November 5, 2020

Hello, friends!

I’m an American who grew up in North Carolina, lived in Georgia for many years, and now counts Pennsylvania as home. All of this is to say, I’ve been especially consumed by the US election this morning and so today’s digest is tailor made to distract me for a few hours. It contains a heavy dose of general microbiome, environmental microbiology, and microbial ecology articles. If you need a bigger distraction than usual, I’ve highlighted a few articles that I am particularly looking forward to reading and am using this space as an opportunity to reintroduce myself and share why these articles have peaked my interest.

I completed my PhD research on the cockroach gut microbiome and through this work, I realized how complex microbiome-host-environmental interactions can be. Because of this, my first highlighted article is a review about cockroach-associated microbes. Currently, I work in a national lab studying environmental-associated microbes (and their functional capacity!) in a variety of different energy-associated environments. It’s no wonder I’m excited to read the second highlighted article focused on novel soil microbes found in an abandoned coal mine! I’m also very hungry at the moment, so as soon I read the phrase “smoked cow cheese” I was motivated to explore my cheese drawer as well as think more about microbial food safety and the microbial production of favor compounds. Finally, I love musical theater and science outreach, so I’m delighted to share a mouldy article that combines both passions.

Happy reading, everyone!


General microbiome

Review: The pneumococcal social network – Aggarawal et al. – PLOS Pathogens

Expanding magnetic organelle biogenesis in the domain Bacteria – Lin et al. – Microbiome

Gene duplication drives genome expansion in a major lineage of Thaumarchaeota – Sheridan et al. – Nature Communications

Metatranscriptomic analysis reveals active microbes and genes responded to short-term Cr(VI) stress – Yu et al. – Ecotoxicology

Effects of heavy ion particle irradiation on spore germination of Bacillus spp. from extremely hot and cold environments – Zammuto et al. – Life
Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiome

Gut microbiota ecology: Biodiversity estimated from hybrid neutral-niche model increases with health status and aging – Sala et al. – PLOS ONE

Implication of gut microbiota in the physiology of rats intermittently exposed to cold and hypobaric hypoxia – Ramos-Romero et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Exploring the resident gut microbiota of stranded odontocetes: high similarities between two dolphin species Tursiops truncatus and Stenella coeruleoalba – Abdelrhman et al. – Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK

**Review: Bacteria associated with cockroaches: health risk or biotechnological opportunity? – Guzman & Vilcinskas – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Impact of land uses, drought, flood, wildfire, and cascading events on water quality and microbial communities: A review and analysis – Mishra et al. – Journal of Hydrology

Dams shift microbial community assembly and imprint nitrogen transformation along the Yangtze River – Gao et al. – Water Research

Built environment

**Isolation and characterization of soil bacteria from an abandoned coal mine in southeast Kansas – Bechtold et al. – BioOne Complete

Review: Understanding building-occupant-microbiome interactions toward healthy built environments – Li et al. – Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering

Food microbiology

**Microbial quality of smoked cow cheese “Parencia” – Kačániová et al. – Scientific Papers: Animal Science and Biotechnologies

Phages and viruses

Virome of bat guano from nine northern California roosts – Li et al. – Journal of Virology

Bioinformatics

The IMG/M data management and analysis system v.6.0: new tools and advanced capabilities – Chen et al. – Nucleic Acids Research

PhANNs, a fast and accurate tool and web server to classify phage structural proteins – Cantu et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques

Low-cost biofuel-powered autoclaving machine for use in rural health care centres – Ahmed et al. – Journal of Medical Engineering & Technology

**‘The Mould that Changed the World’: Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of children’s knowledge and motivation for behavioural change following participation in an antimicrobial resistance musical – Hall et al. – PLOS ONE

Harnessing the power of eDNA metabarcoding for the detection of deep-sea fishes – McClenaghan et al. – PLOS ONE

November 3, 2020

Greetings Everyone!!

Happy reading of an interesting digest for November 3, 2020.

