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Tal Korem

@tkorem.bsky.social
560 followers 444 following 82 posts

Microbiome, metagenomics, ML, and reproductive health. All views are mine. So are all your base

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Reposted by Tal Korem
Sarah Andersen @sarahseeandersen.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The image is of a four panel comic.
The first panel shows a brain. The brain is saying "I'm 30 and YOUNG! I only recently fully developed!"
The second panel shows a heart. The heart says "I hear ya! I can keep going for DECADES more!"
The third panel shows a spine's face. It weakly says, "I am old".
We zoom out and the spine is using a walker. It continues, "so very old".
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Reposted by Tal Korem
Will McKinley @willmckinley.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"It's given a lot of people permission to be themselves, to not dream it, be it, which is the motto of the movie, really. I would like to be remembered for that." Farewell to Tim Curry (1946-2026) #RIP
Tim in costume as Dr. Frank-N-Furter
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Reposted by Tal Korem
Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
4 panel comic

Panel 1:
A post from “kavishj9611” that reads: 

“All the people who are anti-Al or want to slow Al progress, I have one question:
If Al disappeared tomorrow, could you still get through an entire workday without ChatGPT, Claude, or any other
Al tool?
Imagine Al was suddenly banned.
Would you actually be willing to give it up?”

Panel 2:
And Orange Guy and a Pink Guy are standing in a room that has two pipes in it. Both pipes are pumping raw sewage into the room. The characters are waist deep in it.
Orange Guy says smugly “Ok Mr “I don’t want to be in a room that’s filling up with raw sewage” let me ask you this”

Panel 3:
The sewage has reached their chests. Pink Guy is gagging. Orange Guy smugly continues “If all this sewage disappeared right now, could you get through the day without it?”

