New in @natgenet.nature.com: a moving obituary for Peer. Francesca Ciccarelli, Jan Korbel & Christian von Mering reflect on his scientific vision, from protein domains and genome evolution to metagenomics, and on his generosity as a mentor and friend to so many. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our work exploring host-microbial co-metabolism of bile acids in patients with alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) has been published in the JHEP Reports: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🪐 A big thank you to everyone involved, to the GALAXY and MicrobLiver consortia who made this possible! 🙌

Our study describing `microntology` and annotations for >300k metagenomes is now online in Bioinformatics @academic.oup.com : academic.oup.com/bioinformati... Congratulations to @fullam.bsky.social @vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social & @biocs.bsky.social ! See the thread below for more details.

🚨Take this 15 min survey to shape the future of #Hepatology: 👉 survey.alchemer.eu/s3/91085482/... 🦠 #Microbiome-based mechanisms & biomarkers for improved patient stratification + prediction of therapeutic response in decompensated #Cirrhosis / #ACLF ⏳Survey closes on 17 May @easlnews.bsky.social

Due to some IT problems, the Bork group homepage and various services such as SPIRE and Metalog are unfortunately going to be unavailable for a couple of days. We're sorry for that and hope that the outage can soon be resolved!

@fullam.bsky.social has pushed a new #GUNC release, v1.1.0: github.com/grp-bork/gun... It fixes some bugs, updates some underlying databases and brings new features (e.g. you can now BYODB – bring your own database). GUNC v1.1.0 is also live on #bioconda .

Excited to share the upcoming EMBO | EMBL Symposium “Metabolic interactions shape ecosystems” 🧬🌍 📍 Heidelberg & online 📅 21–24 July 2026 Abstract deadline: 14 April! More info & registration: www.embl.org/about/info/c... #Metabolism #Microbiome #SystemsBiology #Ecology #EMBL #EMBO

'Phil was also the founding Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Computational Biology, where he created the beloved Ten Simple Rules series. He was so prolific in the series that the meta-article “Ten Simple Rules for Writing a PLOS Ten Simple Rules Article” literally includes, as Rule 4: “Be Philip E. Bourne.”

We’re hiring: Research Group Leader in computational biology. Are you generating more research ideas than you can explore? Lead cutting-edge AI & biology research at EMBL-EBI. Apply by 11 April 2026: embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j... #ScienceCareers @ewaldlab.org @embl.org

Just published: "Planetary microbiome structure and generalist-driven gene flow across disparate habitats" by @podlesny.bsky.social @chanyeong-kim.bsky.social and @jonas-bio.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... See the quoted post below for a thread on the preprint!

In the largest study of its kind, scientists in the Bork Group at EMBL have found that a small subset of microbes can carry and transfer genes across disparate habitats, creating a planet-wide, interconnected network of microbiomes 🌍 🦠 🔗 Read more here: www.embl.org/news/science...

Excited to announce my upcoming @snsf.ch Ambizione research group at EPFL on bacteria-host interactions, combining systems approaches and microphysiological models. 🚨 We have an open PhD position! More info on projects and how to apply here: elisabettacacace.github.io/BHI-Lab/ 🧪

It has been two weeks since the unexpected death of Peer Bork, and all of us in his research group are deeply missing him. His scientific vision brought us together as a team, and we are immensely grateful for the time we spent together. 🧵

EMBL is deeply saddened by the passing of our Interim Director General Peer Bork, a pioneering scientist who left an indelible imprint on life science research in Europe and beyond. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues. www.embl.org/news/people-...

We just released a @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social describing the *microntology*, a lightweight controlled vocabulary that we have been using for a while to tag metagenomes with contextual data. Study by @fullam.bsky.social @vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social et al: 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We’re hiring 2 Postdocs (f/m/d) in Drug–Microbiome–Host Interactions 🦠💊 Focus: how non-antibiotic drugs shape the gut microbiome, drug efficacy & side effects. #PostdocJobs #Microbiome #AcademicJobs Full job ad: lisamaierlab.com/wp-content/u...

