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Shaul Pollak

@envsysmicro.at
667 followers 121 following 103 posts

Assistant Professor Environmental Systems Microbiology. Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, Ecology w: www.envsysmicro.at @dome-vienna.bsky.social @cemess.bsky.social @univie.ac.at.

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Reposted by Shaul Pollak
Honour McCann @honour.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Great to see this published! A little paper backstory: was reading about interesting outbreaks during COVID-related shutdowns and happened across some cool work by Emmanuel Wicker et al., who first documented this outbreak and made a collection with fantastic metadata 1/9
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Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)
AI-generated illustration of the soma-to-germline transmission of retrotransposons described in our work
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 20/09/2026
youtu.be/a7or6-7QRog
youtu.be
Hot Snakes - Jericho Sirens [FULL ALBUM STREAM]
YouTube video by Sub Pop
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Reposted by Shaul Pollak
Omri Finkel עמרי عُمري @finkel-lab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Michal Breker and I started our labs around the same time. Michal studies Chlamydomonas, and I plant microbiota. We joined forces to see how our bugs interact. This led us down a long and winding road, with 3 amazing PhDs and help from many friends. This is the first product of this collaboration.
biorxiv.org
Conserved inhibitory mechanisms of root-associated bacteria towards Arabidopsis thaliana and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Soil bacteria colonize plants without causing visible disease, yet many suppress host growth. The prevalence and evolutionary reach of this cryptic inhibition are unknown, because phenotyping hundreds...
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 05/09/2026
youtu.be/xfS63LNOoIY
youtu.be
Keelhaul - Subject to Change Without Notice (Full Album 2004)
YouTube video by Nikos Asimakopoulos
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Rogier Braakman @rogierbraakman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Job alert! Please RT! Looking for bioinformatics technician to help in projects using metagenomes to study microbial degradation of organic carbon in the ocean and in the human gut. Opportunity to gain research experience before graduate school. careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...
careers.peopleclick.com
Research Support Associate 1, Bioinformatics
MIT - Research Support Associate 1, Bioinformatics - Cambridge MA 02139
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Cluster of Excellence 'MicroPlanet' @microbesplanet.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
How do marine bacteria break down tough biopolymers? Teamwork! CoE Key Researcher Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at @cemess.bsky.social @univie.ac.at contributed to a study in @nature.com on microbial division of labor to degrade algal polysaccharides🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @fwf-at.bsky.social
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 26/08/2026
#andi_sichert_uber_alles www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Synergistic degradation of fucoidans in the ocean - Nature
Efficient degradation of fucoidans depends on complementary bacterial guilds that cooperatively break backbone and side-chain sugars, revealing a conserved, globally relevant mechanism that shapes mar...
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Alvaro Sanchez @asanchezlab.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
New preprint from the lab: The Latent Simplicity of Microbial Ecological Interactions www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We're excited about this one. We find that high-order microbial interactions often obey simple linear laws, making microbial communities far more predictable than one might expect.
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 18/08/2026
helloblackhole.bandcamp.com/track/five-h...
helloblackhole.bandcamp.com
Five Hundred Rocks to Throw, by Hello Black Hole
from the album In No Good Hand
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 09/08/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q4O...
youtube.com
Godflesh - Avalanche Master Song (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Earache Catalog
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 02/08/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vbu...
youtube.com
GOAT (JP) @ Jazzhouse, Copenhagen (14th of July, 2017)
YouTube video by Jazz Peter
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Reposted by Shaul Pollak
BiologyTechnion @biologytechnion.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Non-canonical gene amplifications facilitate adaptive evolution in bacteria www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Non-canonical gene amplifications facilitate adaptive evolution in bacteria - Nature Microbiology
Transposon-associated amplifications are dominated by a previously underappreciated architecture, where the transposon is found only between, not flanking, the amplicons. These amplifications facilita...
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Isabella Wagner 🧠🦠 @isabellacwagner.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
(1/2) Hiring! 🦠🧠 Postdoc position in my group @univie.ac.at on microbiome-brain interactions as part of the ERC-funded project “MemoryLane: Neural plasticity through the lens of gut-brain interactions”. 📍 Vienna, Austria 📅 Application deadline: 2 Aug 2026 ℹ️ shorturl.at/2E4sf
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SeppeKuehnLab @seppekuehnlab.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
New paper out today in Nature Microbiology: "Epistatic interactions inform rational design of synthetic microbial communities for bioremediation." 🧵https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-026-02386-4 @kiseokmicro.bsky.social @nitmb.bsky.social
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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
How do human cells defend against viruses? @sgfern.bsky.social discovers that human immune proteins named ISGs target ancient features of replication shared between animal and bacterial viruses – opening analysis of human immunity to the power of bacterial genetics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Martin Polz @polzlab.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
There is a postdoctoral position available in our group: jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi... Please repost.
jobs.univie.ac.at
University Assistant postdoctoral
University Assistant postdoctoral
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Martin Polz @polzlab.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Very excited to share our new paper out in Nature. Congrats to Xiaoqian (Annie) Yu and all the coauthors. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Genome-wide sweeps create ecological units in the human gut microbiome - Nature
Genome-wide selective sweeps commonly occur in the human gut microbiome and can spread across the world within decades to produce epidemic-like population structures.
