Microbial Genomics Editor Q&A Lucy Weinert
Lucy Weinert is Editor of Microbial Genomics . Her fellowship centres around the study of evolutionary genomics, specifically as it relates to bacteria.
While completing her undergraduate degree at Bristol, Lucy became fascinated with the evolution of sex and decided to pursue a PhD focused on sex-ratio distorting bacteria. Through this experience, she developed a deep interest in bacteria more broadly, as well as the emerging field of genomics, especially as high-throughput sequencing technology began to advance. She currently also serves as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, UK, teaching undergraduate students about the intricacies of the evolution of sex.
What motivated you to get involved with Microbial Genomics ? The journal is my area of expertise and so it allows me to keep up with a nice variety of research, and find out what others in the field are doing and whether I’m going to get scooped anytime soon. The chance to support a non-profit journal is brilliant, and the team are so friendly and helpful. Why are Society journals so important to the microbiology community? Publishing is an essential but expensive part of science, and lots of private companies make huge profits from it. Society journals allow this money to be invested back into the community. My students and I have directly benefited from this extra support – thanks very much Microbiology Society. Why should members working within industry engage with Microbial Genomics ? It’s the perfect route to networking and knowledge exchange with public health and academia. What do you think the future holds for microbiology? Wow, that’s a broad question! Microbes pose a significant threat to humanity and will continue to do so, thanks to evolution,
despite the development of new vaccines and treatments. In short, the study of microbial evolution is clearly a crucial field. For my future research interests, I am particularly intrigued by the factors that influence bacterial mutation rates. While mutation rates tend to correlate well with genome size over the long term, there is substantial variation among pathogens over the short term. I am eager to explore new technologies that allow for quick and accurate measurement of mutation rates, as I have previously overseen 200 consecutive days of 300 single-colony streaks to obtain four highly precise estimates. In the future, people will likely laugh at our current efforts, much as I once laughed at those who spent their entire PhD sequencing a single PCR product, who in turn laughed at their predecessors, and so on.
Lucy Weinert Editor, Microbial Genomics University of Cambridge, UK
lw461@cam.ac.uk
15 Microbiology Today May 2023 | microbiologysociety.org
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