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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Sep 6

If anyone happens to be around UNC Chapel Hill this week, I'll be speaking on Tuesday: www.med.unc.edu/cgibd/event/... @microbiomeunc.bsky.social #microbiome

"The Assembly, Evolution, and Clinical Implications of the Gut Microbiota in Early Life" With Daniel Sprockett, PhD, MSc | Center for Gastrointestinal Biology and Disease

www.med.unc.edu

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Ben Good @benjaminhgood.bsky.social · Aug 16

Excited to share a new preprint w/ the Sonnenberg lab, led by Matt Carter, @zzzhiru.bsky.social & @mattolm.bsky.social. We analyzed the microbiomes of two non-industrialized populations from opposite sides of the globe to try to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of our gut microbiota.

Prehistoric Global Migration of Vanishing Gut Microbes With Humans

The gut microbiome is crucial for health and greatly affected by lifestyle. Many microbes common in non-industrialized populations are disappearing or extinct in industrialized populations. Understand...

www.biorxiv.org

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Aug 16

Check out this incredible analysis!

Prehistoric Global Migration of Vanishing Gut Microbes With Humans
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Prehistoric Global Migration of Vanishing Gut Microbes With Humans

The gut microbiome is crucial for health and greatly affected by lifestyle. Many microbes common in non-industrialized populations are disappearing or extinct in industrialized populations. Understand...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Katherine Xue @ksxue.bsky.social · Jul 17

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more.
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist – Xue Lab

University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.ap.uci.edu

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jul 22

I am seeking a postdoc for my group at UCLA. We work at the intersection of population genetics x microbiome (garud.eeb.ucla.edu). If interested, please message me!

Garud Lab

garud.eeb.ucla.edu

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Aug 14

Looks like it'll be a good one!

Ákos T Kovács @evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social · Aug 14

Cell Symposia: Host-microbiome dynamics
May 10–12, 2026 | Bruges, Belgium

by @cp-immunity.bsky.social @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social and @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social

www.cell-symposia.com/microbiome-2...

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · May 20

Excited to share the Compendium Manager -- our new tool for scaling bioinformatics pipelines! Launch thousands of analyses, track progress, and maintain reproducibility. Developed by @richabdill.com. Check it out: arxiv.org/abs/2505.11385

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com · May 14

#NatureMicroPicks

Microbial integrons in focus 🦠🧬

Two studies showing microbial integrons encoding phage defense systems

#MicroSky

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Mobile integrons encode phage defense systems

Integrons are bacterial genetic elements that capture, stockpile, and modulate the expression of genes encoded in integron cassettes. Mobile integrons (MIs) are borne on plasmids, acting as a vehicle ...

www.science.org

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · May 14

One thing I think I want to ban entirely is using AI-generated citations. You can't really cite something if you haven't read it yourself.

And even if AI hallucinations get better, I think the risk is far too great.

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · May 14

One thing that comes to mind that could be very positive is assistance with coding and data analysis. But how do I ensure that lab members have a deep understand of how every line/function works?

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · May 14

A very open-ended question:

Has anyone developed a lab policy for for AI use in their biomedical research that they'd be willing to share?

Have people even thought about defining what should be allowed/encouraged, and what should be outright banned?

Please share with anyone who might have ideas.

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Nichole Ginnan 🦠 @botanichole.bsky.social · May 13

🔬 New Perspective in mBio (@asm.org)!

We call for a shift from disease surveillance to microbial stewardship, and highlight testable, cross-system hypotheses to unravel central rules of microbial life–spanning multiple scales, taxa, and environments. 🦠🌎
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Ecologically expanding the One Health framework to unify the microbiome sciences | mBio

Microbiome research rapidly expanded in the last two decades, with nearly 200,000 peer-reviewed articles that use the word “microbiome” and significant microbial lineage discoveries reshaping the evol...

journals.asm.org

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · May 10

From 2 of my favorite scientists:
“We are deeply concerned about the current funding climate. When we think about new professors or postdocs starting their own labs, we worry that funding challenges could easily result in losing a generation of talented scientists.”
news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

‘We can change diet to generate a healthier microbiome and a healthy individual’

Microbiologists Justin and Erica Sonnenburg are working to understand the complex microbial community that resides within the human gut and its potential for helping people live healthier, longer live...

news.stanford.edu

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Reposted by Dan Sprockett

Tami Lieberman @contaminatedsci.bsky.social · May 1

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]

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Apr 29

This is exciting! Top reporting on Science, Biotech, Health Policy, and Public Health news.

Wake Forest University School of Medicine affiliates can access @statnews.com for the next 2 weeks!

Visit www.statnews.com/register/ & enter a valid @wakehealth.edu email address

@wakeforest.bsky.social

Register

Register for your free STAT account.

www.statnews.com

Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Apr 1

I'll take your re-tweets over fancy journal citations any day

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Apr 1

...Way ahead of you, Steve-o (from way back in 2014!)

Moral enhancements and your microbiome:
medium.com/gut-check/gu...

Your stomach bacteria is changing the way you think.

The saying “thinking with your gut” is more accurate than you probably realize.

medium.com

Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Mar 31

Sorry, I'm just reading this now. But are you saying that these investigators reached the wrong conclusion, or that this paper shows that they would have reached the wrong conclusion if they hadn't binned correctly? If the former, whats the evidence that it was wrong?

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Mar 31

Related: We found some MAG databases are contaminated by sequencing adapters, but the collective response was basically "meh..."
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Removal of sequencing adapter contamination improves microbial genome databases - BMC Genomics

Advances in assembling microbial genomes have led to growth of reference genome databases, which have been transformative for applied and basic microbiome research. Here we show that published microbi...

link.springer.com

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Mar 31

This is such a great question! Although I think the expectation for even uncovering those mislead conclusions should be scaled to how few people actually look at this.

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Mar 31

WOW -- this is awesome:

bioRxiv Microbiology @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · Mar 31

Stealth plasmids: rapid evolution of deleted plasmids can displace antibiotic resistance plasmids under selection for horizontal transmission. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.30.646151v1

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Mar 19

"...creativity in science, as in the arts, cannot be organized."

a screenshot of an essay on creativity in science by Nobel Laureate Max Perutz, from the Preface to "I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier".

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Mar 14

Are Microbiomes Contagious?

Check out this awesome video on the social #microbiome.

asm.org/Videos/Are-M...

@asm.org

Are Microbiomes Contagious? Microbial Minutes

ASM is a nonprofit professional society that publishes scientific journals and advances microbiology through advocacy, global health and diversity in STEM programs.

asm.org

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Feb 27

Very cool -- I can't wait to dig into this paper!

What was it about the results that suggests phages and not some other host-specific factor?

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Dan Sprockett @danielsprockett.bsky.social · Feb 27

This is such a cool finding...

Kelsey Huus @kelseyhuus.bsky.social · Feb 27

Thrilled to share my postdoctoral work with @microbiome.bsky.social on BioRxiv. Ever wonder why you got a fever after your booster shot, but your friend didn’t? We find that both diet and the gut microbiome are associated with risk of fever after vaccination (1/4).
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Flagellin in the human gut microbiome is a diet-adjustable adjuvant for vaccination

The intestinal microbiota is thought to modulate immune responsiveness to vaccines. Human studies on this topic, however, have yielded inconsistent results[1][1],[2][2]. We hypothesized that the micro...

www.biorxiv.org

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