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Tera Levin @teralevin.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Bacterial immune proteins have repeatedly evolved to become parts of eukaryotic immunity. But how? Our new preprint uncovers a recent horizontal transfer event & shows how eukaryotes co-opted a toxic bacterial immune protein 🦠🧪🧵 1/
Microscopy image showing yeast cells expressing a fluorescently tagged version of the amoeba TirC protein. TirC forms filaments that span the yeast cells.
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 26/04/2026
youtu.be/fLOb4KVS-S8
youtu.be
Black Sabbath - Symptom Of the Universe HD
YouTube video by TothuRecords
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Hall Lab @halllab.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
New paper out in Nature Comms 🎉 Congrats to first author @sekid.bsky.social & thanks team & collaborators We show that B. bifidum & E. coli can cooperate in the breastfed infant gut through nutrient cross-feeding, helping shape early-life microbiome development 🦠👶 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human milk oligosaccharide mediates mutualism between Escherichia coli and Bifidobacterium bifidum - Nature Communications
Escherichia coli is widespread in healthy breastfed infants, yet its ecological role is unclear. Here, the authors provide insights into the mechanisms supporting its persistence and co-existence with...
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 14/04/2026
youtu.be/02MAcqIvX7w
youtu.be
Here Come the Rome Plows
YouTube video by Drive Like Jehu - Topic
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Omri Finkel עמרי عُمري @finkel-lab.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Check out our new manuscript, in collab with Efrat Sheffer, Guy Dovrat and Amir Erez, where we looked at shotgun metagenomes of wild legume nodules, providing an unbiased view of the taxonomic genomic content of legume nodules, and how these relate to plant performance.
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 23/03/2026
media.tenor.com
a cartoon character holding candles and a skull with the words hail science
ALT: a cartoon character holding candles and a skull with the words hail science
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PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
1/11 🔥 New preprint alert 🔥 We wanted to know what plants in the wild really care about. So we asked them 🎤. Here is what we learned: “Biotic-response networks are an important organizer of the transcriptome in wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Alvaro Sanchez @asanchezlab.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
New preprint on the limits of detecting higher-order interactions in microbial communities. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We find that the dominance of additive and pairwise interactions on community function may not reflect biological simplicity, but fundamental limits of statistical detection.
biorxiv.org
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Karim Majzoub @karimaj.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it. A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !
sciencedirect.com
Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse
Hepatitis D-like satellite viruses, known as deltaviruses, have been recently discovered in a wide range of animals. These viruses are thought to expr…
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 05/03/2026
Very good
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Alex Loy @loyteam.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Our new preprint introduces #kineochelins, a new group of #siderophores produced by the Antarctic soil actinomycete 🦠🔬🧫 #Actinokineospora sp. UV203 Kudos to the amazing Stanislava Králová & a fantastic team of collaborators 🤩 #microbiomesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Vardilab @vardilab.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
🌊Paper announcement! 📣 Viral infections rewire the metabolic makeup of their host and thereby create distinct chemical signatures. Can we use metabolic biomarkers to diagnose infections of algal blooms in the ocean? Well, take a look at our new article led by Conny Kuhlisch in @pnas.org >>
doi.org
Mapping of the viral shunt across widespread coccolithophore blooms using metabolic biomarkers | PNAS
The viral shunt is a fundamental ecosystem process which diverts the flux of organic carbon fixed through photosynthesis during algal bloom events ...
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 01/02/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ57...
youtube.com
THORR'S HAMMER - Dommedagsnatt EP [1996] full album HQ
YouTube video by MrNikkifora
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Reposted by Shaul Pollak
Clare Abreu @clabreu.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
The Abreu lab at NYU is hiring another postdoc! We study microbial ecology and evolution, using yeast/bacteria microcosms, DNA barcoding for evolutionary lineage tracking, and simple mathematical modeling. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/179949
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 17/01/2026
youtu.be/Cyo61Q69xtI
youtu.be
AFX - Analogue Bubblebath 1 (1991)
YouTube video by Avarita
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Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪 www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek
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Isabella Wagner 🧠🦠 @isabellacwagner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Apply now: 1 Postdoc + 1 PhD position, Anderson-Wagner group @univie.ac.at Focus: gut microbial effects on hippocampus & memory 🧠🦠 #PostdocJobs #Microbiome #AcademicJobs #PhDposition Postdoc Ad: careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... > Psychology PhD Ad: careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/p... > CoBeNe
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 02/01/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlQs...
