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fairfaxlab

@bpfairfax.bsky.social
534 followers 856 following 37 posts

Based in the Department of Oncology at the MRC WIMM, University of Oxford | We study the genetics of immunity with a focus on the determinants of response to cancer immunotherapy. Genetics, immunology, oncology, science.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
T.Rexes are closer in time to smartphones than to Stegosaurus
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Andromeda is so far away that every photon we see of it left Andromeda before humans existed
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The Appalachian mountains are older than the North Star
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Sharks have been around so long than the Sun was whole percentage points less bright when they evolved
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Sharks have been on Earth for longer than Saturn has had rings
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
“Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6km each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, annual carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes. This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.” @euronews.com
euronews.com
Cycling like the Dutch would slash the world’s carbon footprint
If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or Australia’s entire carbon footprint.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 13/04/2026
Scientists uncover pre-treatment signatures in monocytes, myeloid cells, and T cells that predict corticosteroid resistance in patients with acute GVHD, hinting steroid resistance is an intrinsic property of immune cells. #ScienceTranslationalMedicine scim.ag/4t6Y4ar
scim.ag
Corticosteroid resistance is predetermined by early immune response dynamics at acute graft-versus-host disease onset
Steroid-resistant acute graft-versus-host disease is set at disease onset and leads to distinct cell-to-cell cross-talk and immune trajectories.
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Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre @petermaccc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Huge congrats to Professor @loisher.bsky.social who was awarded the @nhmrc.bsky.social Elizabeth Blackburn Award - recognising the nation’s top-ranked Investigator Grant application - her work securing $2.9M to advance immunotherapy in breast cancer. More: www.petermac.org/about-us/new...
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Eileen Parkes @eileenparkes.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Parkes lab pre-print alert! ‘TMEM33 deletion potentiates anti-tumor CD8⁺ T cell immunity.’ Led by mtjackson101.bsky.social. Full bluetutorial follows! 1/10 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Hunter Shain @shainlab.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
Proud to share our new paper in Science Advances. We show that indoor tanning beds cause widespread mutational damage across the skin to increase melanoma risk, especially in body sites that rarely see sunlight. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #Melanoma #SkinCancer
science.org
Molecular effects of indoor tanning
The skin cells of tanning bed users have distinct mutational features as compared to people who only experience natural sunlight.
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fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
There was something different about patients receiving treatment for cancer in the pandemic. Less treatment was given, so it may have been restricted the fittest/ those who would most benefit. This may explain the Covid vaccine enhancement of ICB recently reported. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
medrxiv.org
Deconvolving SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine impact on immunotherapy-related survival in a pandemic
Real-world data suggest that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines, administered within 100 days of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment (“peri-ICI vaccination”), may improve ICI effectiveness, potentially ...
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Simon Richardson @simonrichardson.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Brian Huntly and I are looking to recruit a postdoc to investigate a promising novel therapeutic target in B-ALL @scicambridge.bsky.social. This new CRUK-funded project will involve collaboration with Prof Sir Steve Jackson's group @cruk-ci.bsky.social and the CRUK Functional Genomics centre.
cam.ac.uk
Research Associate (Huntly Lab - Fixed Term)
We are seeking a postdoctoral Research Associate to work on an exciting new multi-disciplinary project studying B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL). The project is a collaboration between Dr
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
The murder rate in London is now the lowest in decades, perhaps centuries. (The Times)
Murder in London
Rolling 12-month murder total
View: In numbers / rate / teens / London (since 1990 / 2003)
200
150
Oct '25
93
100
50
0
Jan '05
Jan '10
Jan '15
Jan '20
Jan '25
Includes manslaughter, infanticide, corporate manslaughter. Met Police data; excludes jurisdiction of City of London Police (for the square-mile financial district) & British Transport Police. Data to Oct 2025. published Nov 2025. updated month/v.
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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
“Critically assessing the literature, we found it beset by conceptual & methodological flaws & limitations, undermining claims that the gut microbiome is causally involved in etiology/pathophysiology of autism” Crucial PSA from @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @statsepi.bsky.social @deevybee.bsky.social🧪
cell.com
Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism
Claims that the gut microbiome causally contributes to autism regularly appear in the scientific literature and popular press. Mitchell et al. critically examine influential studies underpinning these...
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MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · 13/11/2025
#WIMMReads: New @nature.com study, led by the Simmons & Antanaviciute Groups, used advanced single-cell and spatial analysis techniques to map the cells that drive #Crohn's fistulas - paving the way for targeted treatments 🧪 Learn more 👇 @rdm.ox.ac.uk @medsci.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk
imm.ox.ac.uk
Oxford scientists map the cells that drive Crohn’s disease fistulas
Researchers at the MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit have identified how rare populations of abnormal cells drive the formation and persistence of fistulas - painful, tunnel-like tracts that dev...
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fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
This is a very interesting study that implicates CMV seropositivity with enhanced spike-specific T cell immunity post covid vaccination. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
medrxiv.org
Impact of CMV Infection and Cancer Treatment on Vaccine Efficacy in Oncology Patients
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection leaves lasting effects on the immune system, particularly shaping T-cell populations. In patients with advanced cancer, persistent CMV exposure may influence vaccine re...
