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Sebastian Schmidt

@tsbschm.bsky.social
661 followers 639 following 198 posts

Lecturer in Microbiome & Health at @apcmicrobiomeirel.bsky.social & @ucc.ie Alumnus @borklab.bsky.social Microbiome, microbial ecology & metagenomics.

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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
bigdatabiology.bsky.social @bigdatabiology.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
SemiBin 2.5.0 is out 🎉 concatenate_fasta() can now preserve full FASTA headers (e.g. circularity flags) when merging samples /ht Jim Downie (github.com/prototaxites) for the suggestion Agents make releases easy now: expect more frequent ones in the future github.com/BigDataBiolo...
github.com
GitHub - BigDataBiology/SemiBin: SemiBin: metagenomics binning with self-supervised deep learning
SemiBin: metagenomics binning with self-supervised deep learning - BigDataBiology/SemiBin
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
That day I learned a lot about the other kids in my year. Some grasped what was happening and we had sincere talks with our teachers. Others were making light of it, joking, or couldn’t be bothered to see what it was to them. Also, I’ve never been on an orienteering trip since.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
We won the orienteering challenge that day. We were the first of just two teams that made it back on their own. Everyone else, not being idiots like us, called in to be picked up as soon as they had network again…
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
We all stayed up that night and watched TV coverage until 5am or so. No one really grasped what was going on. Some kids with elder brothers were crying because they were sure their brothers were going to be immediately drafted and die in the coming war.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
We arrived back at our bungalow camp in the afternoon. Our teachers and a bunch of other students were at the TV, shocked. I had never seen my German teacher crying. I remember stepping into the living room to a live feed from Manhattan. A minute or two later, the second tower collapsed.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Yet we were still in the middle of nowhere. But suddenly, everyone wanted to get back with a lot more urgency. Also, it seemed a lot more desirable now to be as far away from those fighter planes as possible.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Finally, we stumbled back into the reach of some antenna. The rich kids‘ phones started buzzing: sms and missed calls from their parents, from other groups, etc. We finally learned that something horrible had indeed happened in the US.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This was 2001. So there was no mobile internet. We were also in a different country, so the few lucky rich kids among us who had mobile phones had switched off roaming for calls etc. And anyhow, this was 2001, so there wasn’t any signal anywhere anyway.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Soon after, we noticed low flying fighter planes passing overhead, again and again. Hm, did we accidentally wander into some military training ground? This was The Hague after all: loads of NATO HQs and stuff around here, or maybe some random president visiting the NL?
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A few hours in, we started getting SMS from other teams: “War in the US, Manhattan is all rubble, we are all going to die.” Sure, we thought. They’re trying to scare us because we’re out here all on our own. And continued to trod through shrubbery and dune grasses.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
On Sep 11 2001 I was on a school trip: one week in the Netherlands, by the beach close to The Hague. That day was orienteering day: our teachers drove us out to some heather, “here’s a map and compass, see you tonight then.” So off we went: bunch of 10th graders in the middle of nowhere.
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
A global genomic survey of prokaryotic carbon fixation reveals an oxygen-tolerant rTCA cycle in the surface ocean www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs 🌊
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Bork Group at EMBL Heidelberg @borklab.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Led by Lucas Ustick, who has a longer write-up here: www.linkedin.com/posts/lucas-... Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (5/5)
linkedin.com
Planetary structure and drivers of diazotroph communities reveal key reservoirs of nitrogen-fixation potential | Lucas Ustick
I am very excited to share our preprint on NFixPlanet, a resource and planet wide analysis of diazotrophy. Releasing this preprint feels bittersweet, as it is my first manuscript since Peer’s passing...
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Bork Group at EMBL Heidelberg @borklab.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
New preprint from the lab! "Planetary structure and drivers of diazotroph communities reveal key reservoirs of nitrogen-fixation potential" Nitrogen fixation is scattered right across the prokaryotic tree — but it's heterotrophs, not cyanobacteria, that dominate the potential. 🧵
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Football won today.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
And Dudamel represented the US state of Venezuela?
