Anders Norman
@micronorman.bsky.social
Relapsed microbial ecologist/plasmid nerd/bioinformatician now working with Mycobacteria and Tuberculosis Epi. Specialist Consultant at Statens Serum Institute.
Given the recent COVID-19 origins revival and Fauci witchhunt, just a reminder that I have written a book that answers to the best of our knowledge the question; and dismantles the many disinformation campaigns around the various lab leak narratives. Free access: open.substack.com/pub/protagon...
Lab Leak Fever
The COVID-19 Origin Theory that Sabotaged Science and Society
open.substack.com
link.springer.com/article/10.1... #tuberculosis
Risk factors for tuberculosis: a nationwide cohort study among Greenlanders in Denmark, 2005–2022, highlighting social vulnerability - BMC Public Health
Background In tuberculosis (TB) low-incidence countries, TB is becoming increasingly concentrated in marginalised populations. Progress towards TB elimination therefore requires targeted interventions...
link.springer.com
One person a week in England dies with undiagnosed TB, study finds
One person a week in England dies with undiagnosed TB, study finds
British-born, older men among those most likely to have disease found only postmortem, say researchers One person a week dies with undiagnosed and therefore untreated tuberculosis in England, a study has found. British-born, older men were among those most likely to have TB diagnosed only after death, researchers said, suggesting healthcare workers could be overlooking the possibility of the disease in these patients. Continue reading...
theguardian.com
Tulsi Gabbard dumped a pile of docs & claimed they were evidence of a vast plot by Fauci to manipulate intelligence, cover up the lab leak, & conceal his role in creating Covid. They weren’t. In reality, Gabbard’s documents undermine her. Here’s what they say… www.lawfaremedia.org/article/tuls...
Tulsi Gabbard’s Fauci Files Don’t Prove What She Says They Prove
Gabbard’s declassification theater is a case study in politicizing intelligence.
lawfaremedia.org
Increased sensitivity of the updated FluoroType MTBDR V2 with addition of IS6110 analysis | Journal of Clinical Microbiology journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Increased sensitivity of the updated FluoroType MTBDR V2 with addition of IS6110 analysis | Journal of Clinical Microbiology
Tuberculosis remains a major global health threat, and rapid, accurate diagnosis is essential for disease control. This study evaluates an updated molecular assay for detecting the Mycobacterium tuber...
journals.asm.org
Minibwa is a hybrid of bwa-mem and minimap2 and the successor of bwa-mem for short-read mapping. ~4X/2.5X as fast as bwa-mem/bwa-mem2 for WGS reads at comparable accuracy. Native support of directional bisulfite-seq. Applicable to long reads. Preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2606.15357
Nice, when you await something for thirteen years, that it turned out to be this good: boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com/track/naraka
Naraka, by Boards of Canada
from the album Inferno
boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Utilizing Whole Genome Sequencing for the Detection of Nontuberculous Mycobacteria Laboratory Cross-contamination: Experiences from a National Reference Laboratory
Early recognition of clinically-discordant mycobacterial cultures is essential to prevent unnecessary diagnostic procedures and treatments. Here, we s…
sciencedirect.com
Seven decades of nontuberculous mycobacteria in Denmark: shifts in species distribution and clinical relevance | Journal of Clinical Microbiology journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Seven decades of nontuberculous mycobacteria in Denmark: shifts in species distribution and clinical relevance | Journal of Clinical Microbiology
Infections caused by nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are increasingly recognized worldwide, yet the long-term epidemiology of these human pathogens remains poorly understood. By leveraging a unique ...
journals.asm.org
FastSpeciesTree: Fast and Scalable Species tree Inference www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧬💻🧪 github.com/OrthoFinder/...
Existing treatments for #tuberculosis and HIV control the pathogens, but the immune system does not revert to normal The preclinical findings help explain why people living with #HIV likely remain more susceptible to other illness and reinfection with #TB – and point to the need for new therapies
TB and HIV treatments are not enough for a full recovery - Texas Biomed
Existing treatments for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV control the pathogens, but the immune system does not revert to normal, according to research by Texas
dlvr.it
The power of resistance: mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its impact on tuberculosis management | Clinical Microbiology Reviews journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
The power of resistance: mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its impact on tuberculosis management | Clinical Microbiology Reviews
SUMMARYThe global resurgence of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) presents a formidable challenge to public health, driven by a complex interplay of mycobacterial evolution, dynamics and outcomes of...
journals.asm.org
Just saw this. Amazing work www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #idsky #ntmsky #ntm
Population structure of Mycobacterium avium subsp. hominissuis provides new insights into genomic evolution
Mycobacterium avium subsp. hominissuis (MAH) is a clinically important species of non-tuberculous mycobacteria that causes infections in a variety of hosts. This opportunistic pathogen is widespread i...
microbiologyresearch.org
Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics
From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...
science.org
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Biofilm formation by the global outbreak strain of Mycobacterium chimaera results in significantly reduced efficacy of standard disinfectants - BMC Microbiology
Background In 2013, a global outbreak of Mycobacterium chimaera infections due to contaminated heater-cooler units emerged. This ongoing problem has highlighted the question of whether disinfection re...
