We can't understand the human microbiome if most of humanity is missing from the data That's why we work with researchers and communities around the world to preserve microbial diversity and advance microbiome science for all Honored to be featured in @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/m...

Our Bacteria Are Talking. We’ve Just Begun to Understand What They’re Saying.

nytimes.com

Great to see this important study published. For some time I've pointed to the preprint version when students ask about co-evolution between humans and their microbiota. "Limited codiversification of the gut microbiota within humans"

My colleague Eike Matthias Wacker has developed our 🦠 metagenome processing pipeline which is now published in Nature Communciations: www.nature.com/articles/s41... It's a modular workflow implemented in nextflow that can combine local and public data from SRA Github: github.com/ikmb/TOFU-MA....

TOFU-MAaPO: fast, scalable and reproducible analysis of large metagenome sequence data from the Sequence Read Archive - Nature Communications

The authors introduce a portable, automated single-command Nextflow pipeline for large scale analysis of metagenomic short-read sequencing data. It makes large metagenome projects more accessible to i...

nature.com

New feature: querying multiple terms in our microbiome knowledge graph (143k papers)! Generated by LLM prompt engineering with > 96% accuracy (expect-check). Demo with 1% data: genomiverse.net/MicrobiomeCo... Feedback is super appreciated :) #microsky #microbiomesky 🦠🧪🧬🖥️✨

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science #11February, we'll be introducing several female scientists from Kiel University over the next few days. #WomenInScience #ConnectingHorizons Today, among others: Prof. Dr. Mathilde Poyet @mmmicrobiomelab.bsky.social​

Amazing. Bypass model safeguards and get helpful responses about nukes, bioweapons, cyberattacks, etc., simply by putting the adversarial prompt in a poem. Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models arxiv.org/abs/2511.153...

I was fortunate to be one of the scientists to analyse this fantastic resource generated by the GMbC @globalmicrobiome.bsky.social and I am extremely thrilled to see these articles out on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social #microsky 🦠

GMbC@globalmicrobiome.bsky.social · 9mo ago

How does industrialization and lifestyle impact our interactions with gut microbiomes? And what is the consequence of these perturbations on our physiology? Discover findings from our new study addressing these questions: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microbiome #globalhealth #GMbC

Sawhney et al. followed 52 infants from birth to age 8, uncovering how gut microbiomes shift, stabilize, and evolve. A key finding: the emergence and timing of Bacteroides- and Prevotella-dominated enterotypes. 👶🧬 1/n

Gut microbiome evolution from infancy to 8 years of age - Nature Medicine

In a unique cohort of twins followed from birth to 8 years of age, shotgun sequencing of stool samples reveals that the transmission, persistence and evolutionary adaptation of bacterial strains are s...

doi.org

🔥New Night Science paper!! Discovery happens when your initial plans fall apart but it requires you to have a particular mindset: it's not extraverted, orderly, neurotic or agreeable that's the most important – discovery requires an OPENNESS to new ideas and unexpected insights.

Not microbiome, but not less interesting: Cousins et al. introduce cobraa, a model revealing that all modern humans descend from two ancestral populations that split ~1.5 million years ago and later admixed ~300,000 years ago. This 80:20% ancestry mix challenges the idea of a panmictic origin 🌍🧬 1/n

Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n

👇Four days left to apply! (Friday 14th of March)👇

Christoph Kaleta@kaletalab.bsky.social · last yr.

1/3 🌍 We're hiring! The Medical Systems Biology Lab at Kiel University @uni-kiel.de is looking for a #PostDoc in #Metabolic #Microbiome #Modeling. Join us at one of Europe’s microbiome research hubs and push the boundaries of microbiome science! 🔗 jobs.uksh.de/job/Kiel-Pos...

