Rhys White 🧬

Scientist at @PHFScience | Turning #Genomics into intel | Tracking pathogen evolution, diversity, & spread | Welsh expat in New Zealand | Formerly @UQ_News

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

📌20 years later: unravelling the genomic success of New Zealand’s home-grown AK3 community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

How NZ’s #antibiotic habits fuelled a superbug
Once local, now global

Out now & #OpenAccess | @MicrobioSoc
https://t.co/VrlC4Pl1IP

[Dr Miranda Pitt @Miranda_E_Pitt]

🚨Thrilled to share our recent preprint: "Interrogating the Escherichia coli epitranscriptome via CRISPR interference and Nanopore native RNA sequencing" 🦠https://t.co/voJPJdKNeQ

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

This work was possible through collaboration across Aotearoa. From diagnostic labs & surveillance programmes to genomics, AMR & science teams at @PHFScience, alongside international collaborators.

Shout out to Alexander Sundermann (@PittTweet) for linking NZ & USA collaborators

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

Hospital infections are sometimes assumed to spread between patients

But what if they’re not?

📌Decentralized nanopore genomics reveals diverse Klebsiella pneumoniae and no evidence of patient–patient transmission in a New Zealand hospital @MicrobioSoc

https://t.co/P9WYGATho7

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

We embedded @nanopore sequencing directly into a frontline diagnostic lab.

We sequenced routine Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates collected at Wellington Regional Hospital.

Surprisingly, most infections were genomically unrelated with no evidence of patient-to-patient transmission

[Patrick Harris @padstamundo]

Novel transposon Tn8026 acts as a global driver of transmissible linezolid resistance in Enterococcus via a linear plasmid
https://t.co/nbkvv50SGw

[Peter Fineran @PeterFineran]

New post-doctoral research position available in my Phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory at the @otago in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link below.

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

Reviewers can’t assess data quality, mixtures, coverage, or assembly robustness without access to the sequence data.

Peer review without data isn’t #PeerReview.

Journals should enforce data availability before review, not after.

#OpenScience #Genomics

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

It’s 2026.

If you submit a #Genomics paper without making the underlying sequence data publicly available, reproducibility is...

👉I M P O S S I B L E👈

#OpenScience data isn’t optional. It’s foundational to #PublicHealth, benchmarking, & scientific credibility

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

From a neonatal ICU in Wellington to clinics in Africa & Europe: a new @ghn_news feature shows how onsite @nanopore genome sequencing is reshaping #InfectionPrevention… helping to deliver answers in hours, not weeks, & turning #Genomic into real-world action

#PublicHealth

[Global Health NOW @ghn_news]

Faster, cheaper technologies that can do onsite genome sequencing are improving pathogen surveillance in lower-income settings. https://t.co/4FkhHwpsG4

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

The uncomfortable question this paper leaves open...

👉 How many other high-risk #AntimicrobialResistance genes are carried on tiny plasmids we’re not even watching for yet?

https://t.co/85ODuNzDjz

#AMR #FutureOfHealth #Surveillance #GlobalHealthThreats

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

🧵BIG PROBLEMS can hide in small #Plasmids

📌Integration of blaOXA-48 into a Col156 plasmid drove a carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli ST131 outbreak in New Zealand: Global genomic evidence for the gene’s multilayered dissemination

https://t.co/85ODuNzDjz

#ScienceTwitter

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

What didn’t work (at first)

Standard bacterial whole-genome sequencing told us about related cases, but not how the resistance was moving

It took complete genomes to see that this plasmid is global, stable, & quietly successful

#ScientificProcess #Genomics #AMR #LessonsLearned

[Rhys White 🧬 @RhysTWhite]

Genomics isn’t just solving #Outbreaks, it’s stopping them before they escalate

HOT take from @NatureRevMicro... If you only sequence #MDR outbreaks, you’re already late. Sequence the suspects: susceptible strains & #Plasmids

#GenomicSurveillance #InfectionControl #Microbiology

[Nature Reviews Microbiology @NatureRevMicro]

New online! Genome sequencing for prevention of health-care-associated bacterial infections https://t.co/u42KB6oTsw