André Soares

We’re out and about yet again, this time in the vulcanic Eifel region drilling with Jens Kallmeyer @gfz.bsky.social 🌋

Academia is just a job - Nature Human Behaviour Working in academia can be stressful. Laurel Raffington suggests treating it as ‘just a job’ to reduce performance pressure and advocate for structural improvements.

"Working in academia can be stressful. Laurel Raffington suggests treating it as ‘just a job’ to reduce performance pressure and advocate for structural improvements."

"Academia is just a job"
by @laraffington.bsky.social (2025, Nature Human Behavior)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Near-zero temperatures, but field sampling is still a-go for the Probst lab 😎
@geomicrosoares.bsky.social @feriel.bsky.social @pengyaoz.bsky.social are out in Regensburg!
@unidue.bsky.social @uniregensburg.bsky.social

Hi #bioinformatics folk, I want to quickly extract metagenome reads that map to medium-sized piles of reference genomes (100s-1000s, but not 10_000s). I don't _necessarily_ care about the exact position. I'm using minimap2 right now but it's kinda choking on 1000 microbial genomes at once. Thoughts?

Helixer: ab initio prediction of primary eukaryotic gene models combining deep learning and a hidden Markov model - Nature Methods By leveraging both deep learning and hidden Markov models, Helixer achieves broad taxonomic coverage for ab initio gene annotation of eukaryotic genomes from fungi, plants, vertebrates and invertebrat...

AI model Helixer predicts eukaryotic genes ab initio, directly from a plain text FASTA file.

No RNA-seq.
No protein homology.
No repeats, hints, or curated evidence.

Raw genome → accurate gene models.
Deep learning + HMM, published in @natmethods.nature.com

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

GitHub - COMBINE-lab/mim: A small, auxiliary index to massively improve parallel fastq parsing A small, auxiliary index to massively improve parallel fastq parsing - COMBINE-lab/mim

Ok; mim (github.com/COMBINE-lab/...) preprint submitted! Excited for folks to see it and share thoughts. The key takeaway; mim allows the quick, one-time, building of a small auxiliary index that then allows scaling gzipped FASTQ parsing linearly in # of threads. 1/2

A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.24.690213v1

Acquisition of Spacers from Foreign Prokaryotic Genomes by CRISPR-Cas Systems in Natural Environments Abstract. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems of bacteria and archaea provide immunities

@katharinasures.bsky.social @probstlab.bsky.social et al. analysed CRISPR-Cas systems of metagenome-assembled genomes from two subsurface environments, shedding new light on the diversity of CRISPR spacers in natural microbial communities.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf201

#genome #evolution #CRISPR

ICYMI: New online! Microbial genomics for antimicrobial resistance ecology and action

Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples Abstract. Metagenomic sequencing enables the in-depth study of microbes and their functions in humans, animals, and the environment. While sequencing data

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-...

gcMeta 2025: a global repository of metagenome-assembled genomes enabling cross-ecosystem microbial discovery and function research Abstract. The rapid growth of metagenomic sequencing has generated an unprecedented wealth of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), transforming opportuniti

GcMeta - a new global resource of metagenome-assembled genomes and their encoded functions with an easy to use, interactive and searchable website academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

High-resolution profiling of bacterial and fungal communities using pangenome-informed taxon-specific long-read amplicons - Microbiome Background High-throughput sequencing technologies have greatly advanced our understanding of microbiomes, but resolving microbial communities at species and strain levels remains challenging. Results...

Still using 16S/ITS profiling? You might want to reconsider👀

Our new paper presents pangenome-informed amplicons that provide up to 10× higher phylogenetic resolution than full-length ribosomal markers- while remaining cost effective and scalable!
microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Microbial Considerations for the Permanent Geological Storage of CO2 The impacts of microbiology on the storage of CO2 are poorly understood but could be critical to its safe geological disposal. We review evidence for microbial risks and opportunities, and argue for ...

Microbial Considerations for the Permanent Geological Storage of CO2 enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs

Public MAG datasets not available at NCBI or ENA Some metagenome assembled genome (MAG) datasets are not available in the standard locations (NCBI / ENA / etc) for a variety of reasons. Here you can contribute new ones you come across. To be recorde...

In the meantime, we've been collecting a list of these at tinyurl.com/mag-collecti.... Feel free to add more you find.

See also GlobDB from @daanspeth.bsky.social which incorporates some of these into a new MAG collection arxiv.org/abs/2506.11896

eLife Assessment This important study reports the results of efforts to replicate two phenomena of significant interest to early-career scientists and scientific policymakers: the Matthew effect and the early-career setback effect. Several previous studies of these effects have focused on early-career researchers with grant proposals that fell just below or just above a funding threshold. Those just above the threshold were more likely to be successful when they applied for funding later in the career (an example of the well-known Matthew effect), while those just below were more likely to go on to have stronger publication records (the early-career setback effect). In this study the Matthew effect was found to be robust across funders, and to generalize from those close to the funding threshold to the whole population. The early-career setback effect was not robust across funders and did not generalize to the whole population. The evidence reported is convincing.