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MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · 06/11/2025
#WIMMReads: Oxford scientists, led by James Davies at the MRC WIMM, have captured the genome’s structure in unprecedented detail. 🧪 Read the full story below 👇 @ox.ac.uk @davieslab.bsky.social @jojdavies.bsky.social @medsci.ox.ac.uk
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fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Great to see our review of the immunomodulatory role of cytomegalovirus and the relationship with cancer and immune checkpoint blockade treatment published as an open access article in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org
The immunomodulatory role of human cytomegalovirus in cancer in the era of checkpoint immunotherapy | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
This review discusses the role of chronic human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection in patients receiving immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) treatment against different malignancies, with an especial focus on malignant melanoma. We briefly outline the impact ...
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fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...
science.org
Comprehensive analysis of microbial content in whole-genome sequencing samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas project
An analysis of TCGA whole-genome sequencing samples yields a comprehensive resource for investigating the role of microbes in cancer.
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Hatem Abouguendia @hatem-abouguendia.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
CMV co-evolved with human. It is a master regulator of immunity and knows about our biology more than we do.
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Sarah Briggs @sarahbriggs.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Super paper from some super talented colleagues… CMV positivity related to better outcomes and lower toxicity with PD1 blockade, and potential protection from MM development. Lots of interesting avenues to follow and very relevant to treatment stratification 👏
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Pauline Funchain @funchainmd.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Related to lively discussion @brownmedicine.bsky.social this morning about the interplay of environment, genetics and immunotherapy - here CMV seropositivity associated with much lower G3 toxicity of colon, lung, muscle, higher in skin. Very intriguing irAE data from @bpfairfax.bsky.social 🤓
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MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · 30/10/2025
#WIMMReads Fairfax Group ( @bpfairfax.bsky.social ) map how genetic variation shapes monocyte gene expression and splicing across immune contexts 🧪 Read more 👇 doi.org/10.1038/s414... #Genomics #Immunology #Transcriptomics
doi.org
Genetic determinants of monocyte splicing are enriched for disease susceptibility loci - Nature Communications
Our understanding of variation in monocyte context-specific splicing and transcript usage is limited. Here, the authors find genetic variants that affect gene splicing in monocytes in specific co...
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NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford @oxfordbrc.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Why are more younger adults having strokes? Come along to our next free public talk on Tues 4 Nov 6pm to hear researcher Linxin Li discuss what is driving the recent increase and how we tackle it oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk/brc-event/fr... @ouhospitals.bsky.social @medsci.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social
oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk
FREE Public Talk – Why are more younger people having strokes? | NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
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Simon Buczacki @sibucz.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
New CRUK Post-doc position in our group. #mutationalorder #multiomics #cancer. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com
Job Details
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fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Interesting paper from Becki Lee and colleagues: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Splenic granulopoiesis and S100A9 drive resistance to checkpoint inhibitors conferred by liver metastases
Here, we investigate why liver metastases reduce the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors (CPI). The poor prognosis of patients with liver metastases is associated with a systemic increase in neut...
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University of Oxford Department of Oncology @oncology.ox.ac.uk · 03/10/2025
New findings in @natcomms.nature.com demonstrate the impact of allelic variation on monocyte context-specific splicing. @bpfairfax.bsky.social & colleagues show that many risk polymorphisms lead to differential gene splicing. ➡️Reveals putative mechanisms of diverse disease risk alleles inc. cancer
nature.com
Genetic determinants of monocyte splicing are enriched for disease susceptibility loci - Nature Communications
Our understanding of variation in monocyte context-specific splicing and transcript usage is limited. Here, the authors find genetic variants that affect gene splicing in monocytes in specific contexts, including several diseases, and in response to stimulants.
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Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity. But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing? PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
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Yang Luo @y-luo.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
📣First paper from the lab is out in @science.org‬! 📣https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu3461 It’s well known that HLA shapes the TCR repertoire — but how does this change under immune checkpoint blockade (ICB)?
science.org
Defining the genetic determinants of CD8+ T cell receptor repertoire in the context of immune checkpoint blockade
Immune checkpoint blockade influences the genetically determined relationship between TCR repertoire and HLA alleles in cancer.
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Evgeny Kvon @evgenykvon.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/
nature.com
Range extender mediates long-distance enhancer activity - Nature
The REX element is associated with long-range enhancer–promoter interactions.
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Nick Kapur @nickkapur.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
"The diminution and marginalization of science are thus central parts of the erosion of democracy itself." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Will we habituate to the decline of democracy?
The recent attack on science in the US is not only undermining knowledge; it is also undermining democracy. In a healthy democracy, public policy is guided by evidence, and truth is the shared foundat...
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max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
amazing q&a with paul krugman
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Petter Brodin @petterbrodin.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
No evidence for neutralizing IL1RN autoantibodies in our cohorts of MIS-C, SARS-CoV2 pneumonia or vaccine-induced myocarditis. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Great work by Anish Behere in Nils Landegren lab, Uppsala university
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Evaluating IL1RA‐Autoantibodies Across SARS‐CoV‐2‐Related Diseases
Click on the article title to read more.
