📢 New preprint is out on bioRxiv 📢:

How much does virome prep influence our view of the human gut virome?

Short answer: a lot.

Long answer:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Different methods lead to distinct community structures, richness, and major virus-host abundance patterns.

🧵 1/5

Huge thanks to co-authors Trina Knotts, Sean Adams, Mohammed Ali, @mattolm.bsky.social, and to my PI, Joanne Emerson, who handled all of the wet-lab sample processing.

🧵 5/5

Viromes and metagenomes capture partially overlapping but differently biased components of the total gut viral community. This has significant implications for inter-study comparisons.

🧵 4/5

DNase treating your viromes? Unlike soil viromes, this looks like it might not have as big an effect in stool (at least in our study).

🧵 3/5

Firing up the MDA kit? Get STRONG compositional distortions and reduced richness. Whilst this effect is generally known, MDA continues to be used. Filtering out ssDNA viruses can compensate, but it’ll cost you in downstream data analyses.

🧵 2/5

Same. It’s not helped when lots of biotech companies, including Illumina, misuse the term.

Fitting that Google has DNA in today’s doodle,the same day Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoc fellowship proposals are due in 😁🧬

What a fantastic conference! Great to present my work on soil viral responses to simulated wildfire at #FEMS2025 So many interesting talks and posters.

First swag of #FEMS2025 from @novogene-europe.bsky.social 😁

See what happens to soil viruses when you set their habitat on fire! #FEMS2025

Super excited to be presenting my work on DNA/ RNA viruses and how they respond to wildfire.

Talk is 13:00 on Thursday, Brown 1&2

Massive thanks to @femsmicro.org for supporting my attendance!

MMEG has always been a favourite conference of mine to go to since the first year of my PhD. Great to present some results from my current postdoc on viral community responses to wildfire this year #MMEG2024