Monthly Archives: May 2020

May 18, 2020

Posted on by

God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. It’s Monday and the beginning of another week. I am quite excited to write today’s digest because there is a super impressive paper that concerns my area of research. Research efforts in Shigella infections have always suffered from the lack of a mouse model of infection. This notorious bacterium causes enteric infections only in humans and all the infection models, that have been in use so far,  are not physiologically that relevant. It was extremely thrilling to read the development of a mouse model that replicates the typical features of human infections. Talking about infection models, there is another interesting development. A group of researchers has reported an African green monkey model for CoViD-19. This is an important development for clinical assessment of potential vaccine and drug candidates against nCoV-19.

Speaking of vaccines, another group has reported a Neisseria meningitidis outer membrane vesicle (OMV) based vaccine that provides cross-species protection against Neisseria gonorrhoeae. This report assumes great importance when you consider the fact that no Neisseria gonorrhoeae vaccine has entered clinical testing for the past 30 years! In addition to this, there is a structural study of budding in Cryptococcus neoformans that has some really beautiful pictures like this one:

Screenshot 2020-05-18 at 14.57.43

Elsewhere in the digest are some interesting reports on the virulence of a root pathogen, Fusarium; metagenomic identification of diverse viruses; a potent mycobacteriophage; and commentary on Coronaviruses as pathogens responsible for pandemics.

Hope you enjoy today’s selection and have a great week!

COVID-19

Preprint: Establishment of an African green monkey model for COVID-19 – Courtney B. Woolsey, et al.

Preprint: Coronavirus, as a source of pandemic pathogens – Tomokazu Konishi

Bacteria Hysteria

Preprint: NAIP-NLRC4-deficient mice are susceptible to shigellosis – Patrick S Mitchell, et al.

Preprint: The serogroup B meningococcal outer membrane vesicle-based vaccine 4CMenB induces cross-species protection against Neisseria gonorrhoeae – Isabelle Leduc, et al.

Preprint: Antimycobacterial potential of Mycobacteriophage under pathophysiological conditions – Yeswanth C Kalapala, et al.

Preprint: A Division of Labor in the Recruitment and Topological Organization of a Bacterial Morphogenic Complex – Paul D Caccamo, et al.

Preprint: Comparative genomics of ocular Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains from keratitis patients with different clinical outcomes – Kathirvel Kandasamy, et al.

Human gut

Preprint: Higher prevalence of Bacteroides fragilis in Crohn’s disease exacerbations and strain-dependent increase of epithelial resistance – Heike E.F. Becker, et al.

Fungi

Preprint: Let it bud: an ultrastructural study of Cryptococcus neoformans surface during budding events – Glauber R. de S. Araujo, et al.

Methods

Construction of habitat-specific training sets to achieve species-level assignment in 16S rRNA gene datasets – Isabel F. Escapa, et al. – Microbiome

A powerful microbial group association test based on the higher criticism analysis for sparse microbial association signals – Hyunwook Koh and Ni Zhao – Microbiome

Metagenomics

Preprint: Metagenomic identification of diverse animal hepaciviruses and pegiviruses– Ashleigh F. Porter, et al.

Transcriptomics

Preprint: Transcriptome analysis reveals infection strategies employed by Fusarium graminearum as a root pathogen – Yi Ding, et al.

Microbes in the News

Living on The Space Station Leaves a Microbial ‘Fingerprint’ on Astronauts – Science Alert

What are the best foods to increase happiness? – Eastern Daily Press

May 18, 2020

Posted on by

Good morning everyone. Today’s microbiome digest is very short specifically the human gut microbiome section. I have included only one study in this section which shows no association of gut microbiome and fecal calprotectin levels with enteropathy in preterm infants. Additionally, I have covered several interesting reviews and research articles to explore the role of the gut microbiome in Type 1 diabetes and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, ameliorates ulcerative colitis, aging process, regulation of energy metabolism and oxidative stress. I hope you will enjoy today’s feed.

General microbiome

Fungal communities and their association with nitrogen-fixing bacteria affect early decomposition of Norway spruce deadwood – María Gómez-Brandón – Scientific Reports

Review: Gut microbiota and metabolites in the pathogenesis of endocrine disease – Fenneman AC – Biochemical Society Transactions

Review: Role of the Phytochemical Compounds like Modulators on Gut Microbiota and Oxidative Stress – Yordan Martínez – Current Pharmaceutical Design

Human gut microbiome

Faecal calprotectin and gut microbiota do not predict enteropathy in very preterm infants – Florence Campeotto – Acta Paediatrica

Animal microbiome / Animal experiments

Lizhong decoction ameliorates ulcerative colitis in mice via modulating gut microbiota and its metabolites – Junfeng Zou – Applied microbial and cell physiology

