Sebastian Schmidt
tsbschm.bsky.social
Sebastian Schmidt
@tsbschm.bsky.social
Lecturer in Microbiome & Health at @apcmicrobiomeirel.bsky.social & @ucc.ie

Alumnus @borklab.bsky.social

Microbiome, microbial ecology & metagenomics.
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.
September 11, 2026 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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 🌊
September 4, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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. 🧵
Planetary structure and drivers of diazotroph communities reveal key reservoirs of nitrogen-fixation potential https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.27.741065v1
July 29, 2026 at 11:28 AM
Football won today.
July 19, 2026 at 10:05 PM
Your German word of the day:

Fremdscham
July 19, 2026 at 8:06 PM
This is fun.
July 18, 2026 at 10:31 PM
Spain played a great game by making sure that France played a shitty game.

Foolproof strategy.
July 14, 2026 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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...
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...
www.cell.com
July 8, 2026 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Parasitic bacteria feeding on their hosts’ RNA!? New cultures and Patescibacteriota/Minisyncoccota/CPR continue to surprise us…
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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...
www.biorxiv.org
June 23, 2026 at 5:04 AM
The UK is such a deeply unserious country.
June 22, 2026 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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...
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...
www.cell.com
June 10, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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
June 3, 2026 at 10:01 AM
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.
May 28, 2026 at 7:31 PM
Darwin approves.
May 21, 2026 at 8:07 AM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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...
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
www.biorxiv.org
May 13, 2026 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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
May 13, 2026 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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?!?
May 17, 2026 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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!
May 13, 2026 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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...
www.biorxiv.org
May 13, 2026 at 6:25 AM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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
May 5, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
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.
April 30, 2026 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Sebastian Schmidt
Indeed..

here is "generate the first page of a great Nature paper that will get lots of citations. It must be very novel."
April 23, 2026 at 2:58 PM
GUNC pre-processed databases are now also on zenodo thanks to @fullam.bsky.social :

zenodo.org/records/1963...
April 20, 2026 at 7:26 AM