Wow, just finished reading the @microbiome.bsky.social lab's preprint on how gut flagellin levels influence vaccine responses. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.21.639485v1.full
In the paper, they leverage our MEDI tool (estimating dietary in take from fecal DNA) to come to a really surprising conclusion!
🧵...
In the paper, they leverage our MEDI tool (estimating dietary in take from fecal DNA) to come to a really surprising conclusion!
🧵...
Comments
Waltera levels were higher in omnivores than in vegetarians and vegans, but high-temp fever responders showed additional enrichment beyond this simple diet grouping.
We saw the same thing in our MEDI paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-025-01220-1), and found that this genus associated with processed foods. We suspected this was misannotation of cotton.
First, hibiscus and cotton are closely related (phylogenetically).
Second, cotton is a common additive in processed foods: often used as a non-caloric bulking agent or an emulsifying agent (in the form of carboxymethylcellulose, or CMC).
We're excited that MEDI was able to provide additional insight into how host diet was implicated in this microbiome-mediated immune modulation.
@cdiener.com @isbscience.org @medunigraz.at