Anna Cusco
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annacusco.bsky.social
Anna Cusco
@annacusco.bsky.social
Microbiome scientist | Metagenomics | Long-read sequencing
Postdoc at Big Data Biology Lab
Reposted by Anna Cusco
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

I am currently looking for my next research adventure. If you have insights on the microbiome/microbial genomics job market in Europe (academia & industry), or want to chat about this work, please reach out.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
That sounds great, thanks for sharing!
September 25, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Thanks Steven! :)
September 24, 2025 at 8:09 AM
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

I am currently looking for my next research adventure. If you have insights on the microbiome/microbial genomics job market in Europe (academia & industry), or want to chat about this work, please reach out.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
I would like to thank all co-authors: Yiqian Duan, Fernando Gil, Alexei Chklovski, Nithya Kruthi, Shaojun Pan, Sofia Forslund, Susanne Lau, Ulrike Löber, Xing-Ming Zhao, and especially @luispedrocoelho.bsky.social

And of course, all the dog owners and the main characters of this story🐶
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
All the generated data and resources are publicly available.

You can play around with the Shanghai dog MAG catalog here: sh-dog-mags.big-data-biology.org

where we added MAG basic information, ARGs annotation, and linked the 16S rRNA genes to MicrobeAtlas.

More data at Zenodo & ENA.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Using global dog gut microbiome data, we found that the living environment (household, colony, free-roaming) was the strongest factor shaping the gut microbiome composition.

(This is consistent with the mapping results: higher mapping rates for pet dog vs. non-pet dog cohorts)
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
In general, our species-level MAG representatives were more contiguous and had a higher quality than the reference genome assembly in public databases —especially regarding the presence of rRNA and mobile genetic elements, which are often missed in short-read assemblies.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Our Shanghai dog catalogs proved to be globally representative🌍: over 90% of reads (median value) from pet dog cohorts in Germany, South Africa, and the USA mapped to them.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Let's go to some of the main messages:

🧬We recovered 2,676 MAGs from Shanghai dogs, ~72% were near-finished (high-quality regarding MIMAG criteria) & highly contiguous.

⭕We recovered 185 circular extrachromosomal elements like plasmids and viruses from the same dogs.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Each stool sample was deeply sequenced 🐶💩: 20 Gbp Illumina short-reads + (at least) 20 Gbp Nanopore long-reads per dog. That's a substantial throughput for assembling MAGs from complex metagenomes🧬!
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
We started by sharing questionnaires via WeChat 📲 and then collected 💩 samples from 51 pet dogs across Shanghai 🐶. Along the way, we met many doggies (& their humans)!
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the thread.

I am currently looking for my next research adventure. If you have insights on the microbiome/microbial genomics🧬🦠 job market in Europe (academia and industry), or want to chat about this work, please reach out!
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
I would like to thank all co-authors: Yiqian Duan, Fernando Gil, Alexei Chklovski, Nithya Kruthi, Shaojun Pan, Sofia Forslund, Susanne Lau, Ulrike Löber, Xing-Ming Zhao, and especially @luispedrocoelho.bsky.social

And of course, all the dog owners and the main characters of this story 🐶
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
All the generated data and resources are publicly available.

You can play around with the Shanghai dog MAG catalog here: sh-dog-mags.big-data-biology.org
where we have added MAG basic information, ARGs annotation, and linked 16S rRNA genes to MicrobeAtlas.

More data at Zenodo and ENA.
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Using global dog gut microbiome data, we found that the living environment (household, colony, free-roaming) was the strongest factor shaping the gut microbiome composition.

(This is consistent with previous mapping results to our catalog: higher mapping rates for pet dog vs. non-pet dog cohorts)
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
In general, our species-level MAG representatives were more contiguous and had a higher quality than the reference genome assembly in public databases —especially regarding the presence of rRNA and mobile genetic elements, which are often missed in short-read assemblies.
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Our Shanghai dog catalogs proved to be globally representative🌍: over 90% of reads (median value) from pet dog cohorts in Germany, South Africa, and the USA mapped to them.
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Let's go to some of the main messages:

🧬We recovered 2,676 MAGs from Shanghai dogs, ~72% were near-finished (high-quality regarding MIMAG criteria) and highly contiguous.
⭕Additionally, we retrieved 185 circular extrachromosomal elements like plasmids and viruses from the same dogs.
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Each stool sample was deeply sequenced 🐶💩: 20 Gbp Illumina short-reads + (at least) 20 Gbp Nanopore long-reads per dog. That's a substantial throughput for assembling MAGs from complex metagenomes🧬!
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM
We started by sharing questionnaires via WeChat 📲 and then collected 💩 samples from 51 pet dogs across Shanghai 🐶. Along the way, we met many doggies (& their humans)!
September 23, 2025 at 10:42 AM