My sincere apologies: the website was down most of today. I am not sure what it was – the problem was on the host server site. But I’m back, with tea rhizobacteria, bacteria reporting explosives in the soil, fungi in a glacier, and a bacterial protein preventing ice cream drip.

Animal models

Editorial: Worming Their Way into the Picture: Microbiota Help Helminths Modulate Host Immunity – Lisa A. Reynolds, B. Brett Finlay – Immunity

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Environmental changes affect the assembly of soil bacterial community primarily by mediating stochastic processes – Ximei Zhang – Global Change Biology

Hydrologic linkages drive spatial structuring of bacterial assemblages and functioning in alpine floodplains – Remo Freimann – Frontiers in Microbiology

Resistance of Undisturbed Soil Microbiomes to Ceftriaxone Indicates Extended Spectrum β-Lactamase Activity – Joao Gatica – Frontiers in Microbiology

Assessment of Culturable Tea Rhizobacteria Isolated from Tea Estates of Assam, India for Growth Promotion in Commercial Tea Cultivars – Jintu Dutta – Frontiers in Microbiology

Water / extremophile microbiome

Genomic and transcriptomic evidence for scavenging of diverse organic compounds by widespread deep-sea archaea – Meng Li – Nature Communications

Fungal biodiversity in the periglacial soil of Dosdè Glacier (Valtellina, Northern Italy) – Marinella Rodolfi – Journal of Basic Microbiology

Winter severity determines functional trait composition of phytoplankton in seasonally ice-covered lakes – Deniz Özkundakci – Global Change Biology

Seasonal and spatial patterns of microbial diversity along a trophic gradient in the interconnected lakes of the Osterseen Lake District, Bavaria – Katrin Zwirglmaier – Frontiers in Microbiology

Metagenomic sequencing of marine periphyton: taxonomic and functional insights into biofilm communities – Kemal Sanli – Frontiers in Microbiology

Metagenome and Metatranscriptome Revealed a Highly Active and Intensive Sulfur Cycle in an Oil-Immersed Hydrothermal Chimney in Guaymas Basin – Ying He – Frontiers in Microbiology

Diversity and structure of soil bacterial communities in the Fildes Region (maritime Antarctica) as revealed by 454 pyrosequencing – Neng Fei Wang – Frontiers in Microbiology

In situ Detection of Microbial Life in the Deep Biosphere in Igneous Ocean Crust – Everett C. Salas – Frontiers in Microbiology

Waste and built environment microbiology

Review: Genetically engineered microorganisms for the detection of explosives’ residues – Benjamin Shemer – Frontiers in Microbiology

Self-healing of early age cracks in cement-based materials by mineralization of carbonic anhydrase microorganism – Chunxiang Qian – Frontiers in Microbiology

Infection microbiology

Multiplex Molecular Panels for Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Infection: Performance, Result Interpretation, and Cost-Effectiveness – Matthew J. Binnicker – Journal of Clinical Microbiology

FilmArray Respiratory Panel Assay: Comparison of Nasopharyngeal Swabs and Bronchoalveolar Lavage Samples – Natalya Azadeh – Journal of Clinical Microbiology

Editorial: Variability in Antibiotic Prescribing: An Inconvenient Truth – Lauri A. Hicks and Martin J Blaser – Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society

Variation in Antibiotic Prescribing Across a Pediatric Primary Care Network – Jeffrey S. Gerber – Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society

Innate Immune Signaling Activated by MDR Bacteria in the Airway – Dane Parker – Physiological Reviews

Tropheryma whipplei, a Potential Commensal Detected in Individuals Undergoing Routine Colonoscopy – M. E. Grasman -Journal of Clinical Microbiology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

HPMCD: the database of human microbial communities from metagenomic datasets and microbial reference genomes – Samuel C. Forster – Nucleic Acids Research

Antibiotic Selection Pressure Determination through Sequence-Based Metagenomics – Matthias Willmann – Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy

Current and future resources for functional metagenomics – Kathy N. Lam – Frontiers in Microbiology

Microbial Ecology

Slow and Fast Evolving Endosymbiont Lineages: Positive Correlation between the Rates of Synonymous and Non-Synonymous Substitution – Francisco J. Silva – Frontiers in Microbiology

Microbes in the news

How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution: Burgers and fries have nearly killed our ancestral microbiome – Moises Velasquez-Manoff – Nautilus

Bacterial biofilm protein prevents ice cream drip – Elisabeth Bik – NPJ Biofilms Community
and
Ice cream designed to drip slowly – Lydia Chain – Popular Science

Bacteria Hysteria

You Don’t Know Where That’s Been: Part 2 – KGNS TV

Science, publishing, and career

Racial bias continues to haunt NIH grants – Minorities still less likely to win biomedical funding – Erika Check Hayden – Nature

Ask Me Anything on Reddit with Carl Zimmer, science journalist at The New York Times, National Geographic and STAT.

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