Sharok presenting a slide on culture enrichment of the gut microbiome.

It was such a pleasure to host a seminar from Sharok Shekarriz @sharok.bsky.social recently during his visit to @mermanchester.bsky.social ! Sharok told us all about the importance of using the right bioinformatic methodology for the right question (& the importance of culture too! 🧫)

It was such a wonderful trip, talking science with many brilliant people, including the wonderful Whelan lab. Thanks so much for the invite, @whelanfj.bsky.social

Hooman, Mike, Sharok and I caffeinating ahead of our first brainstorm.

I’m in my science happy place this week!

Despite the jet lag, @surettem.bsky.social , @sharok.bsky.social , Hooman Derakhshani, & I kicked off their research visit with our first of 9 (😱) directed brainstorm sessions. A huge thank you to @manchester.ac.uk & @ukri.org for making this possible!

No evidence of immune exhaustion after repeated SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in vulnerable and healthy populations Nature Communications - Repeated vaccination is needed to maintain high levels of SARS-CoV-2 immunity in vulnerable populations, but there is concern that it could lead to immune exhaustion. Here,...

Publication alert: "No evidence of immune exhaustion after repeated SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in vulnerable and healthy populations" ‪@natcomms.nature.com‬ The backstory is particularly interesting-it's a tale of the conflicting needs of scientists & decision makers in times of disinformation ....1/n

Its such a privilege to be part of this work. It’s been years in the making but only because of how thorough and conscientious @sharok.bsky.social , @surettem.bsky.social and other co-authors have been to make sure we got this right.

Huge congrats, Sharok, on this amazing study 🎉

We found a unique set of donor genes that consistently engrafted in FMT responders. These genes are depleted in IBD and may hold clues to therapeutic response. Gene-level resolution matters

A shoutout to my wonderful collaborators on this and to the IMAGINE network for funding @whelanfj.bsky.social

Detecting microbial engraftment after FMT using placebo sequencing and culture enriched metagenomics to sort signals from noise - Nature Communications Here, the authors profile bacterial engraftment in UC patients receiving FMT from a single donor and placebo samples to estimate noise, showing a significant level of false-positive engraftment, which...

A lot of what looks like microbial engraftment after FMT might actually be noise. Using placebo sequencing and culture-enriched metagenomics, we sort signal from noise. Our latest from the Surette lab: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @surettem.bsky.social @mcmasteruniversity.bsky.social