Age-related compositional changes and correlations of gut microbiome, serum metabolome, and immune factor in rats – Xia Zhang – GeroScience

The Beneficial Effects of Lippia Citriodora Extract on Diet‐Induced Obesity in Mice are Associated with the Modulation in the Gut Microbiota Composition – Patricia Diez‐Echave – Molecular Nutrition and Food Research

The gut microbiota attenuates muscle wasting by regulating energy metabolism in chemotherapy-induced malnutrition rats – Haitao Chen – Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology

Slc26a3 deletion alters pH‐microclimate, mucin biosynthesis, microbiome composition and increases Tnfα expression in murine colon – A. Kini – Acta Physiologica

Tibet plateau probiotic mitigates chromate toxicity in mice by alleviating oxidative stress in gut microbiota – Pengya Feng – Communications Biology

Antimicrobial peptide GH12 prevents dental caries by regulating dental plaque microbiota – Wentao Jiang – Microbial Ecology

Methods

Construction of habitat-specific training sets to achieve species-level assignment in 16S rRNA gene datasets – Isabel F. Escapa – Microbiome

Review: Metaproteomics: A strategy to study the taxonomy and functionality of the gut microbiota – Yuqiu Wang – Journal of Proteomics

Microbes in news

DOE scientists identify microbial link in gut-memory connection

May 17, 2020

Posted on by

Hello from the Sonoran Desert! It is a sunny Sunday over Tucson, Az! I find that Sundays are the best to explore new ideas and concepts, and I especially love to take the time to read a good opinion piece or parse few review papers. In today’s digest, you’ll find a fascinating review on the Tara Ocean expedition and how it changed our understanding of marine microbial communities. If you’re more interested in the human-associated microbiome, fear not! There is also great pieces on the gut microbiota in athletes and on the interaction of oral and lung microbiome in the context of lung diseases.

If like me, you are a computational biologist thinking about microbiome data all day, you should enjoy reading today’s non microbiology pick, a great perspective paper discussing the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principle and what are the current hurdles that limit open data reuse.

Have a great Sunday!

Pregnancy and early life

Review: The impact of maternal and early life malnutrition on health: a diet-microbe perspective – Andrew J. Forgie et al. – BMC Medicine

Multi-site human microbiome

Perspective: Microbial Diagnostics for Cancer: A Step Forward but Not Prime Time Yet –  Cynthia L. Sears et al. – Cancer Cell

Human respiratory microbiome

Review: Oral-lung microbiome interactions in lung diseases –  Manoj J. Mammen et al. – Periodontology

Human gut microbiome

Review: The athletic gut microbiota – Alex E. Mohr et al. – Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition

Colorectal cancer occurrence and treatment based on changes in intestinal flora – Huifang Si et al. –  Seminars in cancer Biology

Animal experiments 

Microbial communities modulating brain functioning and behaviors in zebrafish: A mechanistic approach – Larica Mohanta et al. –  Microbial Pathogenesis

Multi-omics reveals that the rumen microbiome and its metabolome together with the host metabolome contribute to individualized dairy cow performance – Ming-Yuan Xue et al. – Microbiome

Preprint: Rumen protozoa shape microbiome composition and metabolic output of fermentation – Ronnie Solomon et al. – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Changes in the gut microbiota during Asian particolored bat (Vespertilio sinensis) development – Zhongwei Yin et al. – Microbiology

After the bite: bacterial transmission from grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) to harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) – Maarten J. Gilbert et al. – Royal Society open science

Exploration of the virome of the European brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) – Benigna Van Eynde et al. – Journal of General Virology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Opinion: The Role of Rhizosphere Bacteriophages in Plant Health – Akbar Adjie Pratama et al. – Trends in Microbiology

Analyzing bacterial community in pit mud of Yibin Baijiu in China using high throughput sequencing –  Li Chen et al. – PeerJ

Shifts of bacterial community structure and function in long-term soybean monoculture – Fengjuan Pan et al. – Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science

Bacterial Diversity in Peat Soils of Forest Ecosystems and Oil Palm Plantation – N. A. Kusai et al. – Soil Biology

Space Is More Important than Season when Shaping Soil Microbial Communities at a Large Spatial Scale – Kaoping Zhang et al. – mSystems

Effects of cadmium perturbation on the microbial community structure and heavy metal resistome of a tropical agricultural soil – Lateef B. Salam et al. – Bioresources and Bioprocessing

Competition for iron drives phytopathogen control by natural rhizosphere microbiomes – Shaohua Gu et al. – Nature Microbiology

Water and extremophile microbiome (sea, rivers, lakes, glaciers, permafrost, high-salt)

Review: Tara Oceans: towards global ocean ecosystems biology – Shinichi Sunagawa et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Review: Microbial genomics amidst the Arctic crisis – Arwyn Edwards et al. – Microbial genomics

