At the beginning of todays post I wanted to highlight some interesting recent articles on COVID-19 and in particular a recent trial demonstrating the utility of BCG for a trained immunity response to protect against respiratory infections in the elderly. Enjoy!

COVID-19 & Vaccines

Tracking the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia using genomics – Seemann et al. Nature Communications. 

A comparison of four serological assays for detecting anti–SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in human serum samples from different populations – Grzelak et al. Science Translational Medicine

Phase 1–2 Trial of a SARS-CoV-2 Recombinant Spike Protein Nanoparticle Vaccine – Keech et al. New England Journal of Medicine

ACTIVATE: Randomised clinical trial of BCG vaccination against infection in the elderly – Giamarellos-Bourboulis et al. Cell

General microbiome

Multi-omic Analysis of the Interaction between Clostridioides difficile Infection and Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Bushman et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Gut mycobiome and its interaction with diet, gut bacteria and alzheimer’s disease markers in subjects with mild cognitive impairment: A pilot study – Nagpal et al. EBioMedicine

Relationship between the composition of the intestinal microbiota and the tracheal and intestinal colonization by opportunistic pathogens in intensive care patients – Fontaine et al. PLOS One

Human respiratory microbiome

Respiratory Bacteria Stabilize and Promote Airborne Transmission of Influenza A Virus – Rowe et al. mSystems

Animal microbiome

Uncovering the microbiome of invasive sympatric European brown hares and European rabbits in Australia – Shanmuganandam et al. PeerJ

Water and extremophile microbiome

Microbiome dynamics in the tissue and mucus of acroporid corals differ in relation to host and environmental parameters – Marchioro et al. PeerJ

Microbial Communities across Global Marine Basins Show Important Compositional Similarities by Depth – Miller et al. mBio. 

Phages and viruses

Metagenome Data on Intestinal Phage-Bacteria Associations Aids the Development of Phage Therapy against Pathobionts – Fujimoto et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Bioinformatics

BLAST-QC: automated analysis of BLAST results – Torkian et al. Environmental Microbiome