Raymond Kiu

Research briefings in @nature.com about our latest study of the gut microbiome of infants in nurseries!

This work was a true multidisciplinary team effort and a testament to how science can be particularly impactful when built alongside the community. — @livi-ricci.bsky.social and
Nicola Segata

Research Fellow at University of Birmingham Discover Research Fellow jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

Only 2 more days to apply for this post as Research Fellow in the Health Protection Research Unit - Public Health Genomics at the University of Birmingham.

Come and join us to exciting, cutting-edge genomics and metagenomics work to deliver public health benefits

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQE112/r...

Baby-to-baby strain transmission shapes the developing gut microbiome - Nature A metagenomic survey of babies attending the first year of nursery detected extensive baby-to-baby microbial strain transmission, pointing to social interactions in infancy as crucial drivers of infan...

🥁 NEW

Our study on infant gut microbiome and #straintransmission is now published in @nature.com:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

1/10

Decoding the microbiome and resistome of advanced chronic liver disease through long-read metagenomics Introduction - Patients with advanced chronic liver disease (ACLD) and underlying cirrhosis frequently require repeated courses of antimicrobial therapy, with both the frequency and spectrum of antimi...

I am pleased to share that my first postdoc paper from the @halllab.bsky.social is now on bioRxiv! 🎉

We used long-read #metagenomics to explore how the gut microbiome and #antimicrobialresistance landscape shift across advanced chronic #liverdisease (ACLD)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Massive congratulations!! You truly deserve this!

Have research, results, or ideas to share with the microbial ecology community? Don’t miss your chance to present it at #MMEG2025 - abstract submissions close 2 November!

📨 Submit your abstract: appliedmicrobiology.org/ems-event-ca...

It’s been a bit over 2 months since the main results of my PhD work on reconstructing carbohydrate utilization pathways in human bifidobacteria were finally published; so I guess it’s a good time to update the previous thread (1/7) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

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...

Wonderful plenary lecture by Prof Dena Lyras to kick off Clostpath 2025 in Paris! @pasteuredu.bsky.social @monashuniversity.bsky.social #clostpath14

Really pleased to see this study led by @raymondkiu.bsky.social now published in @natcomms.nature.com!

We show that probiotics help modulate the preterm infant 👶#microbiome - to reduce ARGs, lower MDR bacteria 🦠 & increase beneficial Bifido ✨

Huge team effort!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Personalized Clostridioides difficile colonization risk prediction and probiotic therapy assessment in the human gut Carr et al. show how microbial community-scale metabolic models (MCMMs) predict personalized Clostridioides difficile colonization risk and probiotic efficacy. MCMMs reveal key metabolic strategies ex...

💥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...

🧵...

Systematic pairwise co-cultures uncover predominant negative interactions among human gut bacteria - Microbiome Background Understanding pairwise bacterial interactions in the human gut is crucial for deciphering the complex networks of bacterial interactions and their contributions to host health. However, the...

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....

Around 25% of U.S. infants lack detectable Bifidobacterium, regardless of birth or feeding method. This deficit could have implications for immune health and the trajectory of noncommunicable diseases, according to a study published in Communications Biology. go.nature.com/4lgA1ls 🧪

🦠 ClostPath 2025 is coming to Paris! 🇫🇷
Join us Sept 1-4, 2025 at Institut Pasteur for the 14th International Conference on Molecular Biology & Pathogenesis of Clostridia.