Exceptional but vulnerable microbial diversity in coral reef animal surface microbiomes – Marlène Chiarello et al. – Proceedings of the royal society biological sciences

Bioinformatics

A powerful microbial group association test based on the higher criticism analysis for sparse microbial association signals – Hyunwook Koh et al. – Microbiome

Review: A practical guide to amplicon and metagenomic analysis of microbiome data – Yong-Xin Liu et al. – Protein Cell

TAMA: improved metagenomic sequence classification through meta-analysis – Mikang Sim et al. – BMC Bioinformatics

nf-rnaSeqMetagen: A nextflow metagenomics pipeline for identifying and characterizing microbial sequences from RNA-seq data – Phelelani T. Mpangase et al. – Medicine in Microecology

My non-microbiology pick

Perspective: FAIR Data Sharing: The Roles of Common Data Elements and Harmonization – R.D.Kush et al. – Journal of Biomedical Informatics

May 16th, 2020

Posted on by

Good morning!

A few nice studies today, with highlights being utilising Streptomyces endophytes to aid in plant growth, a review on the gut-brain-axis with a focus on psychiatry, and a bioinformatics study looking into the role of pathogenic E.coli in cancer. Enjoy!

COVID-19

The coding capacity of SARS-CoV-2 Y.Finkel/O. Mizrahi et al. bioXriv.

Human vaginal microbiome

The study of host-bacterial relationships and immune function in different vaginal environments (Study in progress) A. berard et al. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada.

Human gut microbiome

Relationship between the composition of the digestive microbiota and the concentrations of opportunistic pathogens in intensive care patients. C. Fontaine et al. bioXriv.

Animal microbiome

Evaluation of fecal Lactobacillus populations in dogs with idiopathic epilepsy: a pilot study. Karen R. Muñana et al. Animal microbiome.

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Streptomyces endophytes promotes the growth of Arabidopsis thaliana S. F Worsley et al. bioXriv.

Water and extremophile microbiome

Deciphering a marine bone degrading microbiome reveals a complex community effort E. Borchert et al. bioRxiv.

Prebiotics

Human microbiome and homeostasis: insights into the key role of prebiotics, probiotics and symbiotics. B. Salehi et al. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition.

Probiotics and the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: Focus on Psychiatry. Mörkl S. Current Nutrition Reports.

Bioinformatics

Novel Discoveries Targeting Pathogenic Gut Microbes and New Therapies in Pancreatic Cancer: Does Pathogenic E. coli Infection Cause Pancreatic Cancer Progression Modulated by TUBB/Rho/ROCK Signaling Pathway? A Bioinformatic Analysis. W. Luo et al. BioMed Research international.

May 15th, 2020

Posted on by

We have got a balanced mix for folks today of human, animal, plant, and free-living microbiome research. In particular I want to highlight the work of Inagaki et al., who tracked gut microbiome dynamics within Japanese termites (Reticulitermes speratus) during dispersal and colony formation. They observed a rapid increase then decrease of gut protozoa coinciding with larval hatching of a pioneering termite pair’s first brood; a pattern they call a ‘gut microbial pulse’ (what a wonderfully evocative term!). This is a neat example of how host-associated microbiomes might play a integral role in the ecology of free-living organisms.

General microbiome

Dynamic metabolic adaptation can promote species coexistence in competitive communities– Leonardo Pacciani-Mori et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

The role of the microbiota in periodontal disease – Mike A. Curtis et al. – Periodontology 2000

Human respiratory microbiome

Oral‐lung microbiome interactions in lung diseases– Manoj J. Mammen et al. – Periodontology 2000

Human nearly-sterile sites

Microbiome and Schizophrenia: Current Evidence and Future Challenges – Thiago Macedo e Cordeiro et al. – Current Behavioural Neuroscience Reports

Human gut microbiome

Patients infected with Mycobacterium africanum versus Mycobacterium tuberculosis possess distinct intestinal microbiota – Sivaranjani Namasivayam et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

A systematic machine learning and data type comparison yields metagenomic predictors of infant age, sex, breastfeeding, antibiotic usage, country of origin, and delivery type – Alan Le Goallec et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

The role of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and false positive diagnosis of lactose intolerance in southwest Hungary — A retrospective observational study – Péter Varjú et al. – PLOS One

The Bacterial Gut Microbiota of Adult Patients Infected, Colonized or Noncolonized by Clostridioides difficile – Monique J.T Crobach et al. – Microorganisms

Animal experiments

Effect of age and the individual on the gastrointestinal bacteriome of ponies fed a high-starch diet– Philippa K. Morrison et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

Gut microbial pulse provides nutrition for parental provisioning in incipient termite colonies – Tatsuya Inagaki et al. – Behavioural Ecology and Sociology

