News archive
Anju Kudhail and Elliott Haywood
September 2024
Anju and Elliott have joined our team as DPhil students in the DTP programme.
Chaotic behaviour
December 2023
Single bacteria exhibit chaotic oscillations in gene expression in response to oxidative stress. Our new study in Current Biology demonstrates that chaos exists in biological systems and may play a role in stress adaptation of cell populations.
Clara Kummerer and Tendai Makamure
September 2023
Clara and Tendai have joined our team for their Part ii research projects.
DNA interstrand crosslink repair visualised in cells
June 2023
Our lab contributed to a paper by Martin Cohn's group on the regulation of DNA interstrand crosslink repair, now published in Cell Reports: Phosphorylation by ATR triggers FANCD2 chromatin loading and activates the Fanconi anemia pathway
A burst of mutations
November 2022
Cell stress triggers phenotypic and genetic changes. Our paper in EMBO Reports shows how stress responses modulate mutation rate dynamics: Adaptation delay causes a burst of mutations in bacteria responding to oxidative stress.
Phenotypic heterogeneity driven by cell-cell interactions
September 2022
Divya's paper in Cell Reports shows that Phenotypic heterogeneity in the bacterial oxidative stress response is driven by cell-cell interactions
Book chapter
August 2022
Chloe Cassaro's chapter in the series Methods in Molecular Biology includes a detailed point-by-point protocol for Super-Resolution Microscopy and Tracking of DNA-Binding Proteins in Bacterial Cells
Genetic plasticity meets DNA repair heterogeneity
December 2021
Variation in DNA repair protein expression leads to differences in mutation rates between cells. Article now published in Nucleic Acids Research: Cellular heterogeneity in DNA alkylation repair increases population genetic plasticity.
Claire Qu
June 2023
Welcome to Claire Qu for her summer internship funded by the Lister Institute.
Fiona Sargison
October 2022
Welcome to Fiona Sargison who moved from Edinburgh to start a postdoc in our group.
DNA-target search
February 2021
Our new article in Molecular Cell shows that the bacterial chromosome is crowded with non-specifically bound proteins. Transient non-specific DNA binding dominates the target search of bacterial DNA-binding proteins.
LexA and the SOS response
June 2021
Bacteria sometimes induce the SOS DNA damage response even in the absence of stress. Why this happens and other findings revealed by a single-molecule tracking approach described in our new paper in Nature Microbiology. Free access: Imaging LexA degradation in cells explains regulatory mechanisms and heterogeneity of the SOS response.
DNA organization - replication - segregation
August 2021
Interplay between chromosome organization and replication fosters non-random inheritance of genetic material. Article now published in PNAS: Non-random segregation of sister chromosomes by Escherichia coli MukBEF.
Colworth Medal Lecture
April 2021
Watch Stephan's award lecture for the Biochemical Society Colworth medal on youtube: Seeing DNA repair and mutagenesis in bacteria.
#FEMSmicroBlog: Exposing bacteria molecule by molecule
August 2021
Amy Moores explains on the #FEMSmicroBlog how single molecule localisation microscopy techniques are playing important roles in bacteriology.
Under the Lens
We are running a journal club with other groups at Oxford, where we take recent papers on Microbial Imaging "Under the Lens". This goes together with a new regular feature in Nature Reviews Microbiology. More details can be found here.
DNA repair and evolvability
May 2021
This preprint investigates the phenomenon of stress-induced mutagenesis: Cellular heterogeneity in DNA alkylation repair as a trade-off between cell survival and genetic plasticity.
Amy Moores
February 2021
Welcome to postdoctoral scientist Amy who is focusing on microscopy development in our group.
Divya Choudhary
October 2020
Divya is a new DPhil student in our group and won an Indira Gandhi scholarship at Somerville College.
Lister Prize
August 2020
Our lab has been awarded a Lister Institute Research Prize for our work on DNA repair and mutagenesis in bacteria.
Chloe Cassaro
July 2020
Welcome to Chloe Cassaro who joins our group officially as a DPhil student having completed her successful DTP rotation project.
Victor Chen and Nicolas Aryanpour
July 2020
Congratulations to Victor Chen who completed an internship and his Part II Biochemistry research project, and Nicolas Aryanpour who had joined us for an ERASMUS internship as part of his Masters degree at UC Louvain! Farewell!
Postdoc vacancy
November 2020
We are looking for a microscopy enthusiast to join our team! Do you have skills in single-molecule imaging or super-resolution microscopy? Are you keen to address fundamental questions about how bacteria grow and survive? Get in touch with me by email, and apply here by 13th November 2020!!
DNA-target search
August 2020
How do DNA-binding proteins find their target sites within the dense chromosome meshwork? New preprint describes a chromosome degradation method to address this question: Transient non-specific DNA binding dominates the target search of bacterial DNA-binding proteins.
Review article in Biochemical Society Transactions
March 2020
Our views on the origins and consequences of "Bacterial phenotypic heterogeneity in DNA repair and mutagenesis" are now published!
DNA damaging toxin-antitoxin system
January 2020
A story about the function of a toxin-antitoxin system in pathogenic E. coli published in Cell Reports: DNA ADP-Ribosylation Stalls Replication and Is Reversed by RecF-Mediated Homologous Recombination and Nucleotide Excision Repair.
Chloe Cassaro and Nicolas Aryanpour
January 2020
Welcome to DTP rotation student Chloe and internship student Nicolas from Louvain.
Article in Biophysical Journal
September 2019
Does gene expression noise jeopardize DNA damage signaling? Stochastic simulations and single-cell imaging provide some answers: A quantitative model explains single-cell dynamics of the adaptive response in Escherichia coli.
Maxence Vincent
May 2019
Welcome to Maxence Vincent who joins our group with a postdoctoral fellowship from the Human Frontiers Science Programme.
Aditya Jalin
May 2019
Aditya has won a summer vacation studentship from the Biochemical Society for a project in our lab.
Colworth Medal
April 2019
Stephan Uphoff will receive the 2020 Colworth Medal from the Biochemical Society
Poster Prize
April 2019
Valentine Lagage won a Best Poster Prize at the UK RNA Polymerase Workshop. Congratulations!
Article in J. Phys. D.
November 2018
Choosing the right label for single-molecule tracking in live bacteria: Side-by-side comparison of photoactivatable fluorescent protein and Halo tag dyes by Nehir Banaz and Jarno Makela.