🚨Faculty job search: University of Illinois Chicago Micro & Immuno department is hiring! Open rank and open area within host-pathogen interactions. Apply by May 31 to join us in UI College of Medicine in the heart of Chicago! uic.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

A new method for inference and tracking the transmission of strains in metagenomes #MicroSky #MicroEco www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Out Now! Unravelling bacterial complexity at high resolution with single-cell transcriptomics #MicroSky

If you’re at #DDW2026, come say hi! Started the meeting strong co-moderating a session with Long Nguyen, a full room came at 8AM to listen to Gautam Dantas, David Underhill & Megan Baldridge sharing exciting unpublished data on gut phages 🦠 fungi 🍄 & eukaryotic RNA viruses 🤩

Check out science writer Ed Cara's @edcara.bsky.social piece 'Should We Finally Ditch Artificial Sweeteners?' Ed talks to @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social & @jhu.edu molecular microbiologist & microbiome expert Jotham Suez @suez.bsky.social gizmodo.com/should-we-fi...

Phage community: our plasmids for executing phage transposon mutagenesis are now on AddGene and I would love for you to try it out! It is powerful for ID'ing all essential genes and knocking out all non-essentials in a single experiment :) New exp here: www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

Have you developed a new #bioinformatics tool to understand #phage or #virus? Make sure you add it to #awesome-virome github.com/shandley/awe...

We are proud to again be recognized by our peer schools and programs as the #1 public health school in the nation, as reported by U.S. News & World Report. The Bloomberg School is grateful to partner closely with our peers on our shared commitment to improving health for people everywhere.

ICYMI: New online! Diet–microbiome associations

Microbes impact peanut allergy Mouth & gut contain peanut-degrading bacteria(Rothia) that metabolize PN allergens. Mice colonized w/Rothia show decreased anaphylaxis & allergic patients w/better PN tolerance have higher abundance of these bacteria www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Katalin Karikó will be @jhu.edu's 2026 commencement speaker. Excellent choice! www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2026...

Female urogenital microbiome: Review by Sarah Lebeer & Co In urogenital tract, dominant lactobacilli shape vaginal immunity & community stability. Review examines molecular strategies & rational design of next-generation microbiome-based therapies www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Gut microbes sound the alarm during sleep loss Leone et al. find short-term sleep loss in healthy humans alters 24-hr rhythmic profiles of circulating microbially derived metabolites, including butyric acid & tryptophan catabolites, relative to habitual sleep: doi.org/10.1172/JCI1...

New paper in mSystems! 🧵 - how much of your metagenome is actually bacterial/archaeal DNA? For many samples, nobody knows. We built SingleM prokaryotic_fraction (SPF) to answer this, then ran it on >100,000 public metagenomes. 🧬🖥️🦠 Here's what we found 👇 doi.org/10.1128/msystems.01062-25

🚨 A new piece of the preterm gut microbiome puzzle just fell into place! Bifidobacterium metabolise human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) in early life — shaping immunity, supporting gut development, and protecting against diseases like necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new study shows that a human-derived Bacteroides salyersiae can reverse depressive-like behavior in a chronic stress model, with effects comparable to ketamine. The talented @philstrandwitz.bsky.social to creating microbiome-based antidepressant therapeutics. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A single course of antibiotics can have lasting effects on your gut microbiome, with changes that last well beyond 4 years. Three types of antibiotics stood out for their long term disruptive impact (3 at left, Figure) nature.com/articles/s41...

Impressive new study by @tovefall.bsky.social showing some antibiotics impact the gut microbiome >4 years www.nature.com/articles/s41... I shared some thoughts with Scientific American: www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-si... Sadly, they did not include my answer to the question... 1/2

Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration! Linking below previous thread on our findings

"Can you trust the results from gut microbiome tests? Maybe not." www.sciencenews.org/article/resu... I understand why the authors didn't disclose the different company IDs...but I'm very curious to know which is which

Our latest is out today in @plosbiology.org: "Metabolic modeling reveals determinants of prebiotic and probiotic treatment efficacy across multiple human intervention trials" @isbscience.org @uwbioe.bsky.social @uwgenome.bsky.social doi.org/10.1371/jour...

In this report from Singapore, the release of wolbachia-infected, irradiated male 𝘈𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘦𝘨𝘺𝘱𝘵𝘪 mosquitoes resulted in a reduction in the vector population and in the risk of dengue infection. Full report: nej.md/4atd2iN #MedSky #IDSky

#NatMicroPicks FMT for cancers in clinic! 💩🦠🦀⚕️ Three different clinical trials report activity of faecal microbiota transplant against cancer #MicroSky #CancerSky www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Largest oral microbiome GWAS (n=12519; SPARK): 11 host loci (incl FUT2 and AMY1 CNV) shape oral community composition and even bacterial genomes. Signals colocalize with dentures/tooth-loss risk in UKB, suggesting specific host–microbe interactions in cariogenesis www.nature.com/articles/s41...

