Hello from the Sonoran Desert! In today’s digest, you’ll find quite a few exciting papers! For those interested in soil microbiology, you’ll find in today’s digest a very interesting piece on the the biodiversity and ecology of protists in the soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Antarctica). This piece is particularly exciting given that the role and impact of protists in polar regions is largely unknown and understudied.
Curious readers should also take a look at the amazing study by Dunaj and collaborators focusing on spider’s associated microbiome. This piece examines the host-microbe co-evolution of different widow spider species showing a strong congruence of the microbiome beta-diversity and the host phylogeny.
Finally, in today’s non-microbiology pick, I recommend a preprint, that explored the relationship between the use of jargon and citations in cave research articles. Interestingly the authors suggest that the juse of jargon in title and abstract significantly reduces the number of citations a paper recieves!
Have a great Sunday!
Human vaginal microbiome
Review: The vaginal microbiome of sub-Saharan African women: revealing important gaps in the era of next-generation sequencing – Martina Odogwy et al. – PeerJ
Human gut microbiome
Review: Association or Causation? Exploring the Oral Microbiome and Cancer Links – Teles et al. – Journal of Dental research
Animal microbiome
Learning machine approach reveals microbial signatures of diet and sex in dog – Scarsella et al.- Plos One
Spider phylosymbiosis: divergence of widow spider species and their tissues’ microbiomes – Dunaj et al. – BMC Evolutionary Biology
Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Review: The rhizosphere microbiome: functions, dynamics, and role in plant protection – Rabelo de Faria et al. – Tropical Plant Pathology
Review: The Floral Microbiome: Plant, Pollinator, and Microbial Perspectives – Vannette – Annual review of Ecology, Evolution and systematics
Response of soil microbial communities to natural and managed vegetation restoration in a subtropical karst region – Hu et al. – CATENA
Water and extremophile microbiome
Shotgun metagenomics reveal a diverse assemblage of protists in a model Antarctic soil ecosystem – Thompson et al.- Envirmental Microbiology
Phages and viruses
Evolution of a major virion protein of the giant pandoraviruses from an inactivated bacterial glycoside hydrolase – Krupovic et al. – Virus Evolution
Bioinformatics
Predicting Host Phenotype Based on Gut Microbiome Using a Convolutional Neural Network Approach – Reiman et al.- Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2190. Humana, New York, NY.
Database limitations for studying the human gut microbiome – Dias et al. – PeerJ
Techniques
Review: Microbial High Throughput Phenomics: The Potential of an Irreplaceable Omics – Acin-Albiac et al. – Computational and Structural Biotechnolgy Journal
My non-microbiology pick
Preprint: Specialized terminology limits the reach of new scientific knowledge – Martinez et al. – BioRxiv