presentation from Xenia at #esm2025 supported by @micronorman.bsky.social and @tlillebaek.bsky.social and others on decades of NTM isolates from patients and how it changes over those years.
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanA huge congratulations to @jodyphelan.bsky.social from @lshtm.bsky.social l for receiving the Gertrud Meissner Award at #ESM2025! 🏆 His work on bioinformatic pipelines to predict drug resistance is truly impactful. Well deserved! 🎉 #Tuberculosis #Awards #Science
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanI am Honoured to have received the 2nd Prize at NTU's ⭐️ STAR (Science & Tech Annual Research) Conference! Special thanks to my supervisors @conmeehan.bsky.social @blackpassiflora.bsky.social and collaborators @danwhiley.bsky.social @Kate Cox for the incredible support. @arom-ntu.bsky.social
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanDid leprosy exist in the Americas before European invasion? Our lab #aDNA study at @institutpasteur.bsky.social supervised by @nrascovan.bsky.social in collab with @avanzich.bsky.social (CSU) finds M.lepromatosis in pre-colonial Ancestors from North and South America www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Very excited for the @esmyco.bsky.social 2025 conference programme! Come see me speak about M leprae SNP calling pipeline validationand @orentzfadia.bsky.social speak on some cool machine learning on the genus to find markers of pathogencitiy. www.esmycobacteriology.eu/event-progra...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanYou might be wondering why we haven't updated outbreak.info for months. Well, the reason is that GISAID cut our access in January - as they did others. Without telling us. After a ♾️ back and forth, that is now permanent. More on that soon - and why GISAID should not be trusted with critical data.
- Great as always being at @itmantwerp.bsky.social today teaching whole genome sequencing for clinical tuberculosis management to the group of super engaged clinical doctors taking our DR-TB course. So many great questions I tried my best to answer 😅
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanSFU invites applications from world renowned researchers for the prestigious Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) 2026 Competition. Please see the ad to see if you qualify. In Vancouver, BC www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/a...
- Myself and @yekwah.bsky.social are running our bacterial AMR databases and genotype prediction course again with @eventswcs.bsky.social. Completely free and study at your own pace. Check out the course objectives below and sign up before June 9th to join us! www.futurelearn.com/courses/anti...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanCongratulations to @conmeehan.bsky.social and colleagues on the publication of their new manuscript. #microsky
- Im looking for a good review paper on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and its intrinsic resistance to beta-lacatams for some training I am giving. Does anyone know of such an overview article?
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanWe happily present: “Bakta Web – rapid and standardized genome annotation on scalable infrastructures” @OxUniPress NAR’s Web Server issue doi.org/10.1093/nar/... Easy to use, no registration, fast, scalable, various visualizations, in sync with Bakta CLI: bakta.computational.bio (1/5)
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanApplications for Outreach and Engagement grant are now open. Eligible members can apply for up to £1000 to support relevant science outreach or public engagement initiatives. Apply before the deadline 01 May 25 at 23:59 BST. Apply here: microb.io/OutreachandE...
- Anyone know when BBSRC grant decisions are being released? By my calculations it should have been 2 weeks ago...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanMy first R package is officially out Bioconductor 3.21 today 🎉 TaxSEA adapts GSEA-style methods for metagenomic data— useful for interpreting differential abundance results. Manuscript accepted & in-press. Check it out bioconductor.org/packages/rel... #Bioinformatics #Metagenomics #RStats
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan🌟 Join Us for Optimising Metagenomics Assembled Genomes (MAGs) Building Workflows! 🌟 galaxyproject.org/events/2025-... MAGs building wfs are crucial for building new genomes & reducing microbial dark matter! Join our hackathon to collaboratively improve these workflows! #Metagenomics #Workflows
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanMy final #ESCMIDGlobal session for Sunday is Tuberculosis: where are we now and where should we be.
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanNew pre-print modelling impact of US funding cuts on HIV, #TB, MCH and family planning. We estimate impact of termination of US funding to NTPs via #USAID & The Global Fund may lead to 2.2 (1.5-2.9) million excess TB deaths between 2025 and 2040, reversing over a decade of progress. bit.ly/4lowp18
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanSo glad this is finally out. The method has been instrumental in allowing us to compress the AllTheBacteria data - ~2 million bacterial genomes shrink from 3Terabytes (gzipped) to 100Gb using phylogenetic compression. Great work by @brinda.eu
- Our latest paper, in which @brinda.eu (along with @zaminiqbal.bsky.social and others) introduces phylogenetic compression for storage and search of enormous microbial genome libraries, was published today in @naturemethods.bsky.social: rdcu.be/eg4OA 1/
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) MeehanTwo ERC-funded postdoc positions available in the team - one here and second to follow - please repost! jobs.ncl.ac.uk/job/Newcastl...
- Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan1 week until deadline for this postdoc position. Really key position in my lab working on amazing datasets