Excited to share our latest work on the gut microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease patients. This is the result of hard work across generations of trainees in the Donia Lab, in collaboration with amazing scientists (Nobuhiko Kamada and Lea Ann Chen). www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Tian et al. designed a synthetic microbiota that suppresses C. difficile infection. Using machine learning, they built a 37-strain synthetic fecal transplant (sFMT1) that successfully inhibited C. difficile in vitro and in animal models. 🦠🛠️ 1/n

Lab mice (domesticated for >100y) have kept gut bacterial strains that codiversified w/ rodents for >25My. Here, authors show genetic drift occured in the lab, leading to loss of microb diversity+more deleterious mutations, impacting microbial fitness in lab vs wt mice www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Recent genetic drift in the co-diversified gut bacterial symbionts of laboratory mice - Nature Communications

Here the authors show that lab mice have retained ancient gut bacterial symbionts that diversified in parallel with rodent species, but the genomes of these gut bugs have accumulated mutational burden...

nature.com

I proudly present a new review paper of my group that just came out in Trends in Microbiology @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social with Leonardo Ona and Shryli Shreekar Disentangling microbial interaction networks Open access link: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Coming from a GWAS-lab, my research interest for IBD and host-microbe interactions started here: In this classic paper from 2012, Jostins et al. analyzed 75k+ individuals, identifying new IBD-associated genetic loci, many of which reveal deep evolutionary and microbial connections 🦠📊 1/n

Abdill et al. (@richabdill.com; @blekhman.bsky.social) from the University of Chicago compiled and analyzed 168,000 publicly available human gut microbiome samples to reveal global variation in microbiome composition. 🌎🦠 1/n

Diener @cdiener.com and colleagues from the Institute for Systems Biology (@isbscience.org) and @medunigraz.at introduce MEDI (Metagenomic Estimation of Dietary Intake), a novel method to quantify dietary intake by analyzing food-derived DNA in stool samples. 🧬🥗 1/n

(unsuccessfully) tried to use ChatGPT for scheduling the internal group talks for the next months giving it a few uncomplicated constraints. at least the naming is somewhat human-like...

The gut microbiome isn’t just a collection of species—it’s a network of evolving subspecies. Doran et al. from the University of Chicago introduce the Spectral Tree, a new way to map these hidden evolutionary relationships. 🌱🧬 1/n

Since beginning of last year, I am a #NewPI within the @dfg.de-funded Collaborative Research Center 1182 "Origin and Function of Metaorganisms", which now also made it's way to Bluesky. Welcome, @crc1182.bsky.social! #MicroSky #SciSky

We're hiring a postdoc!🚨 Study human-associated microbial communities in health & disease. 🔬Requirements: - PhD in bioinformatics, microbiology, or related field - Expertise in omics - Strong publication record Apply now!🌟 jobs.vib.be/j/69697/post... @vibmicrobes.bsky.social

Postdoctoral position in bioinformatics of the human gut microbiome - VIB

About the Lab Thelab of JeroenRaes(VIB, KU Leuven) is home to a vibrant, dynamic and international group of researchers in the field of gut microbial ecology and its clinical applications

jobs.vib.be

Setting new boundaries of 16S rRNA gene identity for prokaryotic taxonomy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Setting new boundaries of 16S rRNA gene identity for prokaryotic taxonomy

The 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene is frequently sequenced to classify prokaryotes and identify new taxa. If sequences from two strains share less than ~99% identity, the strains are usually classified...

biorxiv.org

Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers. This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

To mark #InternationalHolocaustRemembranceDay, you can help build the world’s largest digital memorial to the victims and survivors of Nazism. We want to digitize 27,000 prisoner registration cards from Auschwitz & other concentration camps. Join in and help! everynamecounts.arolsen-archives.org/en/

Combining 168k gut microbiome samples into a single analysis - what a great and important effort. Congrats!

Ran Blekhman@blekhman.bsky.social · 2y ago

Today we report a new compendium of human gut microbiomes with >168,000 samples By analyzing this massive dataset, we discovered distinct microbiome patterns across the globe, and show we can predict where a person lives just from their gut bacteria Now out in Cell: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

We are looking for 2 #postdoctoral fellows on #gutmicrobiota, #diet and the #gut mucosal barrier in #health and #disease! Details & Application: umustipendie.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Please share!! #postdoc #postdocjob #academicjobs #MicroSky #GISky #Microbiome #MicroSky #AcademicSky #PhdSky

Hey #HiSciSky 👋. I'm a post-doc researcher with a background in scientific device dev. I have just released an open-source STEM-Education project for a $40, 3D-printed, DNA fluorometer with ng/uL levels of sensitivity. Follow for updates! GitHub Repo: github.com/traulab/DIYN... #DIYNAFLUOR #STEM

End-of-the-year-vibes with little sleep and lots of things to be done. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNfK...

Phoebe Bridgers - If We Make It Through December (Official Audio)

YouTube video by Dead Oceans

youtube.com