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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

>2000 genomes have been analysed on the epsSMASH web service! I hope people are finding it useful. Click the link below to try it out yourself ☀️ epssmash.secondarymetabolites.org 🦠🖥🧬🧫

epsSMASH.org dashboard showing amount of jobs processed (2012)

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

I'm wondering why the article never mentions PNAG 🤔 Like pEtN-cellulose, it's an exopolysaccharide important for biofilm formation in E. coli, and the PNAG operon is found in the MG1655 strain. 🧵

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

epssmash.secondarymetabolites.org/upload/bacte...

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Novel systems: We investigated the largest uncharacterised GCF from activated sludge BGCs, revealing it to be a novel exoPS system conserved in almost every genera in the order Sphingomonadales. Analysis of the genes in the BGC suggests that it is involved in the PEP-CTERM/exosortase system! 6/8

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Distant homologs: epsSMASH detected BGCs containing the core machinery for Pel biosynthesis in several phyla where Pel operons had not been detected before. Using structural homology searches we confirmed that these BGCs were indeed distant homologs of the canonical Pel operon! 5/8

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

To explore this vast expanse of exoPS "dark matter", we built gene cluster families (GCFs) of all detected exoPS BGCs. Known and uncharacterised BGCs grouped into distinct, phylogenetically conserved GCFs. These GCFs represented distant homologs of known systems as well as completely novel ones. 4/8

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

We ran epsSMASH on four HQ genome catalogues, representing microbiomed from the human gut, soil, ocean and activated sludge, detecting a median of 1-2 BGCs/genome. Strikingly, most (62-96%) of the BGCs in all four biomes were found by our "loose" rules and had never been characterised before. 3/8

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

epsSMASH uses custom pHMMs and manually curated rules to detect BGCs across all four types of exoPS biosynthesis (Synthase, Wzx/Wzy, ABC transporter and Sucrase-dependent). Rulesets with different strictness allows for the detection of known exoPS BGCs, distant homologs and novel systems. 2/8

epsSMASH workflow and workflow for creating epsSMASH rules.

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Merry X-SMASH! My first first author paper is out on bioRxiv! 🖥 We present epsSMASH, a comprehensive and high-throughput tool for predicting exopolysaccharide (exoPS) biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in bacterial genomes 🦠🧬🧫 1/8

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

Another fruitful collaboration with the Otzen group 🦠🧫🧬 We looked for curli and Fap operons across the bacterial tree of life (GTDB v226), and found that while Fap operon synteny and FapC repeat numbers are remarkably conserved, the opposite is true for curli operons and csgA!

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

DMS 2025 is a wrap! 🧫 I had a lot of great discussions with people about biofilms and EPS 🦠 Thomas Bjarnsholt's keynote about rediscovering the drivers of chronic infections was a highlight 🧬 A lot of interest in epsSMASH, so now I am even more motivated to get our preprint out ASAP! 🖥

Me at a poster entitled "epsSMASH predicts exopolysaccharide pathways in environmental and human communities"

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

🧬FapC amyloid protein structure unveiled🦠 I am proud to have performed the bioinfo part of this very impressive paper which not only shows the structure of an important functional amyloid protein, but also investigates its fibrillation mechanics and catalytic activity! 🖥 doi.org/10.1002/adma...

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Anders Ogechi Hostrup Daugberg @andersohd.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Returning home from #Biofilms11 today. It's been a great week full of lovely people and chats about all things biofilm! A big thank you to the organisers for offering me my very first conference talk, allowing me to spread the word about epsSMASH 😊🧬🦠 #MicroSky

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