I’ve moved… Philip Fowler, 14th March 20165th August 2018 Today is my first day as a Senior Researcher in Modernising Medical Microbiology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. Practically I’ll be based at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the SBCB Unit at the Department of Biochemistry for ten years, working with Professor Mark Sansom. During that time I used computer simulation to study the function of a variety of membrane proteins, focussing mainly on cell signalling, transporters and ion channels. Now I will be leading efforts to predict whether novel bacterial mutations lead to antibiotic resistance (or not). The key idea is to examine the effect of each mutation on the binding of the antibiotic to its target protein. This boils down to calculating how the binding free energy changes when you make the mutation — something that alchemical free energy methods, such as thermodynamic integration is well-suited to. More soon. Share this: Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon Related antimicrobial resistance clinical microbiology miscellaneous tuberculosis
antimicrobial resistance New preprint: looking at rifampicin-resistant subpopulations in clinical samples 10th April 202510th April 2025 Since clinical samples are usually grown in a MGIT tube for a while before some… Share this: Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon Read More
antimicrobial resistance New paper: quantitative measurement of effect of mutations on antibiotics in M. tuberculosis 15th January 202415th January 2024 The CRyPTIC project played a major role in the release by the WHO of their… Share this: Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon Read More
New preprint: comparing different genetics analysis pipelines for tuberculosis 13th January 202513th January 2025 Ruan Spies has done a careful systematic comparison of the current genetics pipelines that purport… Share this: Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon Read More
Congratulations, Phil! Cool to use statistical physics, computer simulations and structural biology to combat the pressing problem of bacterial resistance to antimicrobials. That’s a fight we (as a civilization) can’t afford to loose. Reply