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Daniel Podlesny

@podlesny.bsky.social

Postdoc @BorkLab.bsky.social @embl.org. PhD @UniHohenheim.bsky.social. Microbiome, HGT, FMT, Strain-level Metagenomics

1,097 Followers  |  757 Following  |  11 Posts  |  Joined: 19.10.2023
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Posts by Daniel Podlesny (@podlesny.bsky.social)

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The MicrobeAtlas database: Global trends and insights into Earthโ€™s microbial ecosystems MicrobeAtlas (www.microbeatlas.org) is an integrated, reference-based resource for truly planet-wide microbiomics, analyzing hundreds of thousands of microbial lineages across diverse environments, co...

MicrobeAtlas is now published in Cell. ๐ŸŒ๐ŸŒŽ๐Ÿฆ 

Explore the paper and resource to see what large-scale microbiome data reveal about global ecological patterns:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

For a concrete application, see our recent work on โ€œCommunity conservatismโ€:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

25.02.2026 16:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 41    ๐Ÿ” 19    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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The MicrobeAtlas database: Global trends and insights into Earthโ€™s microbial ecosystems Environmental DNA sequencing has revolutionized our understanding of microbial diversity and ecology. Microbiomes have now been sequenced across the eโ€ฆ

The Microbe Atlas database paper is *finally* published! Out in @cellpress.bsky.social today:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

25.02.2026 18:56 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 18    ๐Ÿ” 6    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I am pleased to share that our paper is now published in Cell!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
I am deeply grateful to all co-authors for making this possible.

This work was made possible through the guidance of Dr. Peer Bork. I share this in grateful memory and with deep respect for his mentorship.

09.02.2026 21:07 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 28    ๐Ÿ” 13    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 2

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!

09.02.2026 17:08 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 24    ๐Ÿ” 14    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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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 ๐ŸŒ ๐Ÿฆ 

๐Ÿ”— Read more here: www.embl.org/news/science...

09.02.2026 16:42 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 34    ๐Ÿ” 14    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4

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. ๐Ÿงต

30.01.2026 15:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 68    ๐Ÿ” 24    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason Protein structure is conserved beyond sequence, making multiple structural alignment (MSTA) essential for analyzing distantly related proteins. Computational prediction methods have vastly extended ou...

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social.
๐Ÿ“„ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
๐ŸŒ search.foldseek.com/foldmason
๐Ÿ’พ github.com/steineggerla...

30.01.2026 06:11 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 300    ๐Ÿ” 147    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 4    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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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-...

22.01.2026 07:40 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 109    ๐Ÿ” 44    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4
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In remembrance of Peer Borkย  | EMBL EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisationโ€™s Interim Director General.

This is such hard news to process. Such an amazing scientist and inspiration for so many of us.
www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

16.01.2026 18:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 38    ๐Ÿ” 21    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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metaTraits: a large-scale integration of microbial phenotypic trait information Abstract. Microbes differ greatly in their organismal structure, physiology, and environmental adaptation, yet information about these phenotypic traits is

metaTraits: a large-scale integration of microbial phenotypic trait information

academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

30.11.2025 04:47 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 19    ๐Ÿ” 9    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Get in touch if you have feedback or would like to see other data on metaTraits. metaTraits is fully Open Access and FAIR and was supported by a Flex Fund from nfdi4microbiota.de @nfdi4microbiota.bsky.social within @nfdi.de. Many thanks to all co-authors! 8/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
A figure comparing gut microbiome composition across three groups: Gut infection (pre-FMT), post-FMT, and Healthy control. Stacked bar charts show a high relative abundance of aerotolerant bacteria (blue) in the infection group, which decreases drastically after FMT to match the healthy control group (dominated by anaerobes in dark grey). Box plots below quantify the mean abundance dropping from 42.8% to 11.8%.

