I've been working on a new pangenome simulator for eukaryotes - PansimNuc! A Rust-based nucleotide-level simulator that models mutation, selection, recombination, gene and TE mobility and demography. It's still under development, with plans to tweak it for prokaryotes github.com/samhorsfield...

🧬 New preprint! We clustered 5.6 million bacterial genomes into genomically cohesive units (GCUs) 500× faster than existing tools. (In just 14 hours, 16.5 GB RAM using 48 CPUs). 🦠🐙Meet gemsparcl 💎✨! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fast Set Operations for Compact k-mer Sets https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.24.727514v1

Our new preprint is out! We train a transformer on gene order and gene content of bacterial pathogens, applying it to a range of epidemiological and evolutionary analyses (1/8) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I did some public outreach last year - it was super rewarding, and made me realise the importance of grassroots science engagement. Not only does it inspire the next generation of scientists, but fosters public trust in science, something that is very important right now.

ggCallaroo v0.1.0 is now out! This snakemake pipeline predicts, clusters and annotates bacterial genes using ggCaller, Panaroo and Bakta. It generates Panaroo files with functional annotations already integrated, which can then be used with the usual downstream tools. github.com/samhorsfield...

🎉 EarlGrey ParTEA v0.1.6 is here! Huge thanks to everyone who's tried the pipeline and shared feedback — your suggestions directly shaped these new features. 🍵 #TEworldwide #transposableelements #bioinformatics #genomics

Two new bioinformatics internships available in @johnlees.bacpop.org group at EMBL-EBI: 1) testing and developing ML methods for identification of bacterial promoter regions; 2) Applying innovations in protein structure prediction to search massive datasets. Apply here: www.bacpop.org/jobs/

ggCaller v1.5.0 is out! We've removed the integrated clustering to enable users to benefit from new Panaroo features. Now, ggCaller generates GFFs that can be used with any clustering method. But for fans of an integrated ggCaller pangenome workflow read on... github.com/bacpop/ggCal...

🎉🧬 Multiple genomes/pangenome? Time for a parTEA! 🧬 ☕️ Tired of annotating TEs one genome at a time? Same. So we organised a parTEA! Introducing EarlGrey ParTEA v0.1.3 — consistent TE annotation across all your genomes, in parallel, with one command: github.com/TobyBaril/Ea... #TEworldwide #TEsky

Super excited to see this out! Massive effort from the group, generating thousands of ML trees and coming up with a means of merging them. Code for tree generation and merging will be made available soon with release of the ATB paper.

You asked, we listened. Millions of AI-predicted protein complex structures are now available in the #AlphaFold Database. This spans homodimers from 20 of the most studied species, including humans, as well as the World Health Organization’s priority pathogens list. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t...

Introducing kuva: A scientific plotting library in rust, along with cli binary with the option to plot directly into the terminal. Feel free to drop me some feedback as an issue on the repo github.com/Psy-Fer/kuva crates.io/crates/kuva/...

The AlphaFold Database, jointly developed with Google DeepMind, now contains datasets from specialist communities. This includes rich datasets for microbes, viruses & parasites associated with tropical diseases. Explore the new datasets in the AlphaFold Database. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/u...

Pleased to share our latest paper, a summary of many years of work with the GOSH-ACE team. An absolute pleasure to work alongside @fionapk.bsky.social and combine our PhD efforts into lasting patient benefit. academic.oup.com/rheumatology...

At long last, my final PhD chapter is out: we developed a novel evolutionary simulator of bacterial pangenomes, Pansim, fitting it to data from >600K genomes using a likelihood-free framework, PopPUNK-mod, to explore neutral and adaptive pangenome dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Super excited to announce the release of gene and intergenic region annotation from the largest bacterial genome and MAG datasets available, including AllTheBacteria, GTDB, SPIRE, HRGM, mOTUs and MGnify - dereplicated and available from HuggingFace huggingface.co/AllTheBacteria

Very happy to share our preprint on a mathematical model for Streptococcus pneumoniae population dynamics after vaccine introductions. It's a reusable model that describes vaccine replacement dynamics and can help to determine strategies for genomic surveillance: doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.18.695090

Preprint Alert! With @tmthrz.bsky.social and @rayanchikhi.bsky.social we aim to tackle practical unitigs compression! A thread:

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen. 1/n

ICYMI: catch up with our pangenomics webinar series. The recordings are now available on-demand: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve... Webinars were given by: Raymond Cheng, Leanne Haggerty, @samuelhorsfield.bsky.social, Alexander Leonard, Neil MacAlasdair, and @camillemrcht.bsky.social. 🧬🖥️📊🦠

Really grateful for the chance to discuss GNASTY on #ScienceInContext; massive thanks to @eonore.bsky.social for the invite!