youtube.com
The Hunt (2005 Remaster)
YouTube video by New Model Army - Topic
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Heather Hendrickson @drhhnz.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
It’s officially happening folks! The Microbial Population Biology Gordon Research Conference is back in Andover, New Hampshire starting June 27th of 2027! See you there!! @wcratcliff.bsky.social @ksbakes.bsky.social @surtlab.bsky.social #microsky #mevosky
Screenshot from GRC portal confirming microbial population biology meeting June 27, 2027 in Andover, New Hampshire.
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 08/12/2025
www.youtube.com/watch?v=624d...
youtube.com
UNSANE - "Sick" (Official Music Video)
YouTube video by RelapseRecords
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Out after peer-review: www.science.org/doi/full/10.... Our bottom line stayed: never use leave-one-out cross-validation as it has inherent train-test leakage. Consider our Rebalanced version instead! We now also account for regression and nested cross-validation, with more extensive benchmarking.
science.org
Distributional bias compromises leave-one-out cross-validation
Leave-one-out cross-validation, a common machine learning evaluation method, has a pernicious flaw; a practical fix is presented.
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Michael Wagner @michiwagner4.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
📢 New preprint on bioRxiv! We introduce V4-EXT, a revised 16S rRNA V4 primer set that dramatically improves detection of Patescibacteria and other undersampled lineages ✅ 938 samples ✅ More novel ASVs Primer choice matters 👀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @ppjevac.bsky.social #HuifengHu
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bioRxiv Microbiology @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Arbitrium systems control lysis/lysogeny through the regulation of small antirepressor proteins www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Daan Speth @daanspeth.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Our paper describing the GlobDB is now published in @bioinfoadv.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/bioa... The GlobDB is the largest species dereplicated genome database currently available, containing 306,260 species representatives. More information on globdb.org 1/5 🖥️🧬🦠
doi.org
GlobDB: a comprehensive species-dereplicated microbial genome resource
AbstractMotivation. Over the past years, substantial numbers of microbial species’ genomes have been deposited outside of conventional INSDC databases.Resu
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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
🚨Preprint alert - this is a big one! We transfer the revolutionary power of TnSeq to bacteriophages. Our HIDEN-SEQ links the "dark matter" genes of your favorite phage to any selectable phenotype, guiding the path from fun observations to molecular mechanisms. A thread 1/8
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Stefany Moreno-Gámez @smorenogamez.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Thrilled to share our new work uncovering how membrane transporters determine resource-size preferences in gut bacteria, and showing that deleting a single protein domain can shift a transporter’s preference from long to short fructans. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Niche partitioning by resource size in the gut microbiome
Niche partitioning promotes diversity of the human gut microbiota. However, the molecular basis of resource specialization and niche separation in the gut remains poorly understood. Here we show that ...
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Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Please apply for this, and/or encourage your mentees and peers to do so!
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Louis-Marie Bobay @lbobay.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Our latest paper is out with @adiop.bsky.social and @gmdouglas.bsky.social. We analyzed the extent of homologous recombination between bacterial species (introgression) and how it affects species borders (it can vary a lot depending on the approach used to classify species!). rdcu.be/eQAMf
rdcu.be
Introgression impacts the evolution of bacteria, but species borders are rarely fuzzy
Nature Communications - It is commonly thought that bacterial species borders tend to be fuzzy, due to frequent exchange of DNA. Here, Diop et al. quantify the patterns of gene flow between core...
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Ben Good @benjaminhgood.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Excited to share some new work led by grad student Sophie Walton (w/ @petrovadmitri.bsky.social). We used in vitro gut communities to study how natural selection acts on strains of the same species as they compete within larger communities. Check out Sophie's thread below for details!
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Shaul Pollak @envsysmicro.at · 25/10/2025
My brother wrote this. Unimaginable violence that has been happening since 67, supported by every single government since. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
haaretz.com
Lynch mobs, arson, animal slaughter: West Bank faces unprecedented Israeli violence
Israeli Settler Militias, Backed by Soldiers, Are Laying Waste to Palestinian Communities – Beating Residents, Torching Crops, Smashing Cars, Slaughtering Animals. Jonathan Pollak, Who Accompanies Pal...
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Jason Nomburg @jnoms.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
My lab is hiring postdocs! We combine AI, protein structure prediction and comparison, and high-throughput virology to study the virus-host conflict. You can read more about my lab's research here: jasonnomburg.com/research/ Apply here to join us in lovely Vienna! aithyra.onlyfy.jobs/job/0khkxp82
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