Evidence from 14 research funding programmes confirms that early winners tend to keep winning (Matthew effect). But the idea that an early setback makes you stronger later doesn’t replicate widely.
buff.ly/UEtcRd4

Please share this with anyone who may be interested in a post-doc in Germany:

jobs.awi.de/Vacancies/20...

This is quite an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of what is known regarding the molecular basis of the formation and demise of photosymbiotic relationships in marine habitats.

Check out our paper on intricate nested interactions between viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts. Excellent collaboration with @deemteam.bsky.social, @anagtz.bsky.social and Michail Yakimov
Free access link: rdcu.be/eLtCH
🧵 by @yifanzhou.bsky.social 👇

Are you, or someone you know, looking for a PhD, starting in Oct 2026?

Do you like bacteria, genomics & puzzles?🦠🧬🧩

Do you wanna work in a cutting edge of science, with some awesome people @quadraminstitute.bsky.social?

Please apply or share by 2 Dec 🗓️

#PhDposition #academicsky

Find out more ⬇️

"Want to start using Nanopore technology to research protistan diversity? Check out our paper introducing a pipeline for creating OTUs from Nanopore metabarcodes — bridging the gap between short- and long-read metabarcoding." - Anna Karnkowska

doi.org/10.3897/mbmg...

Reclaiming microbiology: scientists as community members and advocacy leaders 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 celebrate and support the great @blackinmicro.bsky.social initiative and what joining could mean for you, please take a look through the commentary in Microbial Genomics @microbiologysociety.org hot off the press today! #MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky 💻🧬🧪🦠 www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Hi bioinformatics, genomics and CS friends! Please help me spread the word. I'm hiring a postdoc! Come work on cutting edge method development in algorithmic genomics with me and my group at @umdscience.bsky.social! 🖥️🧬

Staff Scientist About EMBL-EBI EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute is a data powerhouse, utilised on a global scale to advance scientific discovery through bioinformatics and solutions to some of the world’s mos...

I am hiring! - looking for a Staff Scientist to co-run my research group with me. Staff Scientist is a senior professional scientist role at EMBL. Please forward to people you might know who could be interested! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

The genomic basis of symbiotic integration at University of Bath on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - The genomic basis of symbiotic integration at University of Bath, listed on FindAPhD.com

There's a PhD position now available with me in Bath, on the evolution of symbiosis. www.findaphd.com/phds/project.... The supervisory team also includes @anja1.bsky.social @phil-donoghue.bsky.social and others. NB, this is open both to UK-based students *and* to international students :)

I'm guest editor for an article collection on the Ecology of Soils for BMC Ecology and Evolution. If you're interested to submit, check it here 👇 www.biomedcentral.com/collections/...

Linking antimicrobial resistance, climate warming, and carbon use efficiency in Arctic soils (HERNANDEZ-GARCIA_UEA_ARIES26) at University of East Anglia on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Linking antimicrobial resistance, climate warming, and carbon use efficiency in Arctic soils (HERNANDEZ-GARCIA_UEA_ARIES26) at University of East Anglia, listed on FindAPhD.com

PhD opportunity to work in my lab at UEA, together with @drbradbrad.bsky.social and Marc Dumont “Linking AMR, global warming and CUE in deglaciated soils”

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Dear community, Bakta needs your help!

To further improve the functional annotation of "hypothetical" CDS, me and @gbouras13.bsky.social, we are looking for the worst Bakta-annotated bacterial genomes ;-)

(1/2)

This is figure 1, which shows the summary results from a survey of 306 scientists on data reuse.

In a Consensus Statement in Nature Microbiology, a consortium of #microbiome scientists discusses current sequencing data sharing policies and proposes the use of a Data Reuse Information tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing. go.nature.com/4o1Gl1f 🧪

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data - Nature Microbiology In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

Our own @alexjprobst.bsky.social @geomicrosoares.bsky.social and Cristina Moraru have recently authored a @natmicrobiol.nature.com Consensus Statement where they discuss new mechanisms for sequencing data reuse! 🧬💻

Check out their manuscript here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Automated environmental metagenomics using Oxford nanopore sequencing - BMC Genomics Background Long-read sequencing has revolutionised metagenomics through improved metagenome assembly, taxonomic classification and functional characterisation. Automation can enhance the throughput, reproducibility, and accuracy of library preparation. However, the validation of automated library preparation protocols remains undetermined for metagenomic workflows, which are particularly sensitive to methodological perturbation. Here, we compare long-read metagenomic sequencing of environmental samples through parallel manual and automated protocols. Results Although automated library preparation led to minor reduction in read and contig lengths, taxonomic classification rate and alpha diversity was slightly higher than manual libraries, including the detection of more rare taxa. Despite this, no significant difference in microbial community structure was identified between manual and automated libraries. Conclusions Despite minor differences in sequencing and classification metrics, automated and manual library preparation resulted in comparable characterization of environmental community metagenomes. These findings demonstrate the suitability of automation for high-throughput long-read metagenomics, with broad applicability to automated long-read sequencing for improved efficiency and reproducibility.

Automated environmental metagenomics using Oxford nanopore sequencing bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #jcampubs

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data - Nature Microbiology In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

The article is available here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... after quite a revision journey!

Thanks to the 167 scientists that ended up supporting this effort as part of the Data Reuse Consortium!