The role of the gut microbiome in mediating standard metabolic rate after dietary shifts in the viviparous cockroach, Diploptera punctata – Paul A. Ayayee et al. – Journal of Experimental Biology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Genome reconstruction of the non-culturable spinach downy mildew Peronospora effusa by metagenome filtering – Joël Klein et al. – PlOS One

Unraveling the Microbiota of Natural Black cv. Kalamata Fermented Olives through 16S and ITS Metataxonomic Analysis – Maria Kazou et al. – Microorganisms

Quantifying Plant-Borne Carbon Assimilation by Root-Associating Bacteria – Spenser Waller et al. – Microorganisms

Water and extremophile microbiome

Community-level signatures of ecological succession in natural bacterial communities – Alberto Pascual-Garcia & Thomas Bell – Nature Communications

Instigation of indigenous thermophilic bacterial consortia for enhanced oil recovery from high temperature oil reservoirs – Leha Sharma et al. – PLOS One

Microplastics affect sedimentary microbial communities and nitrogen cycling – Meredith E. Seeley et al. – Nature Communications

Peatland Microbial Community Composition Is Driven by a Natural Climate Gradient – James Seward et al. – Environmental Microbiology

Techniques

Confocal Raman microscopy to identify bacteria in oral subgingival biofilm models – Lukas Simon Kriem et al. – PLOS One

 

Probiotics to precision probiotics

Posted on by

After “precision medicine”, it is now time to conceptualize the term “precision probiotics”. In simple words, fundamental idea of precision medicine is to develop “new taxonomy” of disease employing molecular characterization of disease based on individual data that will enable better stratification of patients and determining most effective treatments. On similar lines, Veiga and colleagues offer strategies to develop precision probiotics, combine with multi-omics host response data to find most optimal probiotic modality in stratified individuals/populations.

I would recommend to read the review in full. To motivate you, following are some excerpts from the review:

“Historically, the discovery of probiotics relied on a top-down approach, where a microorganism enriched in healthy individuals (compared to an altered health state) is suggested to be beneficial and correlates with a health benefit upon administration to humans…While this empirical top-down approach provides robust leads for the development of probiotics, in the absence of prior mechanistic information, it inherently necessitates multiple cycles of trial and error to identify health benefits.”

Problems with top-down approach

  • “Probiotic efficacy being both strain- and indication-specific
  • Person-specific factors also contribute to heterogeneity in the outcome of probiotic supplementations, including diet, age and the microbiome. Colonization-resistant microbiomes are more resilient to probiotic interventions compared to colonization-permissive individuals.”

Bottom up approach

“The phenotypic approach is based on screening for probiotic effects using in vitro and ex vivo cell cultures as well as animal models with immune, neuronal, metabolic or microbial read-outs.

Target-based discovery relies on the selection of probiotic candidates based primarily on in silico prediction of their capacity to produce molecular effectors that are potentially able to modulate host or microbial pathways, which are foreseen to play a critical role in health or disease. Such in silico predictions would require the use of multi-omics (such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and proteomics) possibly coupled to metabolic reconstruction to infer the metabolic capacity of the screened microorganisms.”

Challenges with bottom-up approach

  • “A greater challenge lies in applying a person-specific approach to predict efficacy, which likely requires obtaining profound individualized host data (including genetics, anthropometrics and immune profiling) and microbiome data (such as strain-level composition, transcriptomics and metabolomics), as well as identifying relevant biomarkers that predict colonization resistance and/or a health outcome.
  • As stool samples do not accurately reflect colonization and impact on the gut microbiota along the gastrointestinal tract during probiotic supplementation, there is a great need to devise non-invasive means for identifying compatible probiotic–individual matches.
  • Another important factor to consider is safety, as exogenous microorganisms can have unexpected effects on the microbiome, and can even compromise the health of vulnerable subjects and result in bacteraemia or fungaemia.”

I believe that these challenges also hold true for top-down approach

Precision probiotics strategies

The big aim

“…developing algorithms that, when provided with these individualized parameters, can suggest the optimal probiotic modality that would result in a beneficial outcome.”

  • “To achieve this goal, on one hand, scientists need to better characterize the physiological or pathological pathways that can be modulated by probiotics, in line with the increasing effort to use bottom-up approaches.
  • On the other hand, further digitization of tools for the collection and processing of person-specific data, and their integration with genomic and metabolomic host and microbiome profiles, will be required.
  • Setting up standardized protocols that allow bio-citizens to self-experiment in ‘N-of-1 trials’ and report their experiences with probiotics, coupled with individualized measurements, would greatly expand our understanding of differential probiotic activity in the heterogenous human population. This approach will require devising strict validation and safety measurements for promising centralized data collection while maintaining participants’ anonymity.“

“…While today, this (refers to microbiome data) personal information is poorly actionable, tomorrow it could serve as the basis for microbiome-centred precision nutrition and preventive medicine, including precision probiotics.”

