Ellie Pursey

My Portuguese man o’ war linocut is printed in blues, turquoise, violet and pink on white 9.25” by 12.5” Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. The float is above the water surface, the tentacles below.

Day 11 #SciArtSeptember prompt venomous: my linocut of a Portuguese Man o’ War floating at the surface of the sea. 🧪🐡

These are beautiful but deadly creatures, also known as bluebottles, resemble jellyfish but are actually colonial organisms called siphonophores. They are made up of many 🧵

Thank you!

Thank you ☺️ I’m not sure, other than I do them first and I spend too much time on them trying to get the reflections to look real!

Pastel drawing of a tawny owl perched on a branch

10 - Tawny

My participation in #SciArtSeptember has been a bit sporadic - chronic illness is messing with me. But here is one of my favourite animals, the Tawny Owl. Love to hear them calling to each other 🤎

Drawing of alpine landscape with cloud-covered mountains, trees and yellow flowers

5 - Corridor

#SciArtSeptember

A pastel sketch of a landscape based on a photo I took last year in the Alps. This region is rich in biodiversity and mountains can form important corridors for wildlife to travel.

Pastel drawing of the head of a grey heron with a fish held in its beak

4 - Riverbank

Sketch of a grey heron with a fish in pastel pencil #SciArtSeptember

pastel drawing of an iridescent jewel beetle on a green background

3 - Jewel

Missed a couple of days of #SciArtSeptember but here is my attempt to join in with today's prompt. This is a pastel pencil drawing of a jewel beetle.

A pastel still life of a whole orange with leaves, a halved orange and a segment of orange

Not micro, but still nature 🍊

Abstract-ish sketch of bacterial cells in blue, purple and red

Bacterial cells

Pastel drawing of a bacteriophage in blue, purple, red and orange

Bacteriophages, my muse

E. coli prepares for starvation by dramatically remodeling its proteome in the first hours after loss of nutrients It is widely believed that due to nutrient limitations in natural environments, bacteria spend most of their life in non-growing states. However, very little is known about how bacteria change their p...

What do bacterial cells do when they run out of nutrients? Although most bacterial studies focus on cells in exponentially growing states, in the wild bacteria likely spend most of their time slowly starving to death. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Disability in ecology and evolution In this TrendsTalk series ‘Disability in ecology and evolution’ in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, we will be hearing from people about their experiences being disabled or having a chronic condition an...

I guess I hadn't posted this yet and didn't even know it had come out-- I was interviewed for (and co-wrote w/Daniel Rabosky) a Trends in Ecology & Evolution "TrendsTalk" article on "Disability in ecology and evolution" -- www.cell.com/trends/ecolo... #DisabledInSTEM #academicchatter #academia

Supporting nonlinear careers to diversify science Those who follow non-linear career trajectories often face disadvantages in academia. This Perspective looks at why individuals might choose non-linear careers and how these benefit diversity in scien...

Many people take "non-traditional" career paths in academia.
My Leading Edge colleagues and I did! We wrote for
PLOS Biology about how non-linear careers are increasingly common, but funding agencies and search committees penalize these paths. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Competition and Facilitation Influence Central Place Foraging Ecology in a Colonial Marine Predator Analysis of combined deployments of GPS loggers with cameras or temperature–depth recorders reveals that despite experiencing intraspecific competition for food, northern gannets engage in dynamic, c...

New paper alert!

Really excited to see this work from a postdoc with Steve Votier @heriotwattuni.bsky.social published in Ecology & Evolution!
In it, we use existing bio-logging data to study competition and facilitation in foraging gannets.

Link to paper here:

dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

Critically evaluating the relative importance of phage in shaping microbial community composition The ubiquity of bacteriophages (phages) and the major evolutionary and ecological impacts they can have on their microbial hosts has resulted in phages often cited as key drivers shaping microbial com...

Hello new phage phollowers!

I am shamelessly self-promoting mine and Angus Buckling's relatively new review "Critically evaluating the relative importance of phage in shaping microbial community composition"

www.cell.com/trends/micro...

Expanding the diversity of origin of transfer-containing sequences in mobilizable plasmids - Nature Microbiology Characterization of known plasmid oriT features facilitates identification of 21 oriT-containing sequence families which, alongside candidate sequence validation, expands our understanding of plasmid ...

Our paper on identifying novel origins of transfer by conjugation is out! One can now expand the known oriTs from 1% to 80% in species like Acinetobacter baumannii. This contributes to unravel hitcher plasmid mobility beyond model elements. #microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Labelling my scientific supervisor: A genuine leader or just a big jerk? Thank you for taking part in this survey. The aim of this survey is to understand which characteristics make a scientific supervisor supportive and constructive or, conversely, detrimental to the grow...

📢Calling all researchers! We are studying what makes a great (or not-so-great) supervisor from the perspective of PhD students and postdocs. Our goal? To improve academic mentorship and research environments. Got 5-10 minutes? Take the survey!✍️
forms.gle/WT9GoiaHxypX...

It is imperative that the postdoc is fed! At once!

People at work seem to be enjoying my new sign (but are yet to feed the postdoc...) 🧪

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. But don’t give into despair. For those of us who cling to liberal values, moral principles, and the dignity of all people, there is much work to do.

TIR signaling activates caspase-like immunity in bacteria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.24.620036v1 Proteases of the caspase family, as well as Toll/Interleukin-1 Receptor (TIR)-domain proteins, have

TIR signaling activates caspase-like immunity in bacteria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.24.620036v1

"Women are less likely to be named authors on any given document in all fields and at all career stages."

"Women are credited less in science than men"
Nature 608, p 135–145 (2022)
Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The bacterial defense system MADS interacts with CRISPR-Cas to limit phage infection and escape The coevolution between bacteria and mobile genetic elements has resulted in a large diversity of defense systems. Maestri et al. describe an innate immune system, MADS (methylation-associated defense...

I'm so happy to see the main part of my PhD work published in Cell Host & Microbe!
We discover and characterise MADS (Methylation Associated Defense System) in its native host, a clinical isolate of 𝘗𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘢 strain SMC4386
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Really proud of our new guide to processing and exploring animal tracking data in R which has just been published in @animalecology.bsky.social!

If you work with animal tracking data or have a student that does then please read and share! Lots of useful code and a shiny app for data vis!

I'm recruiting a Research Technician to work on plasmid transmission and antimicrobial resistance in St Andrews, to start in October. Deadline for applications is 19 June. Please share!
www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

I often think about this in the context of leaving my 17-year long academic career...

New paper from the lab, the mysteries involving the genetic elements that move by being mobilized by other MGEs. Hitcher Genetic Elements are distinctive, ancient and diverse.

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

The impact of phage and phage resistance on microbial community dynamics Phages shape the microbial world. This study uses an evolution experiment to explore how phage impact the structure and dynamics of a four-species bacterial community, finding that phage enables compe...

Our paper on "The impact of phage and phage resistance on microbial community dynamics" is finally out in PLOS Biology! What a journey it's been to get here, and I couldn't have done it without my fab co-authors journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Now we have a bioinformatics PhD position In my group in Lund to work on the same fun #phage defence project! Read more and apply here: lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/... deadline March 5th

Join the fun! And stay tuned for a bioinformatics PhD position to work on the same project!