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Ok I make an exception for Ted Lasso and coach Beard. They can stay.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Your German word of the day: Fremdscham
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
This is fun.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
You could submit to @ebi.embl.org 's ENA. Via the INSDC, genomes should eventually be synchronized between databases. They won't show up in BLAST searches immediately, but they will be online with accessions and the syncing will likely be much faster than 8 mo q'ing times...
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Spain played a great game by making sure that France played a shitty game. Foolproof strategy.
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
W. Florian Fricke @wffricke.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Is it not just “good” and “bad” bacteria but their absolute abundance, i.e, quantitative microbiome parameters (QMPs) that control the #microbiome’s effect on the host? Check out our new paper in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social: www.cell.com/cell-reports...
cell.com
Distinct compositional changes but shared quantitative microbiome and anti-inflammatory modulations by diet
Reported gut microbiome associations with diet and disease are frequently inconsistent between studies and interventions. Ruple et al. show that a high-fiber diet and time-restricted feeding induce si...
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Masaru Nobu @masarunobu.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Parasitic bacteria feeding on their hosts’ RNA!? New cultures and Patescibacteriota/Minisyncoccota/CPR continue to surprise us… www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
A representative of a ubiquitous bacterial lineage parasitically feeds on host RNA
Cellular metabolism is widely understood as an integrated network of redox reactions, energy conservation, and biosynthetic pathways. Here we show that across diverse prokaryotic lineages, loss of red...
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
The UK is such a deeply unserious country.
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Jonas Schiller @jonas-bio.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Our new paper „Variations in the latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome“ was just published in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social 🥳 We present a global analysis of prokaryotic #biodiversity in the surface and mesopelagic layers of the ocean 🦠🌊 www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
cell.com
Variations in the latitudinal diversity gradients of the ocean microbiome
Eriksson et al. conduct a global marine microbiome diversity analysis and demonstrate how the surface ocean latitudinal diversity gradient is disproportionately shaped by a few species-rich taxa. Mask...
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
APC Microbiome Ireland @apcmicrobiomeirel.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
A clearer way to describe microbial habitats helps researchers compare #microbiome data. A new paper in #𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 introduces microntology: 148 terms and curated annotations for 305,626 #metagenomic samples. @tsbschm.bsky.social @embl.org @vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social 📰 buff.ly/FD1SYYJ
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Our study describing `microntology` and annotations for >300k metagenomes is now online in Bioinformatics @academic.oup.com : academic.oup.com/bioinformati... Congratulations to @fullam.bsky.social @vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social & @biocs.bsky.social ! See the thread below for more details.
academic.oup.com
microntology: a lightweight, data-driven controlled vocabulary to describe Earth’s microbial habitats
AbstractMotivation. Data-enabled studies of microbial ecology and evolution depend on high-quality descriptions of microbial habitats, based on curated and
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Darwin approves.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Plants don't have vertrebrae, so this is pretty accurate.
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
bigdatabiology.bsky.social @bigdatabiology.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
How well do ARG detection pipelines agree when applied to the same data? Spoiler: not very well. In our new preprint, we ran 10 pipelines on 270M microbial unigenes from GMGCv1. The same data can support conflicting biological conclusions! 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
The elusive resistome: a global comparison reveals large discrepancies among detection pipelines
Identifying antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) from metagenomic data is critical for studying antimicrobial resistance across microbial communities and pathogens. However, there is no standardized methodology for ARG annotation. Here, we compare ten commonly used ARG detection pipelines by analysing over 270 million prokaryotic genes from the Global Microbial Gene Catalogue across 13 distinct habitats. We observed up to a 45-fold difference in the number of reported ARGs, with a mean Jaccard index of only 16% between pipelines. Pipeline selection profoundly impacted downstream biological interpretations, with drastic changes to estimates of ARG relative abundance and richness, to the characterization of pan- and core-resistomes, and to the class-level composition of the inferred resistome. ARG detection pipelines make different, defensible trade-offs, and no single approach should be treated as authoritative. Therefore, users should justify and communicate choices carefully, as our analyses show that, taken uncritically, the same data can support conflicting biological and ecological interpretations. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), 2031902 Australian Research Council (ARC), FT230100724 International Development Research Centre (IDRC), 109304-001 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), FO1279/6-1 Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), F01KI1909A, 01KI2404B Swedish Research Council (VR), 2024-06123, 2019-00299, 2023-01721 Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, KAW 2020.0239 Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, FFL21-0174
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com · 13/05/2026
Our May issue with a focus on technological advances in microbiology is out now! Read about 🌱defence evasion by plant pathogens 🦠E. coli capsule revival 💻multiomic microbiome integration 🐁chronic chikungunya infection 🦀 bacteria in cancer immunotherapy and much more: shorturl.at/Wtzkp #MicroSky
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Dr. Holly Walters @manigarm.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?