May 13, 2020

Posted on by

Happy Wednesday, y’all! Before we get to today’s papers, I wanted to let everyone know about a webinar happening on June 3rd at 12:00 PM E.T. called “Unraveling the link between the gut microbiome, human health, and disease.” Tomoya Yamashita, M.D., Ph.D. from Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine and Meredith Hullar, Ph.D. from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center will both be speaking. If you’re interested you can register here.

Now onto the highlights! We have some super interesting research to share with you today including an examination of the efficacy of transplanting the human gut microbiota into mice and its impact on studying immunological responses; evidence that early-life intestinal colonizers may influence brain development; and a new tool, pepFUNK, which uses a peptide-centric approach to identify KEGG pathways in metaproteomic datasets. Enjoy!

General microbiome
Human Microbiota-Transplanted C57BL/6 Mice and Offspring Display Reduced Establishment of Key Bacteria and Reduced Immune Stimulation Compared to Mouse Microbiota-Transplantation. Lundberg, R. et al. Scientific Reports.

Review: The role of the microbiome in the neurobiology of social behaviour. Sarkar, A. et al. Biological Reviews.

Pregnancy and early life
Neonatal diet alters fecal microbiota and metabolome profiles at different ages in infants fed breast milk or formula. Brink, L.R. et al. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Investigating Bifidobacteria and Human Milk Oligosaccharide Composition of Lactating Mothers. Lugli, A.G. et al. FEMS Microbiology Ecology.

Human respiratory microbiome
Bioorthogonal Non-Canonical Amino Acid Tagging Reveals Translationally Active Subpopulations of the Cystic Fibrosis Lung Microbiota. Valentini, T.D. et al. Nature Communications.

Human gut microbiome
Longitudinal Analysis of Serum Cytokine Levels and Gut Microbial Abundance Links IL-17/IL-22 With Clostridia and Insulin Sensitivity in Humans. Zhou, X. et al. Diabetes.

Berberine and Its Structural Analogs Have Differing Effects on Functional Profiles of Individual Gut Microbiomes. Li, L. et al. Gut Microbes.

Animal experiments
Developmental Signatures of Microbiota-Derived Metabolites in the Mouse Brain. Swann, J.R. et al. Metabolites.

Bifidobacteria Shape Host Neural Circuits During Postnatal Development by Promoting Synapse Formation and Microglial Function. Luck, B. et al. Scientific Reports.

Glycerol Monolaurate, an Analogue to a Factor Secreted by Lactobacillus, Is Virucidal Against Enveloped Viruses, Including HIV-1. Welch, J.L. et al. mBio.

Gut Microbiome Communication With Bone Marrow Regulates Susceptibility to Amebiasis. Burgess, S.L. et al. The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The Protective Effects of 2′-Fucosyllactose Against E. Coli O157 Infection Are Mediated by the Regulation of Gut Microbiota and the Inhibition of Pathogen Adhesion. Wang Y. et al. Nutrients.

Capsaicin Improves Glucose Homeostasis by Enhancing Glucagon-Like peptide-1 Secretion Through the Regulation of Bile Acid Metabolism via the Remodeling of the Gut Microbiota in Male Mice. Hui, S. et al. FASEB Journal.

Microbiota-Induced Type I Interferons Instruct a Poised Basal State of Dendritic Cells. Schaupp L. et al. Cell.

Intratumoral Accumulation of Gut Microbiota Facilitates CD47-based Immunotherapy via STING Signaling. Shi, Y. et al. Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Animal microbiome
Housefly (Musca domestica L.) associated microbiota across different life stages. de Jonge, N. et al. Scientific Reports.

Honey-bee–associated prokaryotic viral communities reveal wide viral diversity and a profound metabolic coding potential. Deboutte, W. et al. PNAS.

Bayesian Modeling Reveals Host Genetics Associated With Rumen Microbiota Jointly Influence Methane Emission in Dairy Cows. Zhang, Q. et al. ISME Journal.

Review: The role of the gut microbiome in sustainable teleost aquaculture. Perry, W.B. et al. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Interactions between social groups of colobus monkeys (Colobus vellerosus) explain similarities in their gut microbiomes. Wikberg E.C. Animal Behaviour.

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Global Warming Shifts the Composition of the Abundant Bacterial Phyllosphere Microbiota as Indicated by a Cultivation Dependent and Independent Study of the Grassland Phyllosphere of a Long-Term Warming Field-Experiment. Aydogan, E.L. et al. FEMS Microbiology Ecology.

Probiotics / prebiotics
A Human-Origin Probiotic Cocktail Ameliorates Aging-Related Leaky Gut and Inflammation via Modulating the Microbiota/Taurine/Tight Junction Axis. Ahmadi, S. et al. JCI Insight.