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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 16/06/2025
Black people who are diagnosed with melanoma are about five times as likely as White people to die within five years. Find out how and where to look for the disease.
washingtonpost.com
Too often, Black patients get late diagnoses of deadly skin cancer
For Black people, surviving skin cancer begins with knowing what to look for — and where to look.
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Mike Inouye @mikeinouye.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 h\t @gmeric.bsky.social
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Simon Richardson @simonrichardson.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Delighted that our work describing a potential novel treatment approach for B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia is published today in @natcomms.nature.com‬. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
CREBBP inactivation sensitizes B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia to ferroptotic cell death upon BCL2 inhibition - Nature Communications
CREBBP mutations in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) are linked to poor prognosis and chemoresistance. Here, the authors show that genetic or pharmacological inactivation of CREBBP sensitiz...
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Pradeep Natarajan @pnatarajanmd.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Very excited to share our preprint led by M. Levin @skoyama.bsky.social J. Woerner & with S. Damrauer assessing genome-wide pleiotropy of >1,000 clinical traits across ~1.7M individuals with nearly 30K locus-trait associations! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social
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Vijay G. Sankaran @bloodgenes.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Delighted to have our work on Polygenic Modifiers of #TelomereBiologyDisorders, led by Michael Poeschla, @sashagusevposts.bsky.social, @mitchiela.bsky.social, @sharonsavage.bsky.social, @tummalalab.bsky.social, + co, published in @jclinical-invest.bsky.social today: www.jci.org/articles/vie...
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Mike Inouye @mikeinouye.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
📣📣 Thrilled to see this cool work finally out in the wild! "Genome-wide analyses of variance in blood cell phenotypes provide new insights into complex trait biology & prediction" www.nature.com/articles/s41... Loads of cool findings including MR for alcohol usage -> increased variance in BC traits
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Ben Goldacre @bengoldacre.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
The amount of single use plastic passing through my house is insane. It's mostly food. I don't know how we all got used to this, and fighting it alone seems pointless. We fritter the years away, in politics world, on just getting by. I'd love to see big energetic policy moves to fix big things well.
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Willem van Schaik @wvschaik.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
'Of course Britain could restrict international student numbers. We could halve the number, and make ourselves £10bn poorer every year, concentrated in Labour held seats.' timleunig.substack.com/p/internatio...
timleunig.substack.com
International university students
Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot again.
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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n
Four images to illustrate some prominent single-gene myths. Top left shows a photograph of a person deftly rolling their tongue into a U-shape. Top right shows a photograph of a person’s ear, highlighting the shape and features of the earlobe and cartilage. Bottom left shows a close-up photograph of a person’s eye, with a vivid blue colouration. Bottom right shows a photograph of a person poised to write with their left hand on the blank white page of a spiral-bound notebook.
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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
I could go on with more examples but instead here’s a message to take home. If you’re curious how your genome helps make you unique, don’t expect neat & tidy answers. Indeed, the richness of this tapestry is one of the reasons why human genetics is such a dynamic & exciting field of science. 11/n 🧬🧪
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Ulrike Harjes @ulrikeharjes.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
To celebrate our 30th anniversary, Nature Medicine has commissioned 'Turning points' articles, in which researchers discuss the impact of their scientific discovery that was published around 30 yrs ago. Read this one: PD-L1 and the dawn of modern cancer immunotherapy www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
PD-L1 and the dawn of modern cancer immunotherapy - Nature Medicine
Lieping Chen describes how his discoveries with PD-L1 yielded life-saving treatments for several cancers.
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Dr. Glaucomflecken @glaucomflecken.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Just passing along some friendly advice on how to approach potential changes to the Australian health care system @drruthmitchell.bsky.social
PowerPoint slide that says: “does America do it, if yes, then no”
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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
40 Years ago Carl Sagan knew about Climate change and he was so aware of it's impact on Nature more than us we do right now.
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Paul Pharoah @paulpharoah.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
I've commented on this before. There's been a lot of interest in the rising incidence of colo-rectal cancer in young adults in many countries. This figure is a plot of incidence and mortality rates in England over time relative to a baseline rate in 1974. I last showed it with data to 2021. 1/n
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Paul Pharoah @paulpharoah.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
... cause that became more prevalent and is now waning. Infection seems to be a good candidate for something that changes over time in this way. Colibactin producing E Coli one possibility. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40267983/ 3/3
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Geographic and age variations in mutational processes in colorectal cancer - PubMed
Colorectal cancer incidence rates vary geographically and have changed over time<sup>1</sup>. Notably, in the past two decades, the incidence of early-onset colorectal cancer, affecting individuals un...
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
To restore the gut microbiome after antibiotics, the right diet (rich in carbohydrates, low in fat) was a better approach than fecal microbial transplants (in the experimental model) www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Diet outperforms microbial transplant to drive microbiome recovery in mice - Nature
Experiments in mouse models show that proper recovery of the intestinal microbiota following depletion, with or without faecal microbiota transplant therapy, is dependent on syntrophic interactions th...
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