Text-mining tools have progressed a lot in the last two decades, and I'm excited to see what can be done now. More info chembl.blogspot.com/2025/12/new-... Apply here: embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/EMBL/job/Hin... The position is at @ebi.embl.org #ScienceJobs #AcademicSky #ChemSky #BioSky [3/3]

...but life intervened and funding changed, so SIDER sideeffects.embl.de is unfortunately gathering dust since its last update in 2015. But there's good news: @chembl.bsky.social and @opentargets.org are starting a new effort to mine the available data and produce a high-quality databases! [2/3]

During my PhD @borklab.bsky.social, we extracted drug side effect data from package inserts and used the dataset to predict new drug targets (doi.org/10.1126/scie...) and pinpoint proteins that mediate the side effects (doi.org/10.1038/msb....). We also published the underlying database... [1/3]

Congratulations, Julia Mahamid! Julia Mahamid receives the @dfg.de Leibniz Prize for her work on structural cell biology! #LeibnizPreis

From @jhcepas.bsky.social and colleagues in the @narjournal.bsky.social #NARDatabaseIssue | eggNOG v7: phylogeny-based orthology predictions and functional annotations | #Bioinformatics #ProteinCentric #Database #OpenScience 🧬 🖥️🧪🇨🇭🇪🇸🇩🇪🔓 ⬇️ academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

We're excited to release metaTraits.embl.de! 🦠 Interactively explore 140+ 𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁𝘀, harmonized & integrated from culture-derived collections 🔬 & genome-based predictions 🧬 for >2M MAGs & genomes. Publication at NAR: doi.org/10.1093/nar/... @narjournal.bsky.social #microsky 🧵 1/8

Happy to announce VIRE, a planetary-scale database of >1.7M viral genomes reconstructed from 100k+ metagenomes across diverse environments! In collaboration with @fullam.bsky.social, @tsbschm.bsky.social, and @borklab.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gkaf1225/8356007

Congrats @fullam.bsky.social @pangenomics.bsky.social @borklab.bsky.social & team(s). Great to see this published! proGenomes4: providing 2 million accurately and consistently annotated high-quality prokaryotic genomes: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

We're up to 1000 studies in metalog.embl.de ! For the past year the focus was on finding inconsistencies in the data and creating the website, but now I have more time to go through the backlog of annotated issues to do QC and load them into the database.

Great to see this finally published! Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples now out in @narjournal.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Our newest preprint is the work of two talented PhD students: Dominic Eriksson (working in the labs of Meike Vogt, Nicolas Gruber & Shinichi Sunagawa @ethz.ch) and @jonas-bio.bsky.social from our group @embl.org, investigating latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome (🧵 linked below)

Latitudinal diversity gradients (LDGs) are found across 🌱🐨🦠 but their underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we highlight that LDGs are not universal in marine microbiomes but reflect lineage-specific ecological strategies and environmental responses. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The Data Science team at EMBL is hiring for two open positions! First, for a Scientific Community Manager, focusing on community aspects and training on data science. embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Had a great time yesterday presenting my efforts to use large-scale computational analyses to better understand marine microbes and their impact on carbon cycling. Thanks #SAME18 for the opportunity!

Our scientific organisers opened ‘The human microbiome’ symposium by giving us a brief update on their most recent work 🦠 #EESMicrobiome 🔹Mani Arumugam, University of Copenhagen 🔹Ami Bhatt, Stanford University School of Medicine 🔹Peer Bork, EMBL Heidelberg 🔹Nicola Segata, University of Trento

New preprint from lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... describing the Metalog database of manually annotated contextual data for >110k metagenomics samples around the globe metalog.embl.de See the thread below from @biocs.bsky.social for more info!

We’re looking for curious, innovative science leaders at EMBL Heidelberg! 🔬🧬🦠 Join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community where collaboration and innovation are nurtured at all levels. Take a look at these four open positions 👇

Ready to lead pioneering research that bridges systems-level investigations of biological systems to molecular mechanism? The EMBL Molecular Systems Biology Unit in Heidelberg is hiring a Group Leader!