Bioinformatics
SHOGUN: A Modular, Accurate, and Scalable Framework for Microbiome Quantification. Hillmann, B. et al. Bioinformatics.

pepFunk: A Tool for Peptide-Centric Functional Analysis of Metaproteomic Human Gut Microbiome Studies. Simopoulos, C.M.A. et al. Bioinformatics.

Microbes in the news
Mapping the Microbiome in Saliva of COVID-19 Patients.

Inside the Belly of the Horse – Doctoral candidate Alexa Johnson goes inside the gut to investigate equine health.

May 12, 2020

Posted on by

Buenos dias!! Greetings from Spain.

Today we can highlight a very interesting article of gut–brain modulation of a monkey model of human depression, MELODY a new trial to improve the future microbiome of the offspring of mothers with Crohn’s disease, or how It’s the fertilization the main agent in rhizosphere composition.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did making it!
Stay safe, Jose

COVID-19

Pre-print: Prediction analysis of SARS-COV-2 entry in Livestock and Wild animals – Manas Ranjan Praharaj et al. – bioRxiv

Pre-print: Clinical performance of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody tests and potential protective immunity – Niko Kohmer et al. – bioRxiv

Pre-print: The role of high cholesterol in age related COVID19 lethality. – Hao Wang et al. – bioRxiv

Human vaginal microbiome

Effect of commercial vaginal products on the growth of uropathogenic and commensal vaginal bacteria – Kristin J. Hung et al. – Scientific Reports

Human respiratory microbiome

Differences in airway microbiome and metabolome of single lung transplant recipients – Nirmal S. Sharma et al. – Respiratory Research

Pre-print: Assessing the variation within the oral microbiome of healthy adults – Jacob T. Nearing et al. – bioRxiv

Microbiome profile associated with malignant pleural effusion – Samira Shojaee et al. – PLOS ONE

Composition and function of oral microbiota between gingival squamous cell carcinoma and periodontitis – Yuchao Li et al. – Oral Oncology

Esophageal microbiome signature in patients with Barrett’s esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma – Loris Riccardo Lopetuso et al. – PLOS ONE

Human gut microbiome

Subtle Variations in Dietary-Fiber Fine Structure Differentially Influence the Composition and Metabolic Function of GutMicrobiota – Tuncil, Y. E et al. – mSphere

Intestinal parasites in rural communities in Nan Province, Thailand: Changes in bacterial gut microbiota associated with minute intestinal fluke infection – Ajala Prommi et al. – Cambridge University Press

Perturbations of the Gut Microbiome and Metabolome in Children with Calcium Oxalate Kidney Stone Disease – Michelle R et al. – Journal of the American Society of Nephrology

The gut microbiome modulates gut–brain axis glycerophospholipid metabolism in a region-specific manner in a non-human primate model of depression – Peng Zheng et al. – Molecular Psychiatry

A dietary intervention to improve the microbiome composition of pregnant women with Crohn’s disease and their offspring: The MELODY (Modulating Early Life Microbiome through Dietary Intervention in Pregnancy) trial design – Peter Inga et al. – Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications

Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis Associated with Bile Acid Metabolism in Neonatal Cholestasis Disease – Meng Li et al. – Scientific Reports

Individual and cohort-specific gut microbiota patterns associated with tissue-specific insulin sensitivity in overweight and obese males – Gerben D. A. Hermes et al. – Scientific Reports

Fecal microbiota composition is linked to the postoperative disease course in patients with Crohn’s disease – Anna Strömbeck et al. – BMC Gastroenterology

Human skin microbiome

Diversity of navel microbiome in young adults Free – Shreya Shah et al. – Journal of Medical Microbiology

Animal experiments

Wild primate microbiomes prevent weight gain in germ-free mice – Dimitrios N. Sidiropoulos et al. – Animal Microbiome

Changes in the microbiome of mariculture feed organisms after treatment with a potentially probiotic strain of Phaeobacter inhibens – Karen K. Dittmann et al. – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Alterations of fecal microbiome characteristics by dietary soy isoflavone ingestion in growing pigs infected with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus – B N Smith et al. – Journal of Animal Science

Influenza infection elicits an expansion of gut population of endogenous Bifidobacterium animalis which protects mice against infection – Qiang Zhang et al. – Genome Biology

Pre-print: Impact of industrial production system parameters on chicken microbiomes: mechanisms to improve performance and reduce Campylobacter – Aaron McKenna et al. – bioRxiv

Administration of Bifidobacterium bifidum CGMCC 15068 modulates gut microbiota and metabolome in azoxymethane (AOM)/dextran sulphate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis-associated colon cancer (CAC) in mice – Qing Wang et al. – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Animal microbiome

Structure and membership of gut microbial communities in multiple fish cryptic species under potential migratory effects – My Hanh Le et al. – Scientific Reports