General microbiome
The perfect condition for the rising of superbugs: person-to-person contagion and antibiotic use are the key factors responsible for the positive correlation between antibiotic resistance gene diversity and virulence gene diversity in human metagenomes -Domingues et al – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome
Parallel and non-parallel changes of the gut microbiota during trophic diversification in repeated young adaptive radiations of sympatric cichlid fish – Härer et al – Microbiome

Exploring the resident gut microbiota of stranded odontocetes: high similarities between two dolphin species Tursiops truncatus and Stenella coeruleoalba – Abdelrhman et al – Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom

Animal experiments
Investigating the cow skin and teat canal microbiomes of the bovine udder using different sampling and sequencing approaches – Dean et al – Journal of Dairy Science

Animal microbiome
Review: Defining Coral Bleaching as a Microbial Dysbiosis within the Coral Holobiont – Boilard et al – microorganisms

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Free Iron and Iron-Reducing Microorganisms in Permafrost and Permafrost-Affected Soils of Northeastern Siberia – Rivkina et al – Eurasian

Soil Science
Behaviors of cadmium in rhizosphere soils and its interaction with microbiome communities in phytoremediation – Niu et al – Chemosphere

Water and extremophile microbiome
Uncovering the genomic potential of the Amazon River microbiome to degrade rainforest organic matter – Santos-Júnior et al – Microbiome

Microbiome variability across the native and invasive range of the ascidian Clavelina oblonga – Goddard-Dwyer et al – Applied and Environmental Biology

Microbiome of the Black Sea water column analyzed by genome centric metagenomics – Cabello-Yeves et al – bioRxiv

Built environment
Review: Understanding building-occupant-microbiome interactions toward healthy built environments: A review – Li et al – Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering

Microbes in space
Molecular repertoire of Deinococcus radiodurans after 1 year of exposure outside the International Space Station within the Tanpopo mission – Ott et al – Microbiome

Bioinformatics
NBZIMM: negative binomial and zero-inflated mixed models, with application to microbiome/metagenomics data analysis – Zhang and Yi – BMC Bioinformatics

Techniques
MASI: microbiota—active substance interactions database – Zeng et al – Nucleic Acids Research

November 1, 2020

Hello from the Sonoran Desert! In today’s digest, you’ll find several interesting works, in particular on recent advances in understanding the gut microbiome! Iandaza and collaborators review the rise of machine learning and deep learning methods in exploring the gut microbiota and the potential of these methods in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Additionally, this digest links to a freely-accessible webinar series from the university of Illinois on gut-brain connections.

If you are interested in microbial ecology, I also recommend taking a look at a very interesting preprint from Ettinger and collaborators. The authors investigate the distribution of fungi associated with a widely distributed seagrass, Zostera marina. This work is particularly relevant since the role and diversity of fungi in marine ecosystems are often overlooked in microbiome studies, while terrestrial fungi have been shown to have critical roles as decomposers, pathogens and endophytes.

Finally, you’ll find in this digest a non-microbiology pick: an amazing preprint where authors assessed 2.75 million open access articles on their transparency (data sharing, code sharing, conflicts of interest disclosures, funding disclosures and protocol registration)!

Have a great Sunday!


Events and webinars

Webinar: Scientific Webinars on the Gut-Brain Connection Spotlight Spike in Research


Pregnancy and early life

Review: The dark matter of microbiome: the mother-infant pair virome – Comitini et al. – Minerva Pediatrica

Human vaginal microbiome

Intrauterine Growth Restriction Is Associated with Unique Features of the Reproductive Microbiome – Hu et al. – Reproductive sciences

Human gut microbiome

Review: Gut microbiota and artificial intelligence approaches: A scoping review – Iadanza et al. – Health and Technology

Review: Circadian rhythms and the gut microbiota: from the metabolic syndrome to cancer – Bishehsari et al. – Nature Reviews Endocrinology

Ecological Structuring of Temperate Bacteriophages in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease-Affected Gut – Nishiyama et al. – Microorganisms


Animal microbiome

Preprint: Genomic and microscopic evidence of stable high density and maternally inherited Wolbachia infections in Anopheles mosquitoes – Walker et al. – BioRxiV

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Testosterone amendment alters metabolite profiles of the soil microbial community – Ding et al. – Environmental Pollution

