Great to share the latest work from our group and collaborators. First CARRIAGE study paper led by @drdaggarwal.bsky.social and the heroic efforts of Katie Bellis and Beth Blane in the lab plus all the team at @cambridge-ceu.bsky.social Huge thanks goes to the 22,000 participants of the study

Wellcome Sanger Institute@sangerinstitute.bsky.social · 10mo ago

People who persistently carry the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus have a much less diverse community of bacteria in their nose, while certain species may help keep it out. 🦠 These findings offer insight into who may be at higher risk of infection. 👇 www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/la...

Read 'Large-scale characterization of the nasal microbiome redefines Staphylococcus aureus colonization status' from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social, @cam.ac.uk, @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social and their collaborators in @natcomms.nature.com here ⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Large-scale characterisation of the nasal microbiome redefines Staphylococcus aureus colonisation status - Nature Communications

Here, using samples from ~1,100 individuals, the authors define the nasal microbiome linked to Staphylococcus aureus colonization, identifying seven communities- either S. aureus-dominated or dominate...

nature.com

People who persistently carry the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus have a much less diverse community of bacteria in their nose, while certain species may help keep it out. 🦠 These findings offer insight into who may be at higher risk of infection. 👇 www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/la...

Largest study of nose microbiome helps highlight those at risk of Staph aureus infection

A study of the human nasal microbiome has allowed scientists to rethink how bacterial communities interact in the nose.

sanger.ac.uk

Worried about identification of human samples from microbial sequencing? We were too- this is what we've done about it! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Benchmarking of human read removal strategies for viral and microbial metagenomics

Human reads are a key contaminant in microbial metagenomics and enrichment-based studies, requiring removal for computational efficiency, biological a…

sciencedirect.com

Academia may not give you job security, flexibility, or wealth, but it will let you unexpectedly connect to eduroam in foreign cities

Great piece about some of the issues within the health research field atm ⬇️

Prof Christina Pagel@chrischirp.bsky.social · last yr.

New comment piece by me & colleagues in @bmj.com on the using health data for research in UK Processes are so complex and so slow now that less research is happening and we are wasting the enormous potential of the NHS to drive innovation www.bmj.com/content/390/...

📣 Interested in the environmental (un)sustainability of AI (and how to support positive change)? Or know someone who is? I have an open position for a postdoctoral researcher to join my group in Cambridge, UK 🌱 🚨Closing June 5th www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51255/ Topics below 👇 #AcademicSky #GreenSky

🎉

Ewan Harrison@ewanharrison.bsky.social · last yr.

Happy to share our first preprint looking at the nasal microbiome in ~1000 healthy adults from the CARRIAGE study of 20,000 healthy blood donors to understand nasal colonisation by Staphylococcus aureus. Ten years in the making! doi.org/10.21203/rs....

One more re-up for my hissy fit about wolves. arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

Dire wolves remain very extinct

Despite what you are being fed, de-extinction is a con, full of gloss, bullshit and ghoulish greed.

arutherford.substack.com

Interested in infectious diseases, climate, health, and international collaborations? 🧬 We spoke with Nick Thomson, Head of our Parasites and Microbes programme to cover all those topics and more. Learn more about Nick and his research vision here ⤵️ sangerinstitute.blog/2025/03/21/a...

First paper from my new job 🎉 Removing human reads from viral and microbial metagenomics data. Usually, I want all the human reads I can get, but this was a really interesting project to work on! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Benchmarking of Human Read Removal Strategies for Viral and Microbial Metagenomics

Human reads are a key contaminant in microbial metagenomics and enrichment-based studies, requiring removal for computational efficiency, biological analysis, and privacy protection. Various in silico...

biorxiv.org

US Science has been under sustained attack for the last month. I've been thinking about the vulnerabilities in UK science. In a new post, I've imagined a dystopian but *possible* future for UK science - as a way for prompting discussions on how we can protect it. open.substack.com/pub/christin...

A dystopian but possible future: the Fall of British Science 2028-2033

In which I think about how a UK populist government could undermine science as a way of prompting discussions about how to protect it.

open.substack.com

1) This feels like really good, bold public interest journalism by the BBC! 2) If you were around social media / online publishing circa 2014 and followed The Social Chain, it was soooo baffling to watch his reinvention as a business guru. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Steven Bartlett sharing harmful health misinformation on Diary of CEO podcast

Disproven health claims are accepted with little challenge by host on number one podcast, BBC investigation finds.

bbc.co.uk

Excellent.

Mark Pallen@mjpallen.bsky.social · 2y ago

Letter sent in to the Editor of the Guardian on brain microbiome nonsense.

Amazing talk from Anna Furtjes outlining the key findings from her paper- I'm not a brain gal but this was incredibly interesting! #segeg2024 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Lifetime brain atrophy estimated from a single MRI: measurement characteristics and genome-wide correlates

A measure of lifetime brain atrophy (LBA) obtained from a single magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan could be an attractive candidate to boost statistical power in uncovering novel genetic signals a...

biorxiv.org

Excited to be at #SEGEG2024 today @kcl.ac.uk; already some super interesting presentations!

My app for finding 🦋 accounts you may want to follow has had a make-over: it now displays names and bios, and allows adding an "app password" for direct follow buttons in the listing bsky-follow-finder.theo.io

PhDs and PostDocs! Circulate to your cohorts and departments. This could be really beneficial to future PhD students that follow in the paths we walk in today. 🧪

Xabier Simón Martínez de Goñi@martinezgonixs.bsky.social · 2y ago

📢Calling all researchers! We are studying what makes a great (or not-so-great) supervisor from the perspective of PhD students and postdocs. Our goal? To improve academic mentorship and research environments. Got 5-10 minutes? Take the survey!✍️ forms.gle/WT9GoiaHxypX...

Hi bluesky👋 I'm Róisín, a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. I'm interested in the human genetics of infection, at the moment I'm looking at S. aureus nasal carriage 🦠