Seasonal habitat drives intestinal microbiome composition in anadromous Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) – Geraint Element et al. – Envariomental microbiology

Honeybee microbiome is stabilized in the presence of propolis – Perot Saelao et al. – Biology letters

Body-size Scaling is Related to Gut Microbial Diversity, Metabolism and Dietary Niche of Arboreal Folivorous Flying Squirrels – Po-Yu Liu et al. – Scientific Reports

Preprint: Differential Response of Digesta- and Mucosa-Associated Intestinal Microbiota to Dietary Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) Larvae Meal in Seawater Phase Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) – Yanxian Li et al. – bioRxiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Liming reduces N2O emissions from Mediterranean soil after-rewetting and affects the size, structure and transcription of microbial communities – Eduardo Vázquez et al – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Significant effects on soil microbial communities were not detected after strategic tillage following 44 years of conventional or no-tillage management – Vivian A. Rincon-Florez – Pedobiologia

Seasonal variations in soil microbial communities under different land restoration types in a subtropical mountains region, Southwest China – Denggao Fu et al. – Applied Soil Ecology

Short term effects of biochar with different particle sizes on phosphorous availability and microbial communities – Rubab Sarfraz et al. – Chemosphere

Microbial community responses to different volatile petroleum hydrocarbon class mixtures in an aerobic sandy soil – George Mangse et al.– Environmental Pollution

Plant litter amendments in restored wetland soils altered microbial communities more than clay additions – Christine E. Maietta et al. – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Long-term fertilization rather than plant species shapes rhizosphere and bulk soil prokaryotic communities in agroecosystems – Mikhail V. Semenov et al. – Applied Soil Ecology

Effect of compost amendment and bioaugmentation on PAH degradation and microbial community shifting in petroleum-contaminated soil – Manli Wu et al. – Chemosphere

Review: The use of -omics tools for assessing biodeterioration of cultural heritage: A review – GutarowskaBeata – Journal of Cultural Heritage

Water and extremophile

Tagging the vanA gene in wastewater microbial communities for cell sorting and taxonomy of vanA carrying cells – Sara Gallego et al – Science of The Total Environment

High-Throughput Sequencing Reveals a Potentially Novel Sulfurovum Species Dominating the Microbial Communities of the Seawater–Sediment Interface of a Deep-Sea Cold Seep in South China Sea – Qing-Lei Sun et al. – Microorganisms

Glacial microbiota are hydrologically connected and temporally variable – Karen A Cameron et al. – Enviromental microbiology

Built environment

The microbiome driving anaerobic digestion and microbial analysis – Jun Wei Lim et al. – Advances in Bioenergy

Bioinformatics

MG-MLST: Characterizing the Microbiome at the Strain Level in Metagenomic Data – Nathanael J. Bangayan et al. – Microorganisms

Inference of single-cell phylogenies from lineage tracing data using Cassiopeia – Matthew G Jones et al. – Genome Biology

TaxIt: An iterative computational pipeline for untargeted strain-level identification using MS/MS spectra from pathogenic single-organism samples – Mathias Kuhring et al. Journal of Proteome Research

Review: The Computational Diet: A Review of Computational Methods Across Diet, Microbiome, and Health – Ameen Eetemadi et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

General microbiology

Review: Diversity, ecology and evolution of Archaea – Brett J. Baker et al – Nature Microbiology

Microbes on the market

Microbiome Sequencing Services Market 2020-2024 – husain – NJ MMA News

May 9, 2020

Posted on by

Among the highlights for today, there’s an unusual preprint on using honeybees for proxy sampling of the urban microbiome, as well as a paper on the effect of captivity on the microbiome of raptors.

In some non-microbiome related news, the summarized highlights from the 5th International One Health Congress were recently published. Some of their recommendations regarding science and public health are particularly apt considering the present pandemic, and I found it to be quite an interesting read. You can find it here:

Make science evolve into a One Health approach to improve health and security: a white paper – Osterhaus et al. – One Health Outlook

I hope you’re all doing well, wherever you are!

COVID-19

Preprint: The coding capacity of SARS-CoV-2 – Finkel et al. – bioRxiv

Pregnancy and early life

An individualized mosaic of maternal microbial strains is transmitted to the infant gut microbial community – Koo et al. – Royal Society of Open Science

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Host evolutionary history and ecology shape virome composition in fishes – Geoghegan et al. – bioRxiv

The fecal microbiota of wild and captive raptors – Oliveira et al. – Animal Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Phylogenetic farming: Can evolutionary history predict crop rotation via the soil microbiome? – Kaplan et al. – Evolutionary Applications

Built environment

Preprint: Holobiont urbanism: sampling urban beehives reveals cities’ metagenomes – Henaff et al. – bioRxiv

Techniques

Preprint: Full-length 16S rRNA gene amplicon analysis of human gut microbiota using MinION™ nanopore sequencing confers species-level resolution – Matsuo et al. – bioRxiv

Quantifying technical confounders in microbiome studies – Bartolomaeus et al. – Cardiovascular Research

May 8, 2020.