New preprint: we looked into production of the bacterial toxin colibactin and found that MDR E. coli from the global north have co-evolved with endemic colibactin producers, acquiring colibactin resistance genes before undergoing clonal expansions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congratulations to @zaminiqbal.bsky.social from @milnerevolution.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 Mary Lyon Medal!

Just a quick plug: I've made a few updates to ExpEvoAnalyzer (variant functional annotation in experimental evolution studies) to use bwa as well as ska2, and to use existing or de novo annotations. It just might help streamline your pesky bioinformatics analysis! github.com/samhorsfield...

If you're interested in using pangenome graphs for comparative genomics, check out my webinar, part of EMBL-EBI's "Concepts, methods, and resources in pangenomics" series, available on-demand: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

There are millions of openly available microbial genomes, but searching them can be slow. Until now 🥁 Introducing LexicMap, a new alignment tool that lets scientists search these data in minutes, helping track antibiotic resistance, trace outbreaks, and more. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/r... 🦠

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols. Thread 1/n

If you can't face reading War and Peace or my massive thread, I was interviewed on BBC Science in Action, you can hear me 12 mins into this episode (we are not the headline paper, which was on autism): www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

A new ggCaller version is out! v1.4 includes tweaks to improve efficiency, outputs Panaroo-friendly GFFs, and enables iterative gene calling; if you have already called a gene set, you can now add more genomes either one by one or in batches github.com/bacpop/ggCal...

Are you an AI expert who wants to stay in academia and change the world by understanding the most complex things we know - living organisms? Want to lead your own group, based in Heidelberg DE, working language English? @embl.org is hiring in AI embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

A little tool I've developed: ExpEvoAnalyzer (github.com/samhorsfield...) - a snakemake pipeline that compares isolate paired-read data from an experimental evolution study to a reference isolate, producing functionally-annotated SNPs in a presence/absence matrix.

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians. It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical. While here, he developed a new way of aligning to millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

In just a weeks time @chownbioinf.bsky.social is cycling over 200km to the @bsmm-meeting.bsky.social in Norwich, to raise money for @aspertrust.bsky.social This is a huge feat, and for such a great cause. Please consider sponsoring Harry! www.justgiving.com/page/harry-c...

Looking forward to seeing everyone, new and old, at the Microbial Population Biology GRS + GRC in just a couple days! go.bsky.app/GGxRjzC

Delighted to see this paper from danderson123.bsky.social 's PhD out. We have been building tools for AMR gene detection for over a decade now, but multicopy genes remain challenging. Dan shows that with a gene-space de Bruijn graph and long reads, you can do well www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Amira: gene-space de Bruijn graphs to improve the detection of AMR genes from bacterial long reads https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.16.654303v1

Very happy and proud to announce that the first preprint of my PhD is out: arxiv.org/abs/2504.20710 We developed an R package to translate mathematical models in SBML format into executable odin models and visualise models from @biomodels.bsky.social on our website Menelmacar biomodels.bacpop.org

Tracking different serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae can be tricky. GNASTy is a scalable analysis method for use with portable Nanopore Adaptive Sampling for real-time detection of S. pneumoniae, helping track vaccine performance. Find out more 👇 genome.cshlp.org/content/earl... 🧬🖥️

Great to see our work on GNASTy made it into the long-read special issue at Genome Research alongside some super innovative applications and methods!

Australia’s reefs are on fire 🔥

Our pangenome graph-based Nanopore Adaptive Sampling (NAS) tool, GNASTy, is available now in Genome Research! genome.cshlp.org/content/earl...

🚨🚨🚨 For everyone who's using BLAST+ through EBI be aware, the default settings for some tools differ and will give different results and will take a lot longer than you're used unless you change these parameters. 🚨🚨🚨 1/n

This morning's reading in both the "everyone loves Lord of the Rings" and "everyone loves contrived acronyms" files: CELEBRIMBOR (Core ELEment Bias Removal In Metagenome Binned ORthologs), a snakemake-based workflow to better identify core genes for pangenomes from metagenomic assemblies. 🧪

NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold. We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940. 2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.

I'm putting together a Microbial Bioinformatics starter pack to help get everyone connected in our community. Let me know if there are any bluesky users to be added and share so that twitter refugees can tune back in to the fantastic world microbes go.bsky.app/3ezLo7e

Just a little tool release before the holidays: WTBcluster ("Woooowww That's Big"-cluster), a snakemake pipeline to predict and iteratively cluster billions (and billions...) of bacterial genes using pyrodigal and MMseqs2. It's a work in progress so any issues let me know! github.com/samhorsfield...

New paper: We show that population exposure to colibactin producing E. coli lineages ST95 and ST73 largely explains global variation in colorectal cancer incidence. Same STs are also major causes of UTIs and may be similarly involved in urinary tract cancers. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...