We're hiring a postdoc!🚨 Study human-associated microbial communities in health & disease. 🔬Requirements: - PhD in bioinformatics, microbiology, or related field - Expertise in omics data analysis - Micro & molecular bio techniques are a plus! Apply now!🌟 jobs.vib.be/j/119682/pos...

At #ISMBECCB2025, @agrekova.bsky.social will present her recent work on detecting mobile genetic elements in both reference and metagenome-assembled genomes in the Microbiome track on Thursday at 3 pm. Come for a sneak peek of the content in promge.embl.de version 2 (to be released in ~1 month)!

Our new preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... In this study, we present the largest systematic analysis of microbiome structure and function, integrating 85K uniformly processed metagenomes from diverse habitats worldwide. @podlesny.bsky.social @jonas-bio.bsky.social @borklab.bsky.social

New preprint from the lab: "Planetary microbiome structure and generalist-driven gene flow across disparate habitats" analysing 85k metagenomes across the world, e.g. looking into generalism across habitats www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... – see the thread below for more details! #MicroSky 🖥️🧬🦠

TREC is hiring! @embl.org is looking for a field technician/engineer to coordinate soil sampling: plan activities, apply protocols, lead site scouting, coordinate teams & more. Join an amazing international team exploring a hidden universe beneath our feet. Please spread the word! bit.ly/4eSTPbZ

Very cool. Here, authors did pairwise co-culturing (mGAM/anaerobiosis) of 97 gut microbial species (113 strains) to infer ecological interactions (n=3233). Most negative were between distant taxa & positive were more among low-abundance taxa. 🔗 microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

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...

The team's first preprint is out! Led by ‪ ‪@vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social‬‬ & @omaistrenko.bsky.social , we asked a question (almost) as old as microbiology: how many prokaryotic species exist on Earth? More specifically, how much diversity is "hiding" in existing metagenomic data? A 🧵.

After a long silence on X (for obvious reasons), the Zeller Lab is now on Bluesky! We’ll post updates soon on what’s been happening in the lab over the past few months. For the future, we promise to share our News in a more timely manner here on this channel. #Microbiome #Bioinformatics #ZellerLab

📥 You have only until 24 June to submit your abstract for 'The human microbiome'❗ 🔬💊 Explore cutting-edge breakthroughs in #microbiome research, from methodological innovations to integrative approaches and personalised therapeutics. Join #EESMicrobiome 🦠🔍 ➡️ https://s.embl.org/ees25-08-bl

Join us at #EESMicrobiome! Organisers Mani Arumugam (#uni_copenhagen), Ami Bhatt (@stanfordpress.bsky.social), Peer Bork (@borklab.bsky.social) and Nicola Segata (#CIBIO_UniTrento) look forward to welcoming #microbiome scientists in September at @embl.org! @events.embl.org

This is just an excellent preprint by Rasmus Jensen and colleagues from Julia Mahamid's lab @embl.org - a tour de force of Cryogenic electron tomography to do in cell structural biology in which they discover a new complex and solve its structure and function! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Open postdoc position in my lab @earlhaminst.bsky.social @quadraminstitute.bsky.social We will generate large-scale soil metagenomes to research the impact of agriculture on healthy soil microbiomes, developing strategies to increase carbon retention: jobs.earlham.ac.uk/Details.asp?... Please RT

Live in 2h: Metagenomic microbial strain tracking in the cloud! I'll be doing a quick demo showing how to use the SameStr workflow on the @nfdi4microbiota.bsky.social Cloud-based Workflow Platform (CloWM) - GUI / no-install / scalable / free for scientific use.

Two years ago, TREC began in Roscoff. Sampling at 120+ sites across Europe was supported by @embl.org custom-built mobile lab and @taraoceans-science.bsky.social schooner, enabling on-site processing across land and sea. Now this work continues, with 100s of projects initiated 📸 Kinga Lubowiecka

TREC is now on Bluesky! The expedition has gathered samples all along Europe’s coasts – now scientists are exploring what the data tell us. We’ll be sharing insights into this amazing ongoing work! Spread the word! @embl.org @taraoceans-science.bsky.social @embrc-eu.bsky.social 📸Massimo Del Prete