Happy to say I passed my PhD viva yesterday! Im so grateful for the most amazing 4 years. Special thanks to @RobFagan and Mike Brockhurst, the lab, and everyone who made the last 4 years so fantastic. Thanks also to my examiners @SmitsLab and @corrigar1 for a great viva! #PhDone

Nothing says "made it" like sharing a newspaper page in the @DailyMirror with @taylorswift13 😭🥳🤩

After 3 and 3/4 years, submission day is here! Could not have asked for a better PhD, or better supervisors. Thanks so much @RobFagan and Mike Brockhurst, and to everyone else who's shared the journey, I'm so grateful.

Great time presenting at #3CdF in Paris, fab final conference of my PhD 😁🦠

Last day in the lab before i write up my thesis 🥲🥲🥲 how has 3.5 years gone so fast?!

Very happy with my package from @microbesNG today - iridescent vancomycin shall live on my phone next to @RobFagan lab sticker 🦠😁🦠 Thank you!!!

Really enjoyed talking at #Clostpath2023 about my project (and our paper!) - thanks for a great audience and great questions, for the organisers for letting me talk today, and of course to the lab @RobFagan @BeckyMenday @Hannah_Fisher2 and @PerBullough

So excited to be in Banff for #Clostpath23

We used qRT-PCR to investigate mutations in the gene encoding the histidine kinase – and found they lead to huge increases in expression of itself, the response regulator, and the D,D-carboxypeptidase! (7/9)

Next, we looked at the two-component system associated with the D,D-carboxypeptidase. We recapitulated mutations we saw in our evolution to look at the contribution of these to resistance. We found a single SNP could lead to vancomycin resistance! (6/9)

Thanks to population sequencing (across time points), we could see these 2 pathways had very different evolutionary dynamics, with one fixing early, and the other arising and fixing later! (5/9)

We then sequenced both resistant isolates and whole populations across time, and noticed 2 distinct pathways to resistance: one involved the vanG operon, and the other involved a previously uncharacterised D,D-carboxypeptidase and its dedicated two-component system. (4/9)