I am a Research Leader at the Institute and Head of the Microbes and Food Safety Programme, where my interests are the epidemiology, evolution and dynamics of foodborne and zoonotic bacteria, with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

I was awarded a BSc in biomedical toxicology and an MSc in epidemiology from the University of Guelph, followed by a PhD at the University of Glasgow, where I took an epidemiological and ecological approach to the study of AMR in zoonotic pathogens.

After moving to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, my work utilised whole genome sequencing to examine, in the greatest resolution, the evolution and transmission of both bacteria and AMR between and within different host populations. I was awarded a BBSRC Anniversary Future Leader fellowship at the University of Cambridge in 2015, where I used short and long-read genome sequencing and metagenomics to investigate the dynamics of AMR and cross-species pathogen transmission.

I have also become very interested in the role of commensal or non-pathogenic bacteria as reservoirs of AMR genes, and use metagenome sequencing to try to quantify their contribution to the AMR burden of pathogens.

In 2017 I moved to the Quadram Institute, where my group studies the epidemiology, evolution and AMR of pathogenic and commensal bacteria throughout the food chain.

Key Publications

Bloomfield, S.J., Palau, R., Holden, E.R., Webber, M.A. and Mather, A.E. (2024) Genomic characterization of Pseudomonas spp. on food: implications for spoilage, antimicrobial resistance and human infection. BMC Microbiology. doi: 10.1186/s12866-023-03153-9.

Bloomfield, S.J., Zomer, A.L., O’Grady, J., Kay, G.L., Wain, J., Janecko, N., Palau, R. and Mather, A.E. (2023) Determination and quantification of microbial communities and antimicrobial resistance on food through host DNA-depleted metagenomics. Food Microbiology. doi: 10.1016/j.fm.2022.104162

Zamudio, R., Boerlin, P., Beyrouthy, R., Madec, J.-Y., Schwarz, S., Mulvey, M.R., Zhanel, G.G., Cormier, A., Chalmers, G., Bonnet, R., Haenni, M., Eichhorn, I., Kaspar, H., Garcia-Fierro, R., Wood, J.L.N. and Mather, A.E. (2022) Dynamics of extended-spectrum cephalosporin resistance genes in Escherichia coli from Europe and North America. Nature Communications. 13: 7490. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-34970-7

Alikhan, N.-F., Zanolli Moreno, L., Castellanos, L.R., Chattaway, M.A., McLauchlin, J., Lodge, M., O’Grady, J., Zamudio, R., Doughty, E., Petrovska-Holmes, L., Cunha, M.P.V., Knöbl, T., Micke Moreno, A. and Mather, A.E. (2022) Dynamics of Salmonella enterica and antimicrobial resistance in the Brazilian poultry industry and global impacts on public health. PLOS Genetics. 8(6):e1010174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1010174

de Oliveira Martins, L., Bloomfield, S.J., Stoakes, E., Grant, A.J., Page, A.J. and Mather, A.E. (2022) Tatajuba – exploring the distribution of homopolymer tracts. NAR Genomics & Bioinformatics doi: 10.1093/nargab/lqac003