Raymond Kiu

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....

This is figure 1 showing general features of infant gut microbiomes.

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 🧪

The ClostPath conferences, which began in 1995, have been a leading venue to bring together top scientists and clinicians studying the molecular biology of clostridia and their role in health and disease. In keeping with this tradition, Clostpath 14 will cover all aspects of clostridia-dependent pathogenesis and will take place September 1 - 4, 2025. The congress will open with a welcome word by Prof. Yasmine Belkaid, President of the Institut Pasteur, followed by an introducing keynote.

🦠 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 🦠🦠🦠

Visual description: graphic depicts Professor Lindsay Hall giving their lecture. Title reads: "Peter Wildly Prize 2025, Interview and Lecture, Lindsay Hall."

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...

Congratulations!!

Congrats Louise! @flanagella.bsky.social

It was a memorable experience at #Microbio2025 where I presented my work to colleagues working in the field of microbiology, listened to up-to-date research and had a great time with great people in Liverpool (beautiful city by the way!) 😀 Looking forward to the next one! @microbiologysociety.org

Willem presenting a blue-gray slide with the title 'UKRI Transdisciplinary AMR Genomics Network'

I presented @target-amr.bsky.social at #Microbio25

Please join the network via www.targetamr.org.uk

Thanks @lucasbham.bsky.social for the photo.

Excited to share that my first chapter of my #PhD has been published! This was a real labour of love, using qualitative research to set the scene for current #infectiousdisease diagnostic landscapes and how #metagenomics could fit into clinical settings to diagnose infections 🥳
rdcu.be/efTsE

Microbiology Society Microbiology Society journals contain high-quality research papers and topical review articles. We are a not-for-profit publisher and we support and invest in the microbiology community, to the benefi...

To all enjoying #MicroBio25 remember: all @microbiologysociety.org events rely on our journals - every paper pays 4x travel grants!

Make 2025 when you submit a paper to a MicroSoc journal www.microbiologyresearch.org

$0 OA for Publish+Read institutions www.microbiologyresearch.org/publish-and-...