More and more cool work looks at the role of human archaea in health outcomes. In this preprint, authors suggest protective role & show that colonisation of mice with M. smithii or M. stadtmanae thickens mucus, boosts reg. T cells & protects vs DSS colitis. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Jothan Suez, PhD, @suez.bsky.social, who studies sweeteners @jhu.edu @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social, comments on @wsj.com article www.wsj.com/health/new-d...

Super excited to share my latest publication with Justin Malogan and @suez.bsky.social , my love letter to viromics! 🦠 Here, we discuss computational and wet lab methods to study the gut virome and how they can be used together But why is this synergy so important? journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

🦠 How do microbes arrive together, and why does it matter for #microbial #diversity? 👉 Read the paper: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... Published in @plos.org Computational Biology 🎉 Congratulations to authors Loïc Marrec & Sonja Lehtinen @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social @sib.swiss

It's increasingly clear that commensal viruses play important roles in human health, but how do you study them? Our review "Tools and approaches to study the human gut virome: from the bench to bioinformatics" is out today in mSystems! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @haleybiont.bsky.social

Our new paper, where we use metabolic modeling to show Fusobacterium grows faster in colorectal tumor vs normal tissue microenvironments, and use computational + experimental approach to find specific metabolic pathways driving host-microbiome interactions in cancer www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new community-driven lab handbook for reducing conflict and creating more positive and equitable work environments gets strong support from a survey of 200 researchers. buff.ly/K7CGFLV

Out after peer-review: www.science.org/doi/full/10.... Our bottom line stayed: never use leave-one-out cross-validation as it has inherent train-test leakage. Consider our Rebalanced version instead! We now also account for regression and nested cross-validation, with more extensive benchmarking.

We're at 735 registrants and counting! 🎉🦠 If you haven't registered yet, don't miss out on this exciting (free) symposium on gut microbial metabolites and their impacts on host health. Please share with your networks. 🔗👇 isbscience.org/events/2025-...

Campus friends @ Homewood

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)

Congrats to Yancong, Amrisha, Xochitl, Eric and all co-authors!!!

Love this approach!

#NewResearch Prion-like proteins in Escherichia coli trigger an abortive infection mechanism in response to phage infection—a process similar to amyloid-mediated immune signalling in fungi and animals. #MicroSky 🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

💥Personalized C. difficile colonization risk prediction and probiotic therapy assessment in the human gut💥 I'm very excited about this work, driven by Alex Carr & co-supervised by @cdiener.com @cp-cellsystems.bsky.social @isbscience.org @nitinbaliga.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell-systems... 🧵...

We are hiring a postdoc - come work with us (www.koremlab.science) at the intersection of #microbiome, data science, and women's health! Message or email me if interested. 🖥️ 🧬

Excited 🥳 to share our latest work on gut phages! Big thanks to @epcrocha.bsky.social, Erick D, Camille d'H, @fplazaonate.bsky.social, Quentin LB, and all others involved for support and contributions! 🙌 Out in Cell Reports @cp-cellreports.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Here's what we found 🤓

Really cool work, congrats Gechlang, Sean, and team! 👏🏽

Sucralose may interfere with cancer immunotherapy - exciting and important new research from @overacrelab.bsky.social in @theaacr.bsky.social! aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscov... (AI-rendered illustration of the article's title) 1/🧵

🌿💡 Just dropped: our 4‑bug SynCom eats 8 herbicides (up to 99 % gone in a month) and revs up soil carbon metabolism. Microbes doing double duty for cleaner, richer black soils. Check the iMeta paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #SoilSci #Bioremediation

It's finally out!🎉 We known that the #microbiome confers colonization resistance against #pathogens, we know that some meds 💊 affect gut microbes 🦠 So, do 💊 alter colonization resistance? It turns out that some do! If you wanna know more, check out our latest work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A gut microbiome metabolite promotes atherosclerosis by hijacking the immune system @nature.com nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

To learn more about SeqCoast including direct orders with transparent pricing, visit seqcoast.com Sequence smarter, discover more (said in a New Hampshire accent 😉)

⚡🦠I'm very excited to share our latest work on the gut microbiome and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is published in @natmetabolism.nature.com, with @hutlab.bsky.social & @longnguyen.bsky.social! 🔗Check out the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Applications are now open for the 2026 Takeda Innovators in Science Award with Nature. Early-career researchers in GI & inflammatory disease, neuroscience or oncology: Win a share of US$400K and earn global recognition. Apply today: go.nature.com/4jBp3oM #Academicsky