Greetings from Wiltshire, England!

Today’s digest brings a little bit of everything. We’ve been cataloguing the latest COVID-19 publications during this pandemic, and today I’m please to bring you a paper combining both COVID-19 and microbiome research!

Elsewhere, there are plenty of environmental microbiome publications, including a great paper on the challenges of studying microbiology in space, an analysis of how aerosols spread COVID-19 and other infectious agents in dental practices, and plenty of articles on various aspects of soil microbiomes.

I hope everyone’s coping well during these times. On a personal level, I’m delighted to be returning to the lab this week to resume my PhD research into gut microbiomes and cancer. I’m glad to be back, but worried about how my pipetting skills have suffered during my time off!

Stay safe, and happy reading!

COVID-19

Intestinal Flora as a Potential Strategy to Fight SARS-CoV-2 Infection – He et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Preprint: Naturally mutated spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 variants show differential levels of cell entry – Ozono et al.

Human vaginal microbiome

Novel Potential Probiotic Lactobacilli for Prevention and Treatment of Vulvovaginal Infections – Kumherová et al. – Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins

Preprint: The structure and diversity of strain level variation in vaginal bacteria –Tortelli et al.

Human gut microbiome

Early exposure to food contaminants reshapes maturation of the human brain-gut-microbiota axis – Sarron et al. – World Journal of Gastroenterology

Luminal microbiota related to Crohn’s disease recurrence after surgery – Hamilton et al. – Gut Microbes

Animal experiments

Preprint: The gut mycobiome of healthy mice is shaped by the environment and shapes metabolic outcomes in response to diet – Mims et al.

Animal microbiome

Germ-free housing conditions do not affect aortic root and aortic arch lesion size of late atherosclerotic low-density lipoprotein receptor-deficient mice – Kiouptsi et al. – Gut Microbes

The effects of environment and ontogeny on the skin microbiome of two Stegastes damselfishes (Pomacentridae) from the eastern Caribbean Sea – Xavier et al. – Marine Biology

Variations and Potential Factors of Gut Prokaryotic Microbiome During Spawning Migration in Coilia nasus – Ying et al. – Current Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Genetic diversity of Agrobacterium species isolated from nodules of common bean and soybean in Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Mozambique, and description of the new species Agrobacterium fabacearum sp. nov. – Delamuta et al. – International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

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

Differences in soil microbial communities and enzyme activity due to the application of bioslurry under cultivation – Mofokeng et al. – South African Journal of Plant and Soil

Microbial Communities in the Fynbos Region of South Africa: What Happens during Woody Alien Plant Invasions – Jacobs et al. – Diversity

Water and extremophile microbiome

Sierra Nevada mountain lake microbial communities are structured by temperature, resources and geographic location – Schulhof et al. – Molecular Ecology

Preprint: Fungal communities in sediments along a depth gradient in the Eastern Tropical Pacific – Rojas-Jimenez et al

Built environment

Preprint: Evaluating aerosol and splatter following dental procedures – Allison et al.

Microbes in space

Current Progression: Application of High-Throughput Sequencing Technique in Space Microbiology – Chen et al. – BioMed Research International

Food microbiology

Swine Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carrying toxic-shock syndrome toxin gene in Hong Kong, China – Sapugahawatte et al. – Emerging Microbes and Infections

Probiotics / prebiotics

Moving from probiotics to precision probiotics – Veiga, et al. – Nature Microbiology

Phages and viruses

Fetal inheritance of chromosomally integrated human herpesvirus 6 predisposes the mother to pre-eclampsia – Gaccioli et al. – Nature Microbiology

Techniques

Developing standards for the microbiome field – Amos et al. – Microbiome

Microbes in the news

Team Examines Microbiome of Marine Invertebrate That Produces Anticancer Compound – Technology Networks

Bacteria live on our eyeballs — and understanding their role could help treat common eye diseases – Yahoo! News