Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Today’s digest is unintentionally themed around change. Included is an article on the metabolic versatility of Salmonella enterica and another on the genetic diversification of Escherichia coli. If you’re more interested in the big picture, there is also an article about the evolution of ecological niches in plant-associated microbes as well as an article about the impacts of global change on soil microbial diversity and functionality.

Here’s to hoping that we are just as resilient as the microbes we study!

Events and jobs

A special plug for the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP). NSURP is a community-driven initiative to create rewarding remote summer research opportunities for BIPOC undergraduate students in the microbial sciences. They are actively recruiting mentors and students for this summer, with the hope to match pairs by June 22nd.

General microbiome

Salmonella finds a way: Metabolic versatility of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in diverse host environments – Taylor and Winter – PLOS Pathogens

Phylogenetic background and habitat drive the genetic diversification of Escherichia coli – Touchon et al. – PLOS Genetics

Human skin microbiome

The microbiome of diabetic foot ulcers: a comparison of swab and tissue biopsy wound sampling techniques using 16S rRNA gene sequencing – Travis et al. – BMC Microbiology

Animal experiments

MAPK-dependent hormonal signaling plasticity contributes to overcoming Bacillus thuringiensis toxin action in an insect host – Guo et al. – Nature Communications

Investigation of the effects of probiotic, Bacillus subtilis on stress reactions in laying hens using infrared thermography – Soroko and Zaborski – PLOS ONE

Gut carriage of antimicrobial resistance genes in women exposed to small-scale poultry farms in rural Uganda: A feasibility study – Weil et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Anti-microbial activity of whole blood and plasma collected from Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) against three different microbes – DeRogatis et al. – PLOS ONE

Bacteriophages specific to Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli exist in goat feces and associated environments on an organic produce farm in Northern California, USA – Lennon et al. – PLOS ONE

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Survival of Escherichia coli O157 in autoclaved and natural sandy soil mesocosms – Baker et al. – PLOS ONE

Geometry and evolution of the ecological niche in plant-associated microbes – Chaloner et al. – Nature Communications

Meta-analysis of the impacts of global change factors on soil microbial diversity and functionality – Zhou et al. – Nature Communications

Food microbiology

Neighboring plants divergently modulate effects of loss-of-function in maize mycorrhizal phosphate uptake on host physiology and root fungal microbiota – Fabiańska et al. – PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

Comparative analysis of viruses in four bee species collected from agricultural, urban, and natural landscapes – Olgun et al. – PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

bigPint: A Bioconductor visualization package that makes big data pint-sized – Rutter and Cook – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques

Subduing the influence of PCR inhibitors on amplifying aged, degraded, and low copy number DNA: PCR enhancer cocktail-p and rescue PCR – Kemp et al. – PLOS ONE

Click-to-Capture: A method for enriching viable Staphylococcus aureus using bio-orthogonal labeling of surface proteins – Shalizi et al. – PLOS ONE