Dr Michiel Vos

About me:

I am a senior lecturer in evolutionary microbiology at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health and the Environment and Sustainability Institute, Cornwall Campus.

I combine approaches from a variety of disciplines to study fundamental aspects of bacterial evolution with important ramifications for human health. Main research foci in my lab are: Horizontal Gene Transfer, the evolution of pangenomes and the diversity and ecology of human pathogens.

Recent publications include:

Vos, M., Buckling, A., Kuijper, B., Eyre-Walker, A., Bontemps, C., Leblond, P. and Dimitriu, T., 2024. Why do mobile genetic elements transfer DNA of their hosts?. Trends in Genetics, 40(11), pp.927-938.

Padfield, D., Kay, S., Vos, R., Quince, C. and Vos, M., 2024. Macroevolutionary dynamics in micro-organisms: generalists give rise to specialists across biomes in the ubiquitous bacterial phylum Myxococcota. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 41(5), p.msae088.

Bartlett, A., Padfield, D., Lear, L., Bendall, R. and Vos, M., 2022. A comprehensive list of bacterial pathogens infecting humans. Microbiology, 168(12), p.001269.

Soni, V., Vos, M. and Eyre-Walker, A., 2022. A new test suggests hundreds of amino acid polymorphisms in humans are subject to balancing selection. PLoS Biology, 20(6), p.e3001645.

Winter, M., Buckling, A., Harms, K., Johnsen, P.J. and Vos, M., 2021. Antimicrobial resistance acquisition via natural transformation: context is everything. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 64, pp.133-138.

Dickinson, A.W., Power, A., Hansen, M.G., Brandt, K.K., Piliposian, G., Appleby, P., O'Neill, P.A., Jones, R.T., Sierocinski, P., Koskella, B. and Vos, M., 2019. Heavy metal pollution and co-selection for antibiotic resistance: A microbial palaeontology approach. Environment International, 132, p.105117.

Career:

• current: senior lecturer at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, UK
• 2012-2017: lecturer at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, UK
• 2009-2011: postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Wageningen, The Netherlands
• 2007-2009: postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, UK
• 2002-2006: PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology / Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany