Taylor priest
@taylorpriest.bsky.social
NOMIS-ETH fellow at Institute of Microbiology and Center of Origin and Prevalence of Life, ETH Zurich | microbial ecologist interested in diversification, evolution and mobile genetic elements | Parent of a beautiful Briard | food and fitness enthusiast
Declining coccolithophore blooms in the North Atlantic and Western Barents Sea www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊
Declining coccolithophore blooms in the North Atlantic and Western Barents Sea
Satellite observations reveal substantial decreases in coccolithophore blooms across the North Atlantic and Barents Sea.
science.org
Microbial anaerobic digestion communities converge on metabolic functions and metabolite profiles despite variability in taxonomic composition - academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...
Environmental selection constrains metabolic network architecture despite taxonomic turnover in anaerobic digestion communities
Abstract. Microbial ecosystems often sustain stable metabolic functions despite pronounced taxonomic turnover, yet the mechanisms underlying such reproduci
academic.oup.com
Mobile genetic elements shape microbial diversity and functions in thawing permafrost soils www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Mobile genetic elements shape microbial diversity and functions in thawing permafrost soils - Nature Microbiology
An 8-year soil meta-omic time series shows how mobile genetic elements shape permafrost microbial diversity and impact a range of functions, including carbon and nutrient cycling.
nature.com
🚨New paper alert 🚨 Here we tried to leverage an (incredible) metagenome time-series to better understand MGE diversity and activity in soil across decade(s). @scbagby.bsky.social has an amazing thread about this work with all the details - bsky.app/profile/scba...
Mobile genetic elements shape microbial diversity and functions in thawing permafrost soils - Nature Microbiology
An 8-year soil meta-omic time series shows how mobile genetic elements shape permafrost microbial diversity and impact a range of functions, including carbon and nutrient cycling.
nature.com
Sarah Bagby@scbagby.bsky.social · last mo.Out today in Nature Microbiology: a paper that started in 2021 with an email from @sullivan-lab.bsky.social. Subject line: "Crazy ideas". www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/23
Cyanobacterial flocculation as a defence against bacterial predation academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs
Cyanobacterial flocculation as a defence against bacterial predation
Abstract. Many cyanobacteria are capable of flocculation: the formation of floating linked assemblages of many thousands of cells. Flocculation is a highly
academic.oup.com
In marine microbial studies, we typically filter seawater through a 0.22 micron filter...have you ever wondered how many cells and of what taxa pass through these filters ? This study provides some new insights on this - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Very nice study integrated metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and geochemistry to gain insights into microbial communities and methane production in a temperate wetland ecosystem - journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... #MicroSky #MicroEco #EcoEvo
Mapping the soil microbiome functions shaping wetland methane emissions | mSystems
Soil microbial ecology is increasingly recognized as essential to climate mitigation, but realizing its full potential requires shifting from static genome inventories to dynamic assessments of microbial activity. This study shows that methane-cycling microbes exhibit stable, depth-stratified expression patterns, even in response to major redox and flooding shifts, undermining assumptions that water-table manipulations common in wetland management can alone reduce methanogenesis. Instead, methane cycling is shaped by spatially organized, transcriptionally active networks involving not only methanogens but also methanotrophs, fermenters, and iron reducers. These findings expose the limitations of genome-only models and highlight the need for soil diagnostics that capture in situ activity. Together, we provide a foundation for developing activity-based microbiome tools, embedding microbial functions into Earth system models, and designing interventions that move beyond “single-lever” strategies and instead work with the structure and dynamics of microbial communities as complex, layered systems.
journals.asm.org
Fifty years since a simple equation described the chaos of biology 🧪🌐 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Fifty years since a simple equation described the chaos of biology
An exploration of chaos theory in population dynamics showed that unpredictable systems can often be modelled using surprisingly simple mathematics.
nature.com
How is the diversity of microbes structured across the global oceans ? Check out our latest paper, spearheaded by @jonas-bio.bsky.social and Dominic Eriksson, that addresses this - www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Variations in the latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome
Eriksson et al. conduct a global marine microbiome diversity analysis and demonstrate how the surface ocean latitudinal diversity gradient is disproportionately shaped by a few species-rich taxa. Mask...
cell.com
Very happy to have been given the opportunity to contribute to this great study on the spatial structuring of microbial biodiversity in the oceans #MicroSky #Microecoevo www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Variations in the latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome
Eriksson et al. conduct a global marine microbiome diversity analysis and demonstrate how the surface ocean latitudinal diversity gradient is disproportionately shaped by a few species-rich taxa. Mask...
cell.com
Our new paper „Variations in the latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome“ was just published in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social 🥳 We present a global analysis of prokaryotic #biodiversity in the surface and mesopelagic layers of the ocean 🦠🌊 www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Variations in the latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome
Eriksson et al. conduct a global marine microbiome diversity analysis and demonstrate how the surface ocean latitudinal diversity gradient is disproportionately shaped by a few species-rich taxa. Mask...
cell.com
Viruses are highly abundant in the oceans, but there is one place you won't typically find them: in global ocean ecosystem models... until now. Introducing "vDarwin", an explicit integration of viruses into the MITgcm/Darwin global ecosystem framework: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... a 🧵
We think that EET may be an overlooked respiratory strategy in peatlands with implications for CH₄ emissions. Preprint: tinyurl.com/5d7p4cwn Congrats to @gfiorito.bsky.social and the whole team: @taylorpriest.bsky.social @bledinadede.bsky.social, Hanna Zehnle et al.! #MicroSky #Microbiology
tinyurl.com
A survey of 2600 early-career researchers provides insights into good and bad practices of supervision - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... So valuable! I think supervision is, unfortunately, largely an after thought in scientific research...🧵
biorxiv.org
Beyond thrilled that our paper ‘Co-migration of hundreds of microbial species over metres drives selection and promotes non-motile hitchhikers’ has been accepted in Nature Communications! 🎉🦠 (1/n) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Co-migration of hundreds of microbial species over metres drives selection and promotes non-motile hitchhikers - Nature Communications
Migration of microbial communities is poorly understood. Here, the authors use a meso-tube assay to show that hundreds of microbial species co-migrate over metre scales via chemotaxis, which restructu...
nature.com
Excited to say that my new paper with @maxlechte.bsky.social (and others not on bluesky) has come out in @nature.com! Study of sediments, geochemistry and fossils from rocks 1.75 to 1.4 billion years old indicate that the oldest known #eukaryotes were aerobic and benthic! #protists rdcu.be/fjNgL
Early fossil eukaryotes were benthic aerobes
Nature - Integrated palaeontological, sedimentological and geochemical analyses of ancient rocks from Australia show that early eukaryotes were largely restricted to oxygenated benthic habitats,...
rdcu.be
Very interesting read and great study - Genome wide sweeps creat ecological units in the human gut microbiome #MicroSky #Microevo #Microbiome www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Genome-wide sweeps create ecological units in the human gut microbiome - Nature
Genome-wide selective sweeps commonly occur in the human gut microbiome and can spread across the world within decades to produce epidemic-like population structures.
nature.com
A new method for inference and tracking the transmission of strains in metagenomes #MicroSky #MicroEco www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Strain-level transmission inference across multi-kingdom metagenomic data using TRACS - Nature Microbiology
The TRACS algorithm tracks bacteria, viruses and parasites in metagenomic or population sequencing data, detecting microbial transmission even when multiple strains coexist within a host.
nature.com
Cool paper👇 In a microbial community, each species changes its proteome (what proteins it expresses) to do a more specialised metabolic job, so overall functional overlap between species goes down...
Nature Microbiology@natmicrobiol.nature.com · 3mo agoOut Now! Community context reshapes microbial proteomes and reduces functional overlap #MicroSky
Our first collaboration with the Levine lab! Defining metabolic niches for marine microbial heterotrophs www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊
Defining metabolic niches for marine microbial heterotrophs
Understanding carbon cycling requires simplifying bacterial diversity into functional groups defined by genetic signatures.
science.org
Microbiome Research Lab, ETH Zürich@microbiomeresearch.bsky.social · 3mo agoHow diverse are E. coli capsules? In collaboration with @mucosalimmunology.bsky.social we mapped this uncharted diversity in >66k genomes with a new tool, kTYPr, paving the way to capsule-targeted therapies and vaccines www.nature.com/articles/s41... @eth-microbiology.bsky.social
How diverse are E. coli capsules? In collaboration with @mucosalimmunology.bsky.social we mapped this uncharted diversity in >66k genomes with a new tool, kTYPr, paving the way to capsule-targeted therapies and vaccines www.nature.com/articles/s41... @eth-microbiology.bsky.social
In silico typing maps the natural diversity of Escherichia coli transporter-dependent capsules - Nature Microbiology
Escherichia coli ABC transporter-dependent capsule gene analysis alongside the development and application of the kTYPr in silico capsule typing tool uncovers E. coli capsule diversity across environm...
nature.com
It is crazy that in 2026, major research findings published in high impact journals are still being built on a dichotomous view of p-values without any consideration of effect sizes or biological context! Just because you get p < 0.05 that doesn’t mean it is biologically significant....
Seasonality drives temporal niche partitioning of pelagic prokaryotes academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...
Seasonality drives temporal niche partitioning of pelagic prokaryotes
Abstract. Prokaryote seasonality is well documented in lakes, coastal areas, and inland seas, yet microbial annual periodicity in diverse open ocean settin
academic.oup.com
Illuminating the newly produced viruses within the virosphere with bioorthogonal noncanonical amino acid tagging and single-virus genomic sequencing technologies #microbiology #virus #viruses #MicroSky @isme-microbes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/isme...
Illuminating the newly produced viruses within the virosphere with bioorthogonal noncanonical amino acid tagging and single-virus genomic sequencing technologies
Abstract. Marine viruses impact biogeochemical cycles through cell lysis, releasing organic matter and nutrients that fuel ocean productivity. Identifying
doi.org
This is from 7 years ago (merenlab.org/2019/02/24/f...). We are talking about the same things today. We will be talking about the same things 7 years from now. There is no one to blame for this apart from ourselves. I find it very depressing.
GTDB release 11 based on RefSeq 232 (R11-RS232) is live at gtdb.ecogenomic.org. This release covers 901,341 genomes (23% increase) and has 199,923 species clusters (39% increase). Release notes at: forum.gtdb.ecogenomic.org/t/announcing.... Release statistics at: gtdb.ecogenomic.org/stats/r232.
GTDB - Genome Taxonomy Database
The Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB) is an initiative to establish a standardised microbial taxonomy based on genome phylogeny.
gtdb.ecogenomic.org
10 years after the first FAMSA paper, its successor is now published in Nat Biotech! We believe that FAMSA2 can enable analyses of large protein collections that were previously unattainable. Thank you, Andrzej and Cedric, for great collaboration www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Fast and accurate multiple-protein-sequence alignment at scale with FAMSA2 - Nature Biotechnology
FAMSA2 accurately aligns millions of protein sequences at high speed.
nature.com
Does anybody have access to this article and could share a PDF with me ? www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
New preprint alert 🚨: Who actually drives methane production in anoxic sediments 🧬🔥? We point to a transcriptionally dominant 🦠 clade: VadinHA17. shorturl.at/Rijc0 @bledinadede.bsky.social @taylorpriest.bsky.social
biorxiv.org