Good morning and happy Friday!

In my last blog post I requested reader contributions and many of you reached out! Below are some of the highlights which include a commentary on phylogenetic core groups, a preprint on viral RNA methylation in Wolbachia, a database for the murine oral bacterial community, and a research article on fungal modification in the leaf-cutter ant fungal garden ecosystem.

Events and jobs

Biological Sciences Laboratory Instructor Position at Smith College in Northampton, MA

General microbiome

***Commentary: Phylogenetic Core Groups: a promising concept in search of a consistent methodological framework – Pascual-García – Microbiome

Animal microbiome

***Preprint: Differential viral RNA methylation contributes to pathogen blocking in Wolbachia-colonized arthropod – Bhattacharya et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Isolation and characterization of a novel Wolbachia bacteriophage from Allonemobius socius crickets in Missouri – Fischer et al. – bioRxiv

***From plants to ants: Fungal modification of leaf lipids for nutrition and communication in the leaf-cutter ant fungal garden ecosystem – Khadempour et al. – mSystems

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Experimental evolution-driven identification of Arabidopsis rhizosphere competence genes in Pseudomonas protegens – Zhang et al. – bioRxiv

Built environment

Metagenomic profile of microbial communities in a drinking water storage tank sediment after sequential exposure to monochloramine, free chlorine, and monochloramine – Gomez-Alvarez et al. – ACS EST Water

Bioinformatics

***A 16S rRNA gene and draft genome database for the murine oral bacterial community – Joesph et al. – mSystems