Hutlab
@hutlab.bsky.social
The Huttenhower Lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: microbial community function and human microbiome population health;
Moderators: @jtnearing.bsky.social, @chahat.bsky.social
Moderators: @jtnearing.bsky.social, @chahat.bsky.social
Happy Thanksgiving to you from the Hutlab!!
November 26, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Happy Thanksgiving to you from the Hutlab!!
Meet @jtnearing.bsky.social!
Jacob earned their PhD at Dalhousie U. with @betascience.bsky.social. Their microbiome–cancer work there led them to study how bioinformatic tools shape results. They’re now in the Hutlab as a postdoc working on dog microbiomes, creating association methods and tools!
Jacob earned their PhD at Dalhousie U. with @betascience.bsky.social. Their microbiome–cancer work there led them to study how bioinformatic tools shape results. They’re now in the Hutlab as a postdoc working on dog microbiomes, creating association methods and tools!
November 21, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Meet @jtnearing.bsky.social!
Jacob earned their PhD at Dalhousie U. with @betascience.bsky.social. Their microbiome–cancer work there led them to study how bioinformatic tools shape results. They’re now in the Hutlab as a postdoc working on dog microbiomes, creating association methods and tools!
Jacob earned their PhD at Dalhousie U. with @betascience.bsky.social. Their microbiome–cancer work there led them to study how bioinformatic tools shape results. They’re now in the Hutlab as a postdoc working on dog microbiomes, creating association methods and tools!
Grad student Jordan Jensen recently provided testimonial to the MA Legislature backing bills (S.747 / H.1336) to extend unemployment & Paid Family & Medical Leave to grad workers. These protections exist for other campus employees but not grad students. Proposed by HGSU & other Mass. grad unions 🫶🎉
November 13, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Grad student Jordan Jensen recently provided testimonial to the MA Legislature backing bills (S.747 / H.1336) to extend unemployment & Paid Family & Medical Leave to grad workers. These protections exist for other campus employees but not grad students. Proposed by HGSU & other Mass. grad unions 🫶🎉
Meet Marina from the Hutlab!
Marina recently earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Epidemiology and is currently continuing her work as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Her work focuses on human–environment microbial interactions and transmission, particularly within built environments.
Marina recently earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Epidemiology and is currently continuing her work as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Her work focuses on human–environment microbial interactions and transmission, particularly within built environments.
November 7, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Meet Marina from the Hutlab!
Marina recently earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Epidemiology and is currently continuing her work as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Her work focuses on human–environment microbial interactions and transmission, particularly within built environments.
Marina recently earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Epidemiology and is currently continuing her work as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Her work focuses on human–environment microbial interactions and transmission, particularly within built environments.
Specific examples included previously uncharacterized proteins in F. prausnitzii confidently predicted to participate in viral response and CRISPR-Cas systems and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron proteins newly associated with carbohydrate-metabolizing cassettes:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
7/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
7/8
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Specific examples included previously uncharacterized proteins in F. prausnitzii confidently predicted to participate in viral response and CRISPR-Cas systems and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron proteins newly associated with carbohydrate-metabolizing cassettes:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
7/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
7/8
FUGAsseM accurately predicted uncharacterized proteins with both broadly distributed and species-specific functions across the human microbiome:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6/8
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
FUGAsseM accurately predicted uncharacterized proteins with both broadly distributed and species-specific functions across the human microbiome:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6/8
We applied FUGAsseM to predict functions for >582k community gene products using 1,595 metagenomes and 800 metatranscriptomes from HMP2. The resulting function catalog is also available as a community resource (see paper for details):
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
5/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
5/8
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
We applied FUGAsseM to predict functions for >582k community gene products using 1,595 metagenomes and 800 metatranscriptomes from HMP2. The resulting function catalog is also available as a community resource (see paper for details):
