James McDonald
@jamesemcdonald
Prof. of microbial ecology @UoBbiosciences @unibirmingham | Decoding the tree microbiome 🌳 🌲 | He/him
New #openaccess opinion piece, the 1st from our brilliant collaboration with @EvolvedBiofilm, Xinming Xu, Sofia Gomes and Marine Cambon. Synthetic microbial communities for studying and engineering the tree microbiome: challenges and opportunities sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Wonderful day @BangorUni Huge congratulations to Dr. @Alejandra211909 for passing her viva with minor corrections. Thanks to @DrCarrieBrady and @MojganRabiey for examining and George Turner for chairing. Look out for some cool papers in the near future!
Always a great day at @UoBbiosciences @unibirmingham graduation. Congratulations to all of the 2025 graduates - and great to see Becca get her degree after being an excellent project student in our lab this year 👏
If you’re at #2025ISMPMI, drop by @Alejandra211909 ‘s poster. Some really cool results on pathogen suppression using syncoms in trees
🎉 My poster is up and ready to go at #2025ISMPMI. Excited to share our work on SynComs for pathogen suppression in oak trees 🌳🧫 Check out poster P-324 during Session 2 - I'll be presenting on Thu, 13.30-15.15 pm
Permanent post with a great PI 👇🏻
Hiring a *permanent* programmer in ecological modelling at my lab @UniBonn. We mechanistically model plant communities, island biogeography, sp. range dynamics, eco-evo feedbacks, diversity gradients, tropical forests, vascular epiphytes. Pls rt! shorturl.at/Bzzdt
July issue of @TrendsMicrobiol is now online, with our review by Xinming Xu @neftalyl @CajaDinesen @AdelePioppi on Composing a microbial symphony and a matching cover illustration by @Lizah_Aart #SynCom #PlantMicrobiome #MicrobiomeEcology at @LeidenBiology
Bartje in Birmingham discussing on microbiomes and potential collaborations - a visit supported by a Birmingham-Leiden collaborative seed grant with @jamesemcdonald @unibirmingham @UniLeiden @LeidenScience @IMIBirmingham #BartjeAroundTheWorld
Proud to work @unibirmingham
The results are in: we've risen to 76th in the @worlduniranking 🎉 Thanks to all the students, staff, academics, alumni & partners around the world who have helped us rise once again - this sustained improvement is great news in our 125th anniversary year birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/univ…
Nice hilltop walk to end the day after finalising a grant submission and a paper acceptance #treehealth
Really delighted to see Lindsay Hall, our Chair of Microbiome Research, recognised as a trailblazer as she joins the Goalkeepers community 🎉 wired.com/sponsored/stor…
Huge congratulations to Professor Lindsay Hall @hall_lab, who has been named as one of the UK’s 2025 Goalkeepers by @WIRED Consulting and The @gatesfoundation. Lindsay sits alongside other visionaries of global development, taking on the world’s biggest problems.
We have two new positions, a PhD and a Post doc at @LeidenBiology within our @MicroClockERC #ERCSyG project to discover interaction of #circadianclocks between Bacillus subtilis and Arabidopsis please share these with your network! 🙏 links below👇 [1/3]
Postdoc call in Mechanistic Biodiversity Modelling (up to 6 ya) at my lab @UniBonn. We focus on modelling terrestrial plant communities, island biogeography, range dynamics, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, tropical forests, vascular epiphytes. Pls rt! shorturl.at/CL1ny
Stoked to have Luke Hillary joining us to talk about adapting MIUViG for RNA viruses—huge step for making sense of uncultivated RNA viromes!😍 #RdRpSummit2025 in 3 days!
🌳 Woodland owners and managers – our oaks need you. This summer, assess 5+ trees and share the data via Forest Lab to support research into Acute Oak Decline. Sign up 👉 ow.ly/rgNz50VLcIy #WoodlandManagement #TreeHealth #OakDecline
Having a great week in the USA visiting forests across different states to discuss forest health and forest product production. Next stop Louisiana … @BIFoRUoB @UoBbiosciences @NASDAnews
Huge congratulations to @ROsborne_93 for being awarded this prestigious 3-year BBSRC fellowship to investigate novel molecular mechanisms controlling plant defence memory at @UoBbiosciences @LES_UniBham 🦠🌱🧬 ukri.org/news/9-million…
Good tree health discussions with @forestservice in Maine @NASDAnews @UKinUSA @BIFoRUoB @Forest_Research @ForestryComm
Big congratulations to Dr Usman Hussain on his successful PhD defence yesterday! A tour-de-force in abiotic impacts on the oak microbiota. Thanks to examiners Corinne Whitby and @Metallophyte and co- supervisors Marine Cambon and @AmyEllison_UK
Fantastic people 🤩and inspiring discussions during the lichen microbiome workshop @unibirmingham 🍄🦠 #lichens #fungi #microbiome #symbiosis @jamesemcdonald @GBerg_ubt @Natalia_R0312 @oddurV @MateHG @arnspanglab