Panel 4:
The sewage is almost up to their eyeballs. Orange Guys says “Look at that shit floating past your face. Are you willing to give that up?”
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Amy D Willis @amydwillis.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I'm hiring a #postdoc 🥳 and applications are open 🤩 Candidates with interests in EITHER statistical methodology or microbial ecology / microbiome are welcome to apply. The position / projects will be tailored to the candidate 🌟📈🎤 Thank you for sharing widely! apply.interfolio.com/188571
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Reposted by Tal Korem
Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
this is a masterpiece
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A. Murat Eren (Meren) @merenbey.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism: merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...
merenlab.org
Unfalsifiable by Design: A Year of Trying and Failing to Reproduce a Human Microbiome and Autism Study
The myth of open data, reproducibility, responsibility, and accountability in science, and your role in it
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
That's what we saw. I guess it's a matter of how you define "better". At some point I think the gain in recall is worth it.
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
That's important and straightforward to incorporate to MAG-E. I'll follow up on this. Thanks
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Alex Crits-Christoph @acritschristoph.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Absolute banger: "find that metaSPAdes consistently outperforms MEGAHIT" "Binning refinement, which combines bins from multiple different algorithms, leads to reduced performance" "We further show that CheckM2 systematically overestimates completeness and underestimates contamination"
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
This simulation-cum-benchmark study on MAG making by @tkorem.bsky.social & team looks really interesting. Loads of plots and results to work through! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
We were also surprised! "Classic" inners work better with multi-sample (particularly CONCOCT!), but COMEbin and semibin2 are actually better in single-sample (at least in this benchmark and another unpublished one)
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J. L. Westover @mrlovenstein.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
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Seth Rosenthal @sethrosenthal.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
i've yet to see evidence that this man is anything other than the fucking coolest to ever do it
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 03/02/2026
The truly visionary thing for Simons to do would be to map the collaboration graph of submitted proposals, find the bridges between large connected components, and offer them unrestricted awards
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Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Schopenhauer
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Pollution dropping by that much likely means a whole bunch of people are alive who otherwise wouldn’t be. Incredible stuff.
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Amir Mitchell @amitchell.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
We just published in @molsystbiol.org with the Mugler lab (UPitt) on bacterial population dynamics during tumor colonization (mouse model). Our study was guided by a Luria–Delbrück-style idea: infer mechanism from statistics (1/7) 🧪🦠 doi.org/10.1038/s443...
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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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Reposted by Tal Korem
AnniZLab: [🦠, 🧬 , ✨] @annizlab.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Using leave-one-out cross-validation to calculate metrics such as AUC and R^2 creates bias! This can be fixed by removing one of each class in the meanwhile to maintain the training data distribution - great work by Tal and his team 🧪🧬🖥️
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Emil Privér @priver.dev · 01/10/2025
I found a flowchart which helps you navigate the IT landscape
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Mike Feigin 🥯 @mikefeigin.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Back when we hid beer in the cold room in a box labeled “yeast embryos.”
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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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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
As long as three reviewers keep reading each proposal, doesn't really address anything either
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Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
"This could take down Democrats, too." I know. And I frankly wouldn't give even an itty bitty damn if it implicated every Democratic man in Congress, every Democratic hopeful for 2028 and every Democrat who has even thought about running for office. Down with the sex predators, wherever they are.
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Mohammed AlQuraishi @moalquraishi.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
White paper: github.com/aqlaboratory... GitHub Repo: github.com/aqlaboratory... Huggingface: huggingface.co/OpenFold/Ope... Testimonials: openfold.ghost.io/openfold3-co...
github.com
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Mohammed AlQuraishi @moalquraishi.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
OpenFold3-preview (OF3p) is out: a sneak peek of our AF3-based structure prediction model. Our aim for OF3 is full AF3-parity for every modality. We now believe we have a clear path towards this goal and are releasing OF3p to enable building in the OF3 ecosystem. More👇
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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Just to be super clear, if you’re phoning in your peer review to ai you should quit your job so someone else who actually likes science can have it.
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
No idea. Still working through this.
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
This is from the very paper you linked to - Figure S5. They claim that this has a p-value of 1. It's not here and there, this is what most results look like, and this is a large part of the basis for claiming that there are no robust associations with other tumors.
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
So you look at this figure and your interpretation is "no signal"?
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
I never knew I needed this thread
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
We are hiring a postdoc - come work with us (www.koremlab.science) at the intersection of #microbiome, data science, and women's health! Message or email me if interested. 🖥️ 🧬
koremlab.science
Korem Lab - Microbiome Systems Biology @ Columbia | New York, USA
We apply systems biology approaches to decipher the metabolic interactions between the microbiome and its human host in diverse clinical settings, aiming towards personalized microbiome-based therapeu...
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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
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.eeb.ucla.edu
Garud Lab
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
This will also likely reduce the number of study sections, firing SROs and making them less specialized.
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Noah Fierer @noahfierer.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Hope this is useful - consensus statement "Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies" rdcu.be/er3Io
rdcu.be
Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies