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
5/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
5/8
We further quantified the contributional importance of each data modality integrated into the full FUGAsseM model, elucidating their respective impacts on predictive performance:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
4/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
4/8
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
We further quantified the contributional importance of each data modality integrated into the full FUGAsseM model, elucidating their respective impacts on predictive performance:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
4/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
4/8
We comprehensively evaluated FUGAsseM, which exhibited high accuracy in predicting microbial community functional annotations, including those that postdate all training data (temporal holdouts) and those recently validated by experiment:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3/8
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
We comprehensively evaluated FUGAsseM, which exhibited high accuracy in predicting microbial community functional annotations, including those that postdate all training data (temporal holdouts) and those recently validated by experiment:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3/8
FUGAsseM integrates community-wide data and demonstrates that metatranscriptomic profiles can accurately predict the functions of previously uncharacterized proteins in microbial communities:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2/8
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
FUGAsseM integrates community-wide data and demonstrates that metatranscriptomic profiles can accurately predict the functions of previously uncharacterized proteins in microbial communities:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2/8
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2/8
We had a fun visit to the lab by @zymoresearch.bsky.social discussing their solutions and products with the folks in the lab! And thank you for the cool sweatshirts! 😎
October 21, 2025 at 11:11 PM
We had a fun visit to the lab by @zymoresearch.bsky.social discussing their solutions and products with the folks in the lab! And thank you for the cool sweatshirts! 😎
Curtis and Kelsey attended the PROSPECT Team Retreat last week in Paris and Curtis gave a wonderful talk! A big thanks to Institut Pasteur @institutpasteur.bsky.social for hosting the event.
October 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Curtis and Kelsey attended the PROSPECT Team Retreat last week in Paris and Curtis gave a wonderful talk! A big thanks to Institut Pasteur @institutpasteur.bsky.social for hosting the event.
Meet @orakov.bsky.social!
Askarbek is an academic nomad with research stints in US and Japan. He holds a B.S. from Nazarbayev University, M.S. from Paris-Saclay, and PhD from EMBL. As a postdoc, he studies the female genital tract virome & is developing a viral quantification method using spike-ins.
Askarbek is an academic nomad with research stints in US and Japan. He holds a B.S. from Nazarbayev University, M.S. from Paris-Saclay, and PhD from EMBL. As a postdoc, he studies the female genital tract virome & is developing a viral quantification method using spike-ins.
October 2, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Meet @orakov.bsky.social!
Askarbek is an academic nomad with research stints in US and Japan. He holds a B.S. from Nazarbayev University, M.S. from Paris-Saclay, and PhD from EMBL. As a postdoc, he studies the female genital tract virome & is developing a viral quantification method using spike-ins.
Askarbek is an academic nomad with research stints in US and Japan. He holds a B.S. from Nazarbayev University, M.S. from Paris-Saclay, and PhD from EMBL. As a postdoc, he studies the female genital tract virome & is developing a viral quantification method using spike-ins.
Meet @dongyuwang.bsky.social!
Dongyu earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and M.Sc. in Data Science. She studied microbial structure–function via multiomics and modeling, and virus–host interactions with Nanopore. As a postdoc, she explores microbial dynamics, coevolution, and human–animal convergence.
Dongyu earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and M.Sc. in Data Science. She studied microbial structure–function via multiomics and modeling, and virus–host interactions with Nanopore. As a postdoc, she explores microbial dynamics, coevolution, and human–animal convergence.
September 23, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Meet @dongyuwang.bsky.social!
Dongyu earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and M.Sc. in Data Science. She studied microbial structure–function via multiomics and modeling, and virus–host interactions with Nanopore. As a postdoc, she explores microbial dynamics, coevolution, and human–animal convergence.
Dongyu earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and M.Sc. in Data Science. She studied microbial structure–function via multiomics and modeling, and virus–host interactions with Nanopore. As a postdoc, she explores microbial dynamics, coevolution, and human–animal convergence.