📝 Register now: www.clostpath2025.conferences-pasteur.org/home

Day 4 of IMI Summer school started with Feeding the Future and green bread 🍞 with UoB's Dr Helen Onyeaka, GI infections with Dr Ella Rodwell and Exploring the World of Gut Bacteria with the fabulous @halllab.bsky.social 🦠🦠🦠

Peter Wildy Prize Lecture and Interview with Prof. Lindsay Hall from Annual Conference 2025 is now available on YouTube. Watch the full interview and lecture: 'Guardians of the Gut Bringing Microbiome Science to Life through Public Engagement' microb.io/40s1zvB #Microbio25

Half way through the IMI Summer school 2025 starts with a fantastic Q&A panel with our own UoB students and Postdocs and @wvschaik.bsky.social giving a great talk on AMR & Phages 🦠🦠

How does your diet impact the microbiome? Let's find out...🦠🦠

Culture club! Do probiotic yoghurt drinks really contain live bacteria? Let's find out at IMI Summer school 2025 🦠🦠

🌍 #WorldMicrobiomeDay 2025
At @halllab.bsky.social we’re uncovering how microbes - right from day one - help shape the gut, strengthen immunity, and protect against infection.
We're exploring how, when, and which microbes colonise - in order to develop interventions for a healthier start to life.

Newly published study by Prof Lindsay Hall @halllab.bsky.social and Prof Willem van Schaik @wvschaik.bsky.social finding that antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus haemolyticus bacteria are common in premature babies
www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/wi...

Gut microbiome evolution from infancy to 8 years of age - Nature Medicine In a unique cohort of twins followed from birth to 8 years of age, shotgun sequencing of stool samples reveals that the transmission, persistence and evolutionary adaptation of bacterial strains are s...

#NatMicroPicks

Tracking the gut microbiome evolution 🦠

A big data analysis of gut microbiome of kids from infancy to 8 years of age.

#MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing to see this now published! Congrats to @lisalamberte.bsky.social and @wvschaik.bsky.social - on leading this important #microbiome study on #AMR and Staphylococcus haemolyticus in the preterm gut 👇

Staphylococcus haemolyticus is a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes in the preterm infant gut Staphylococcus haemolyticus is an important cause of sepsis in preterm infants, with gut colonization being recognized as a risk factor for infection. To better understand the diversity of S. haemo...

I am delighted that our manuscript 'Staphylococcus haemolyticus is a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes in the preterm infant gut' is now published.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Big thank you to all co-authors, particularly @lisalamberte.bsky.social and @halllab.bsky.social

PhD Microbial Genomics for Health Protection, Biosciences - University of Birmingham PhD in Microbial Genomics, exciting new Doctoral Training Programme in Microbial Genomics for Health Protection in collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) launches

An exciting new Doctoral Training Programme in Microbial Genomics for Health Protection, in collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency @ukhsa.bsky.social, has just launched, funded by @nihr.bsky.social there are 9 PhD projects available (UK students only) www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/cen...

Assessing the safety of microbiome perturbations Everyday actions such as eating, tooth brushing or applying cosmetics inherently modulate our microbiome. Advances in sequencing technologies now facilitate detailed microbial profiling, driving inten...

(1/6) 🌟 Excited to share our new paper!
Advancing microbiome safety assessments: opportunities, challenges & recommendations 🧫🦠

This work came out of an academic–industry workshop hosted by @microbiologysociety.org in early 2024.

🔗 www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Autocycler: long-read consensus assembly for bacterial genomes Motivation Long-read sequencing enables complete bacterial genome assemblies, but individual assemblers are imperfect and often produce sequence-level and structural errors. Consensus assembly using T...

New preprint! Autocycler is a tool for long-read consensus assembly of bacterial genomes. It's like Trycycler but can be run fully automated (without any human intervention).
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
(1/6)

Do people in the same household share strains when they have the same species?

How many cells transmit when a strain is shared?
Can strain composition be dynamic when species composition is stable?

We answer these and related questions for the facial skin microbiome in our latest paper.

🧵[1/10]

What happens to microbial genomic evolution in highly stable, closed ecosystems? In this preprint, authors look at 111 MAGs from a Romanian cave isolated from external influences for 5.5My(!) and see more pseudogenisation of core genes & limited HGT. Unsurprising?
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to finally share results from my first post-doc @halllab.bsky.social 🫡

E.coli commonly occurs in infant gut microbiota, yet its role during healthy development has been disregarded. In our pre-print, we reveal its fundamental involvement in HMO-degradation.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...