link.springer.com
Glad to share our paper out today @NatureEcoEvo: “Serial innovations by Asgard archaea shaped the DNA replication machinery of the early eukaryotic ancestor”. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #microsky #archaeasky
Serial innovations by Asgard archaea shaped the DNA replication machinery of the early eukaryotic ancestor - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Phylogenetic and biochemical analyses show a diversity of components of the DNA replication machinery in different Asgard archaea that contributed to the eukaryotic DNA replication machinery.
nature.com
New paper with my (amazing) friend and mentor @jrpenades.bsky.social Really looking forward to see what plasmid aficionados think of this one!! With @asantoslopez.bsky.social @wfigueroac3.bsky.social Akshay Sabins and others www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Non-conjugative plasmids limit their mobility to persist in nature
Sabnis et al. explain why non-conjugative plasmids move at a low rate in nature. While increased mobility can easily evolve by incorporating phage DNA into plasmids, this is disadvantageous because it...
cell.com
New research from Nicolas Menzies & colleagues: Potential #paediatric #tuberculosis incidence and deaths resulting from interruption in programmes supported by international health aid, 2025–34: a mathematical modelling study www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... #PedSky #InternationalAid
Potential paediatric tuberculosis incidence and deaths resulting from interruption in programmes supported by international health aid, 2025–34: a mathematical modelling study
Without actions to restore discontinued services, cuts to health aid for tuberculosis and HIV programmes could result in millions of additional childhood tuberculosis cases and deaths in low-income an...
thelancet.com
Announcing a call for a special issue on Nontuberculous Mycobacterial (NTM) Pathogens, led by our guest editors Sidharth Chopra, Arunava Dasgupta and @lkremer1.bsky.social! Accepting manuscripts on various themes. Deadline - March 30, 2026. @pubs.acs.org Link - pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Call for Papers: Nontuberculous Mycobacterial (NTM) Pathogens─Biology, Infection, and Drug Discovery
pubs.acs.org
What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years? Our paper looking at resistance genes from a century of NCTC historical isolates now out in mGen: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
Genomic resistance in historical clinical isolates increased in frequency and mobility after the age of antibiotics
Antibiotic resistance is frequently observed shortly after the clinical introduction of an antibiotic. Whether and how frequently that resistance occurred before the introduction is harder to determin...
microbiologyresearch.org
Fun fact: diluted tattoo inks and washes make pretty decent carbon sources for NTMs.
Joseph Marcus@josephmarcusid.medsky.social · 12mo agoEight of 63 clients of a tattoo artist using a homemade (witch hazel-based) diluent developed an NTM skin and soft tissue infection. Just say no to 🙅♂️homemade tattoo ink #IDSky academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...
The global TB epidemic is driven by social determinants. In this case-control study in Peru, we characterised the associations between multidimensional household poverty, personal risk factors, and TB. @tb-lshtm.bsky.social idpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
The social determinants of tuberculosis: a case-control study characterising pathways to equitable intervention in Peru - Infectious Diseases of Poverty
Background Despite being key components of global tuberculosis policy, poverty reduction and social protection interventions have been inconsistently implemented. We aimed to characterise how poverty ...
idpjournal.biomedcentral.com
Really pleased to see this study led by @raymondkiu.bsky.social now published in @natcomms.nature.com! We show that probiotics help modulate the preterm infant 👶#microbiome - to reduce ARGs, lower MDR bacteria 🦠 & increase beneficial Bifido ✨ Huge team effort! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Impact of early life antibiotic and probiotic treatment on gut microbiome and resistome of very-low-birth-weight preterm infants - Nature Communications
Here, the authors show that giving probiotics to very low birth weight preterm babies can help reduce harmful antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the gut and support the development of a healthier microb...
nature.com
Hall Lab @halllab.bsky.social · 2y agoSo excited to see this preprint out! Huge congrats to @raymondkiu.bsky.social on bringing this preterm microbiome study together with some really neat well-controlled clinical subgroups & analysis. As always we couldn't do this without amazing team members & collaborators! Check out details below 👇
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Convolutional neural networks quantify antibiotic resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis with diagnostic grade accuracy and predict treatment response
There is considerable interest in training machine learning (ML) models on genomic data that achieve clinical grade diagnostic accuracy. Many successful ML models have been trained and validated on bi...
medrxiv.org
Our study on TB rates among Greenlanders in Denmark is out: doi.org/10.1080/2374...
Extraordinarily high incidence rates of tuberculosis among Greenlanders living in Denmark, 2006–2022
Many Greenlanders move from Greenland, a tuberculosis (TB) high-incidence country, to Denmark, a TB low-incidence country. Surprisingly, according to official statistics, the TB incidence among Gre...
doi.org
Happy to finally share this! Read here about the best strategy the the persistence of low-copy plasmids. @mariosanter.bsky.social @iwangtoknow.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s414...
The combination of active partitioning and toxin-antitoxin systems is most advantageous for low-copy plasmid fitness - Nature Communications
Effe et al. evaluate how specific plasmid traits influence plasmid fitness; they provide mechanistic insight into the persistence of large conjugative plasmids, including those that disseminate antibi...
doi.org
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
UShER-TB: Scalable, Comprehensive, Accessible Phylogenomic Analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for the Tuberculosis (TB) disease, remains a leading global infectious disease killer, and genomic epidemiology is essential for understanding its...
medrxiv.org
Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