Long and Kelsey just won the 2025 Microbiome SMRT Grant for HiFi shotgun metagenomics!! They will collaborate to optimize PacBio-compatible protocols for gut metagenomics, specifically generating high quality long-read data from IBD patients. Congrats to both! 🎉 🎉 www.pacb.com/blog/2025-mi...
September 17, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Long and Kelsey just won the 2025 Microbiome SMRT Grant for HiFi shotgun metagenomics!! They will collaborate to optimize PacBio-compatible protocols for gut metagenomics, specifically generating high quality long-read data from IBD patients. Congrats to both! 🎉 🎉 www.pacb.com/blog/2025-mi...
Some summer vacation pictures from Hutlab members! Pictures from Curtis's trip to the Yellowstone and Kelsey's trip to the Azores island 🌄🌈
August 29, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Some summer vacation pictures from Hutlab members! Pictures from Curtis's trip to the Yellowstone and Kelsey's trip to the Azores island 🌄🌈
Last weekend we went kayaking with the lab!!
August 15, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Last weekend we went kayaking with the lab!!
Meet the Hutlab!
Chahat is a first year postdoc in the lab working on the microbial signal of colorectal cancer. In his free time, he likes to play board games and play squash
Chahat is a first year postdoc in the lab working on the microbial signal of colorectal cancer. In his free time, he likes to play board games and play squash
August 8, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Meet the Hutlab!
Chahat is a first year postdoc in the lab working on the microbial signal of colorectal cancer. In his free time, he likes to play board games and play squash
Chahat is a first year postdoc in the lab working on the microbial signal of colorectal cancer. In his free time, he likes to play board games and play squash
A random Friday in the lab
July 31, 2025 at 3:14 AM
A random Friday in the lab
Whale Watching with the Lab! 🐋
July 21, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Whale Watching with the Lab! 🐋
We had a great time at the annual BPH retreat where we spent time discussing how to support each other given the current challenges, and we welcomed our incoming G1 cohort! Thank you to Dyann Wirth for hosting us for such a lovely day!
July 18, 2025 at 3:36 PM
We had a great time at the annual BPH retreat where we spent time discussing how to support each other given the current challenges, and we welcomed our incoming G1 cohort! Thank you to Dyann Wirth for hosting us for such a lovely day!
Welcome Sithija Manage, a fourth-year PhD student in Statistics at Cornell, who joins the lab this summer as a visiting graduate researcher! His work focuses on developing statistically rigorous methods for microbiome data, currently addressing subject-level confounding in PERMANOVA.
July 11, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Welcome Sithija Manage, a fourth-year PhD student in Statistics at Cornell, who joins the lab this summer as a visiting graduate researcher! His work focuses on developing statistically rigorous methods for microbiome data, currently addressing subject-level confounding in PERMANOVA.
Kelsey and Guilherme did a great job presenting their work at the ASM meeting in LA!
June 27, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Kelsey and Guilherme did a great job presenting their work at the ASM meeting in LA!
Our lab recently organized a week-long course on Microbiome data analysis using the bioBakery suite. We had almost 60 participants from around the world, eagerly participating and learning. Huge shoutout to Kelsey for spearheading the course and all instructors for teaching fabulously! 🎉
June 20, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Our lab recently organized a week-long course on Microbiome data analysis using the bioBakery suite. We had almost 60 participants from around the world, eagerly participating and learning. Huge shoutout to Kelsey for spearheading the course and all instructors for teaching fabulously! 🎉
Over 600 scientists from around the world participated in the annual HCMPH Microbiome symposium earlier this week. Thank you to the speakers and panelists for their excellent presentations and to everyone who presented posters as well! Here's a write-up on it - hsph.harvard.edu/news/role-of... 🎉
May 22, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Over 600 scientists from around the world participated in the annual HCMPH Microbiome symposium earlier this week. Thank you to the speakers and panelists for their excellent presentations and to everyone who presented posters as well! Here's a write-up on it - hsph.harvard.edu/news/role-of... 🎉