A figure comparing gut microbiome composition across three groups: Gut infection (pre-FMT), post-FMT, and Healthy control. Stacked bar charts show a high relative abundance of aerotolerant bacteria (blue) in the infection group, which decreases drastically after FMT to match the healthy control group (dominated by anaerobes in dark grey). Box plots below quantify the mean abundance dropping from 42.8% to 11.8%.

2๏ธโƒฃ sumTraits computes community-level trait summaries from taxonomic profiles (mOTUs, MetaPhlAn, etc.). Trait shifts can mirror environmental context: Here, aerotolerant microbes, abundant in rCDI, decrease after FMT, likely reflecting the restoration of low oxygen availability in the gut. 7/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
CloWM The Cloud-based Workflow Manager (CloWM) is a service hosted at Bielefeld University that can transform your Nextflow workflow into a public webservice and provide compute and storage resources for ex...

1๏ธโƒฃ porTraits predicts traits for your genomes/MAGs (currently BacDiveโ€‘AI, GenomeSPOT, Traitar, MICROPHERRET) & pulls metaTraits context for the detected taxa. Also available on the free โ˜๏ธ workflow platform CloWM.de, or via @nextflow.io github.com/grp-bork/por.... 6/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Bring your own data! ๐Ÿ’ป We provide two workflows for the annotation of user-submitted data. Have a look at the examples and try them out on our metaTraits website: 5/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Most microbial diversity is uncultured. metaTraits bridges the gap by combining culture-based trait data (@bacdive.bsky.social, @bvbrc.bsky.social, JGI/GOLD/IMG) with predictions for MAGs and genomes (SPIRE, proGenomes). All trait summaries come with provenance and links to their original data. 4/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Search ๐Ÿ” metaTraits by NCBI or GTDB taxonomy, or directly by IDs in the underlying DBs. Filter data sources to consider in your query: You can include/exclude genome-based predictions or toggle specific culture collections to strictly control the level of evidence you need. 3/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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View traits ๐Ÿ“Š for individual microbes, or summarized at species, genus, or family level. Explore traditional culture-based traits (e.g. aerotolerance, pH, motility), alongside metrics derived from (meta)genomics (e.g. genome size, pangenome openness, generalism, population diversity). 2/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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We're excited to release metaTraits.embl.de! ๐Ÿฆ  Interactively explore 140+ ๐—บ๐—ถ๐—ฐ๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐—ฏ๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—ฝ๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ผ๐˜๐˜†๐—ฝ๐—ถ๐—ฐ ๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐˜๐˜€, harmonized & integrated from culture-derived collections ๐Ÿ”ฌ & genome-based predictions ๐Ÿงฌ for >2M MAGs & genomes.

Publication at NAR: doi.org/10.1093/nar/... @narjournal.bsky.social #microsky ๐Ÿงต 1/8

02.12.2025 17:52 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 37    ๐Ÿ” 29    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Alcohol-related liver disease disrupts bile acid synthesis and is associated with compensatory gut microbiota changes Background: Alcohol overuse disrupts liver function and alters microbial gut communities, with alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) accounting for half of all liver-related deaths worldwide. Bile acids...

Super happy to share our latest preprint in #liverdisease & #gut microbiota mechanisms.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

24.07.2025 17:02 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5    ๐Ÿ” 4    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

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... โ€“ see the thread below for more details!

#MicroSky ๐Ÿ–ฅ๏ธ๐Ÿงฌ๐Ÿฆ 

21.07.2025 13:57 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 24    ๐Ÿ” 12    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Planetary microbiome structure and generalist-driven gene flow across disparate habitats Microbes are ubiquitous on Earth, forming microbiomes that sustain macroscopic life and biogeochemical cycles. Microbial dispersion, driven by natural processes and human activities, interconnects mic...

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

21.07.2025 11:56 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 28    ๐Ÿ” 18    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4

The team's first preprint is out!

Led by โ€ช
โ€ช@vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.socialโ€ฌโ€ฌ & @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 ๐Ÿงต.