Posted on by

The highlighted paper of the day looked at the relationship between statins and gut microbiome / enterotype prevalence, mined from data collected from the MetaCardis study which looked at over 2000 participants all across the EU and collected over 1,400 parameters.

If you’re looking for a review/news article of the paper head to: Statin drugs might boost healthy gut microbes

If you’re looking for the paper: Statin therapy is associated with lower prevalence of gut microbiota dysbiosis – Sara Silva – Nature

COVID-19


Identification of Drugs Blocking SARS-CoV-2 Infection using Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-derived Colonic Organoids – Xiaohua Duan – bioRxiv

Whose coronavirus strategy worked best? Scientists hunt most effective policies – Elizabeth Gibney – Nature

Coronavirus activates a stem cell-mediated defense mechanism that accelerates the activation of dormant tuberculosis: implications for the COVID-19 pandemic – Lekhika Pathak – bioRxiv

General Microbiome

Multi ‘Omics Profiling of the HIV Airway Epithelium: Integration of the Microbiome, Methylome, and Transcriptome – MS Jude – Am J Respir Crit Care Med

Intracellular Staphylococcus aureus persisters upon antibiotic exposure – Frederuc Peyrusson – Nature Communications

Isolation and characterization of bacteriophages that infect Citrobacter rodentium, a model pathogen for investigating human intestinal diseases – Carolina Mizuno – bioRxiv

MiniReview: A toxic environment: a growing understanding of how microbial communities affect Shiga toxin expression by E. coli O157:H7 – Erin M. Nawrocki – American Society for Microbiology, Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Pregnancy and early life

Gut microbiota derived metabolites contribute to intestinal barrier maturation at the suckling-to- weaning transition – Martin Beaumont – Gut Microbes

Gut Microbiome Derived 12,13 Dihome Promotes Antigen Presenting Cell Dysfunction In Vitro and Airway Allergic Inflammation In Vivo – S Levan – Atsjournal


Multi-site human microbiome

The Microbiome and the Gut‐Liver‐Brain Axis for CNS Clinical Pharmacology: Challenges in Specifying and Integrating In Vitro and In Silico Models – Kyle Hawkins – Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Gut Check: The Intestinal Microbiome Does Not Predict or Protect from Vancomycin- Resistant Enterococcus Acquisition Among Critically Ill Patients – Chanderraj – Atsjournal

The Tumour-Resident Microbiome Is Associated with Cancer Hypomethylation Status in Lung Adenocarcinoma – Marshall – atsjournal

An association between the gut microbiota and immune cell dynamics in humans. – Jonas Schluter – bioRxiv

Metabolomics

Analyzing the impact of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection on primary human macrophages by combined exploratory and targeted metabolomics – Vrieling Frank

Review: Metabolome–Microbiome Crosstalk and Human Disease – Kathleen Lee-Sarwar – metabolites

Animal Microbiome

Review – Mycobacterium bovis: From Genotyping to Genome Sequencing – Ana Guimaraeas – Microorganism

Animal experiments

Staphylococcus aureus-induced proteomic changes in the mammary tissue of rats: A TMT-based study – Lirong Cai – Plos One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome


Effects of earthworms on the microbiomes and antibiotic resistomes of detritus fauna and phyllosphere – Dong Zhu – Environmental Science and Technology

Surface runoff alters cave microbial community structure and function – Madison Davis – Plos One

Water and extremophile microbiome

Culturing of ‘Unculturable’ Subsurface Microbes: Natural Organic Carbon Source Fuels the Growth of Diverse and Distinct Bacteria from Groundwater – Xiaoqin Wu – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics & Techniques

Sequence count data are poorly fit by the negative binomial distribution – Stjin Hawinkel – Plos One

Book Chappter: Meta-Pangenome: At the Crossroad of Pangenomics and Metagenomics – Bing MA – The Pangenome, Springer.

Snipe: Highly sensitive pathogen detection from metagenomic sequencing data – Lihong Huang – bioRxiv

Validated Method for the Study of Human Lung Microbiota from Excised Tissue – Dumont-Leblond – atsjounal

Microbes in the news

Bad to the Bone – Matthew Greseth- MUSC Health

Meet the ‘psychobiome’: the gut bacteria that may alter how you think, feel, and act – Elizabeth Pennisi – ScienceMag

Decoding the Microbiome: Essential to Advancing Precision Medicine – Heather Hall – rdworldonline

Harithaa’s non-microbiology picks!

Mass spectrometry for future atomic clocks – Marianna Safrova – Nature (news & views)