Nature Microbiology - In this Consensus Statement, the authors outline strategies for processing, analysing and interpreting low-biomass microbiome samples, and provide recommendations to minimize...
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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
The trolley problem graphic where one side is several people tied to the train tracks except the other side has no one on the tracks. A man is standing holding a lever trying to decide which track the trolley should take. The text reads “You can pull the lever, but to do so you must wear a mask at the grocery store.”
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Timothy McBride @mcbridetd.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Not getting much attention, except in a recent NYTimes story, is a provision to increase the tax on university endowments and those of other nonprofits.
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Justin Silverman @inschool4life.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
New paper in Genome Biology! genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... We introduce scale models, a generalization of normalizations that explciitly account for uncertainty in biological system scale (e.g., microbial load).
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com
Incorporating scale uncertainty in microbiome and gene expression analysis as an extension of normalization - Genome Biology
Statistical normalizations are used in differential analyses to address sample-to-sample variation in sequencing depth. Yet normalizations make strong, implicit assumptions about the scale of biologic...
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daniel sieradski @self.agency · 18/05/2025
as a resident of syracuse, ny, a rust belt town that used to be an economic epicenter for the nation: syracuse university is our largest local employer now and if it goes under, so does my town, which has the largest concentration of child poverty in the nation.
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Lynn Jolicoeur @lynnjolicoeur.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
"I'm still in shock. I know that there have been political issues around Harvard in recent weeks, but antibiotic resistance isn't one of them." My conversation with Harvard microbiologist @baym.lol, one of many researchers there who just lost millions in fed. grants. www.wbur.org/news/2025/05...
wbur.org
Antibiotic research at Harvard lab threatened by federal funding cuts
Microbiologist Michael Baym studies antibiotic resistance at Harvard Medical School. He lost millions in federal funding this week.
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Our paper explaining why Gihawi et al. failed to prove an error in the normalization used by the 2020 cancer #microbiome analysis now out as a Matters Arising in @asm.org #mSystems (w/ @george-austin.bsky.social) 🖥️ 🧬 Thread explaining the key points below. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org
Compositional transformations can reasonably introduce phenotype-associated values into sparse features | mSystems
Gihawi et al. claim that finding that a transformation turned highly sparse (mostly zero) features into features that are associated with a phenotype is sufficient to conclude that there is informatio...
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Our paper explaining why Gihawi et al. failed to prove an error in the normalization used by the 2020 cancer #microbiome analysis now out as a Matters Arising in @asm.org #mSystems (w/ @george-austin.bsky.social) 🖥️ 🧬 Thread explaining the key points below. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org
Compositional transformations can reasonably introduce phenotype-associated values into sparse features | mSystems
Gihawi et al. claim that finding that a transformation turned highly sparse (mostly zero) features into features that are associated with a phenotype is sufficient to conclude that there is informatio...
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Emily White @emily-white.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Come and work with me! The Nature Micro team is expanding and we're looking for someone to champion microbial ecology, plant micro & related areas for the journal Knowledge of microbial ecology/plant micro is desirable but we're open to applications from all microbiologists Link below 👇
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Congrats!
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Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com · 27/03/2025
OUT NOW: Processing-bias correction with DEBIAS-M improves cross-study generalization of microbiome-based prediction models @tkorem.bsky.social & co #microsky #microbiomesky 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Processing-bias correction with DEBIAS-M improves cross-study generalization of microbiome-based prediction models - Nature Microbiology
DEBIAS-M corrects technical variability in microbiome data in a manner both interpretable and suitable for machine learning. In extensive benchmarks, DEBIAS-M facilitates robust analyses that generali...
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
A hopefully paywall-free link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Processing-bias correction with DEBIAS-M improves cross-study generalization of microbiome-based prediction models
Nature Microbiology - DEBIAS-M corrects technical variability in microbiome data in a manner both interpretable and suitable for machine learning. In extensive benchmarks, DEBIAS-M facilitates...
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
DEBIAS-M is available as a Python package (korem-lab.github.io/DEBIAS-M/ or just pip install debias-m). It works with any microbiome read count or relative abundance matrices, and any paired metadata. 7/7
korem-lab.github.io
DEBIAS-M: Domain adaptation with phenotype Estimation and Batch Integration Across Studies of the Microbiome
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Its multi-task version allows DEBIAS-M to learn models for multiple tasks at the same time, further increasing its performance. This is particularly useful for tasks such as metabolite level predictions, where we want to predict multiple metabolite levels using the same microbiome data. 6/7
Boxplots showing performance on metabolite prediction (each point is a different metabolite). Y-axis is Spearman correlation, x-axis are different methods. Prediction using raw data is nearly random (median correlation of ~0). MelonnPan improves substantially to a median of ~.25. DEBIAS-M and multi-task DEBIAS-M improve this further, with a median Spearman of ~.3.
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Finally, DEBIAS-M is designed for machine learning pipelines, allowing to not just hold-out labels for a test set, but actually has an online learning mode that can handle completely new data on the fly (to our knowledge - the only method that allows that for microbiome data). 5/7
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Tal Korem @tkorem.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Next, the changes DEBIAS-M makes to the data are interpretable and explained by differences in experimental protocols. Analyzing the biases inferred for these 17 gut microbiome studies in HIV, we found that 84% of the variance can be explained by just three experimental factors. 4/7
An analysis of 17 studies of the gut microbiome in the context of HIV. On the top is an Adonis analysis, showing that 43% of the variance in inferred experimental biases is explained by DNA extraction kit, 27% by the 16S gene region, and 14% by the type of swab used for sample collection. On the bottom is a PCA of inferred biases, where every dot is a study. There is apparent clustering by extraction kit type and 16S gene region.
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