27.06.2025 20:09 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 46    ๐Ÿ” 30    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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The rare microbial biosphere harbors many chemosensitive microorganisms undetectable by regular shotgun metagenomics. We can now explore them using our custom target-capture sequencing approach. Impressive work by
Claudia Sanchis, part of her PhD thesis!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

25.06.2025 19:25 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 15    ๐Ÿ” 7    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Europeโ€™s choice is clear.

To put science at the heart of its economy.

To become the home of scientific freedom and collaboration.

And to welcome talent from all over the world.

Iโ€™m glad to present the first elements of our Choose Europe Initiative.

โ†’ europa.eu/!TTbWbJ

05.05.2025 10:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4056    ๐Ÿ” 975    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 122    ๐Ÿ“Œ 138

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.

28.04.2025 10:21 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 6    ๐Ÿ” 3    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Efficient and robust search of microbial genomes via phylogenetic compression Nature Methods - Phylogenetic compression achieves performant and lossless compression of massive collections of microbial genomes, facilitating fast BLAST-like search and versatile alignment tasks.

Our latest paper, in which @brinda.eu (along with @zaminiqbal.bsky.social and others) introduces phylogenetic compression for storage and search of enormous microbial genome libraries, was published today in @naturemethods.bsky.social:

rdcu.be/eg4OA

1/

09.04.2025 21:07 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 252    ๐Ÿ” 104    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 11    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4
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Schon wieder Der Aufstieg der NSDAP/AfD

Die Faschisten sind auf dem Vormarsch - schon wieder - und wir machen genau die gleichen Fehler - schon wieder.
datajournal.org/schon-wieder/

20.02.2025 09:41 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1203    ๐Ÿ” 552    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 71    ๐Ÿ“Œ 104
Screenshot von Google News: Zeit Online schreibt von vermeintlichem HitlergruรŸ, NTV sagt Geste รคhnelt, SZ von mรถglichem HitlergruรŸ, Welt spricht von rรถmischen GruรŸ oder Geste von Herzen

Screenshot von Google News: Zeit Online schreibt von vermeintlichem HitlergruรŸ, NTV sagt Geste รคhnelt, SZ von mรถglichem HitlergruรŸ, Welt spricht von rรถmischen GruรŸ oder Geste von Herzen

Weitere Screenshots von Google News. ZDF spricht von fragwรผrdiger Geste, T-Online schreibt Mast ihre Tiere mit Geste, BR schreibt von HitlergruรŸ รคhnlicher Geste und so weiter

Weitere Screenshots von Google News. ZDF spricht von fragwรผrdiger Geste, T-Online schreibt Mast ihre Tiere mit Geste, BR schreibt von HitlergruรŸ รคhnlicher Geste und so weiter

Weitere Screenshots von anderen Medien im selben Ton

Weitere Screenshots von anderen Medien im selben Ton

Weiteres Screenshots, diesmal aber mit Watson, die als einziges Medium den HitlergruรŸ als solchen benennen

Weiteres Screenshots, diesmal aber mit Watson, die als einziges Medium den HitlergruรŸ als solchen benennen

Dass nur eine einzige Redaktion sich hier traut, zu schreiben, was jeder sehen konnte: "Musk macht HitlergruรŸ" โ€“ das ist so dystopisch, ihr werft uns denen zum FraรŸ vor.

21.01.2025 05:59 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 637    ๐Ÿ” 137    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 29    ๐Ÿ“Œ 46

Die deutschen Mainstream-Medien sind soweit nach links gerutscht, dass sie einen HitlergruรŸ nicht mehr HitlergruรŸ nennen.

21.01.2025 07:17 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 968    ๐Ÿ” 134    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 34    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 08 January 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-024-00803-0Controlling for phylogeny is essential in comparative genomics studies, because species, genomes and genes are not independent data points within statistical tests.โ€ฆ

NEW ONLINE! New online! A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics

08.01.2025 13:58 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 19    ๐Ÿ” 11    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0