Monitoring for future pandemics. Developing quantitative microbiome methods.
Cambridge, MA
Joined July 2015
- Tweets282
- Following352
- Followers424
- Likes970
Mike McLaren retweeted
New preprint: We applied untargeted viral metagenomics to composite airplane wastewater and found that human viruses had much higher relative abundance (median 13-fold) compared to municipal treatment-plant wastewater. This could substantially cut the cost of using metagenomics to detect emerging viruses.
The Nucleic Acid Observatory project (based out of @kesvelt 's group at @medialab ) is searching for a Research Scientist (a PhD-level staff scientist role; media.mit.edu/about/job-oppo…) and/or a Research Specialist (an experienced non-PhD staff role; media.mit.edu/about/job-oppo…)
Mike McLaren retweeted
How can we detect future pandemics?
Sequencing wastewater could be promising: It allows us to monitor millions of people’s disease status at a single site.
But this might require a LOT of sequencing and thus a lot of $. We estimated how much:
doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.22.2… (1/6)
We are #hiring an experienced bioinformatics scientist to join the Nucleic Acid Observatory team at SecureBio
linkedin.com/jobs/view/37374…
Mike McLaren retweeted
STAMPS @ MBL is back in 2023! Jul 19-29 in Woods Hole ☀️🏖️💻
STAMPS has trained thousands of microbial ecologists (of all stripes!) in the bioinformatic and statistical analysis of microbiome data 🌟🧠🦠
Join us for #STAMPS2023 and be one of them! 😻🥳📈
The Nucleic Acid Observatory project at MIT is hiring an experimental scientist to help lead our efforts to develop an environmental metagenomics monitoring system to detect catastrophic biothreats
linkedin.com/posts/michael-m…
Mike McLaren retweeted
To save her people, a scientist travels to a distant planet in search of a microbial product learning about a new society and making new friends.
Read this shortlisted flash fiction story by @jkimthu & L.D. from the #FEMSmicroBlog Writing Competition.
fems-microbiology.org/short-…
Mike McLaren retweeted
New preprint alert! 🚨🥳😻
When we first put out the “MWC model” paper, there was a lot of concern about how negatively impactful the problem of unequal detection efficiencies in microbiome taxonomic profiling is.
A thread🧵…
1/
Mike McLaren retweeted
Our latest work led by @mikemc423 on bioRxiv goes deep on "Implications of taxonomic bias for microbial differential-abundance analysis": biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Metagenomic sequencing is biased. When are differential abundance (DA) results still valid?
#NCStateMicrobiome 1/
This paper might not have happened if @archaearama didn't respond the way she did: by working to understand my criticism, suggesting we work together to correct the record, and pushing me to suggest alternative solutions
I first met @mikemc423 when he cold-emailed me to tell me a theory I had published was flawed. Now his paper explaining when and where this flaw affects the quantitativeness of relative 16S amplicon surveys is posted. I'll explain in the thread. biorxiv.org/cgi/content/shor…
I put off that first email for months because it was scary to go out on a limb and send criticism to a PI I didn't know, and gotten enough no-replies from others when requesting data or pointing out problems with a paper