Congrats all! 🎉🎉

More info + apply: yorkshirebiosciencedtp.ac.uk
Questions about the project → Dr. Jason Wilson, Prof. Per Bullough

🧪 Training includes:
• Cryo-EM + SPA
• Protein purification + interaction assays
• Computational structural biology (AlphaFold, modelling pipelines)

Open to UK applicants and international candidates.
💰 Fully funded (UKRI rate stipend + fees).
📅 Deadline: 7 January 2026

Congrats to everyone involved, great insights and visually striking!

You can also read more here on the @sheffielduni.bsky.social webpage

www.sheffield.ac.uk/biosciences/...

Lots left to figure out, and very excited to see where @robfagan.bsky.social, @perbullough.bsky.social, and Louis-Charles Fortier take this next, whilst I take on a @ukri.org BBSRC Discovery Fellowship.

Finally, we found that phiCD508 lacks identifiable enzymatic domains in the tail spike, suggesting the #phage breaks through by contractile force alone.

We also found that S-layer penetrating phages tend to have smaller tail spikes, lacking a beta-helical domain.

Surprisingly, we found that phiCD508 only contracts by about 20%, which is quite unusual. It also seems a reduced contraction is conserved amongst S-layer penetrating #phages

We were able to determine the structure of the #phage in both the extended and contracted states, and model the majority of the proteins making up the ~23MDa assembly

It's been a really fun project, led by @jasonwils.bsky.social in collaboration with @perbullough.bsky.social and Louis-Charles Fortier at the Université de Sherbrooke

I saw once posting the reply but couldn't find it to delete it 😅