Duncan Ng

Maybe I’m in the wrong side of microbiome research 🍫

Protein structure alignment significance is often exaggerated Machine learning has generated millions of high-quality predicted protein structures, creating a need for computationally efficient structure search algorithms and robust estimates of statistical sign...

"We show that unrelated proteins have a universal tendency towards convergent evolution of secondary and tertiary motifs, causing an excess of high-scoring FP alignment... previous methods routinely overestimate significance by up to six orders of magnitude."
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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...

Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...

Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it?

Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

I definitely agree with you there. I ended up biting the bullet and paying for premium. The ads on my phone just makes the whole experience horrendous. 🫠

Do you listen to ads on Spotify too?

Probiotics Can Help or Hinder Gut Recovery After Antibiotic Treatment

New paper is out from our lab showing that some probiotics can accelerate and prolong the return of colonization resistance to C. difficile after antibiotics.
news.ncsu.edu/2025/07/prob...

She should have tried harder and growled while she’s at it

Is it… working?

Part of me still can’t believe it! It has been almost 6 years since the “eureka” moment of the paper 😬

a girl in a pink sweater is raising her arms in the air while a group of people are standing around her . ALT: a girl in a pink sweater is raising her arms in the air while a group of people are standing around her .

Got an email that my first first author paper from my PhD was accepted for publication! Cannot wait to talk about it! 🥳

Quantifying phage infectivity from characteristics of bacterial population dynamics A frequent goal of phage biology is to quantify how well a phage kills a population of host bacteria. Unfortunately, traditional methods to quantify phage success can be time-consuming, limiting the t...

Excited to see this new, and extensively-rewritten, version of our preprint up now! With @paulturnerlab.bsky.social we show how bacterial population dynamics (e.g. growth curves) can be used to accurately quantify bacteriophage infectivity

🦠 🧫🔬 #microbiology #VirEvol

doi.org/10.1101/2023...

Reviewer number 2 will 100% accept that explanation.

Maybe it’s better for him to find out what happens when you don’t understand the basics. A little experimentalist except we are all part of his experiment.

This ancient pathogen became deadlier when humans started wearing wool Ancient genomes reveal that a bacterial fever jumped from human-borne ticks to lice around the time wool textiles became common.

I never thought about wool as a possible route of infection.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

if she doesn’t show up #Eurovision

Albania is… confusing. Visually great but vocally confusing

Love that San Marino isn’t even singing. He got someone else to do it for him

Anything for Eurovision

RIP whoever who has to clean that sand

Sweden understood the assignment. They gave us another banger!

It’s a good aim! I’ve only started trail races recently and with the right weather condition, they’re very enjoyable

The core strength on those dancers tho!

With a beautiful guitar rift too 🥰

Not normally a fan of chill songs on Eurovision but Portugal is surprisingly enjoyable

I think you did the right thing. Road marathon are another level of hell because you’re chasing a time while trail ultra you just aim to finish. It’s why I am more keen for ultra over a marathon

Malta is definitely serving

Not sure I appreciate the camera shake

You did not! Congratulation/My condolences. Which race is it? Tbf, I was tempted by a 50k ultra by the coast too but I’ve double booked myself this year 🙈

And he runs too!