The reactions of some researchers on Twitter finally being held responsible for not having read the very paper they submitted are... something. Mainly, they don't think they should have to check every citation or make sure the data is real and accurate. Because it's too hard, I guess.
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Joerg Lau @joerglau.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Hostage taker to hostages: This is your hostage crisis, too. Don’t just sit there waiting for me to negotiate, stand up and do something to get us all out of here!
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Luis Pedro Coelho @luispedrocoelho.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
More details to follow later, but this has been in the works for almost 6 years, so it is great to finally see it in preprint form: "The elusive resistome: a global comparison reveals large discrepancies among detection pipelines" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
APC Microbiome Ireland @apcmicrobiomeirel.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Gut bacteria form #spores, but our lab models rarely match the real thing. A new review in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social argues for developing model organisms from human gut spore‑formers. Current models miss key genetics & biology of Bacillota species common in people. 📰 buff.ly/ZWLKobR
We outline a path to develop novel gut commensal spore-formers as model organisms, which can provide a means to better understand gut sporulation processes and serve as a resource for therapeutic applications.
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Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Jonathan Eisen @phylogenomics.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Reposting this from April 1, 2007 in honor of Craig Venter. I did this as an April Fool's joke - sharing it as a PDF. I got stressed when I found out Craig had seen it and knew it was by me. But he loved it and said it was OK to share it more widely. So then I posted it on the web.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Gladly! This is going far from the initial thread now, but: (how) do you normalize the counts between marker genes? As the raw reads are not linked. Do you take the median or sth across markers, and/or across windows w/in markers? This is super interesting!
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Wow that’s a huge number! But that includes all sequence variants without filtering then, correct?
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
S table of the paper has sample accessions, even though some data (5-10%) is not from ENA (eg HMP and MetaSUB for stupid reasons).
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
What is the current count of extra OTUs then actually, out of curiosity?
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
We looked up the n of additional species (OTUs) from SingleM >1y ago when writing - could be the text in the preprint was misconstrued by us or we go the n another way, I don’t 100% recall tbh.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
We didn’t map against SingleM OTUs because it’s not trivial… so we don’t know how big the overlap is.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Also to clarify, the number is referenced twice: in the intro and discussion. Context isn’t “only” in either section.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
I expect from here or directly from the website. Though we initially got that number when sandpiper was still a preprint or a previous version, not sure when this was last updated.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Maybe it’s “canonically pronounced chime”? We’re certainly guilty of confusing pronounciation too though. For GUNC, we internally say “junk” not “gunk”…
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Re mOTUs: no clue. Been wondering that myself for the past 10y… I’ve heard some of the devs (like @pangenomics.bsky.social ) say “moh-tus”, but others “em-oh-tee-uh”. Personally I always thought of “moh-tuh” like the Polynesian word for island (motu).
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
SingleM uses a different dataset and an approach based on raw reads mapped to (usually conserved) windows in GTDB markers, we used assembly. Imo, SingleM needs stricter filtering bc shorter reads, whereas we miss stuff that doesn’t assemble. But maybe @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social has an opinion?
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
At the same time, for shallower levels (genus, species) our trees do not include all clades that the ref includes. ~50% of GTDB species were not detectable in our metagenomic assemblies at all.
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Sebastian Schmidt @tsbschm.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
The difference arises from: i. We use individual marker gene trees, where GTDB uses concatenated (which is ofc preferable) ii. We have bigger trees where GTDB marker placement is less dependable & resolved, so we may see two RED clades where the concat tree sees only one.
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