Host population size is linked to orchid mycorrhizal fungal communities in roots and soil, which are shaped by microenvironment – Kaur et al. – Mycorrhiza

Root exudates drive soil‐microbe‐nutrient feedbacks in response to plant growth – Zhao et al. – Plant, Cell & Environment

Microbial activity and metamitron degrading microbial communities differ between soil and water-sediment systems – Wang et al. – Journal of hazardous materials

Water and extremophile microbiome

Review: Insights into ‘Symbiodiniaceae phycosphere’ in a coral holobiont – Guedes Garrido et al. – Symbiosis

Diversity and Dynamics of Seaweed Associated Microbial Communities Inhabiting the Lagoon of Venice – Juhmani et al. – Microorganisms

Preprint: Global diversity and biogeography of the Zostera marina mycobiome – Ettinger et al. – BioRxiV

Built environment

Analysis of Microbial Community Structure and Diversity in Surrounding Rock Soil of Different Waste Dump Sites in Fushun Western Opencast Mine – Jiang et al. – Chemosphere


My non-microbiology picks

Preprint: Assessment of transparency indicators across the biomedical literature: how open is open? – Serghiou et al. – BioRxiV

October 27, 2020

Greetings from Pittsburgh, PA!

Today’s digest a contains articles focused on the oral microbiome, koala symbionts, soil microbial communities, and more. For those of you who are a bit too tired to digest cutting-edge research, I suggest using the 10 simple steps outlined in the highlighted editorial to colorize your own data visualizations. Finally, if you just need a break, I suggest bookmarking the article on the whale skin microbiome and revisiting the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Happy reading (or movie watching)!

General microbiome

Taxonomic profiling and functional characterization of the healthy human oral bacterial microbiome from the north Indian urban sub-population – Verma et al. – Archives of Microbiology

Pregnancy and early life

Maternal and cord blood vitamin D level and the infant gut microbiota in a birth cohort study – Kassem et al. – Maternal Health, Neonatology and Perinatology

Human gut microbiome

Review: A review on preventive role of ketogenic diet (KD) in CNS disorders from the gut microbiota perspective – Rawat et al. – Reviews in Neurosciences

Animal experiments

Challenges in microbiological identification of aerobic bacteria isolated from the skin of reptiles – Brockmann et al. – PLOS ONE

Isolation and sequence-based characterization of a koala symbiont: Lonepinella koalarum – Dahlhausen et al. – Peer J

Vertical transmission of zika virus in Aedes albopictus – Lai et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Cultured-dependent and cultured-independent study of bacteria associated with Thai commercial stingless bee Lepidotrigona terminata – Suphaphimol et al. – Journal of Apicultural Research

Animal microbiome

**Skin microbiome of beluga whales: spatial, temporal, and health-related dynamics – Van Cise et al. – Animal Microbiome

Diversity of bacterial symbionts associated with Myzus persicae (Sulzer) (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Aphidinae) revealed by 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing – Xu et al. – Microbial Ecology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Protists and collembolans alter microbial community composition, C dynamics and soil aggregation in simplified consumer–prey systems – Erktan et al. – Biogeosciences

Responses of soil bacteria and fungi after 36 years fertilizer, straw cover, and irrigation management practices in northwest China – Zhang et al. – Soil Use and Management

Water and extremophile microbiome

Integration of time-series meta-omics data reveals how microbial ecosystems respond to disturbance – Herold et al. – Nature Communications

Islands in the sand: Are all hypolithic microbial communities the same? – Lebre et al. – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Shifts of sediment bacterial community and respiration along a successional gradient in a typical karst plateau lake wetland (China) – Xia et al. – Journal of Oceanology and Limnology

Salinity controls soil microbial community structure and function in coastal estuarine wetlands – Zhang et al. – Environmental Microbiology

Phages and viruses

Association of host proteins with the broad host range filamentous phage NgoΦ6 of Neisseria gonorrhoeae – Piekarowicz et al. – PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

**Editorial: Ten simple rules to colorize biological data visualization – Hattab et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

NanoGalaxy: Nanopore long-read sequencing data analysis in Galaxy – de Koning et al. – GigaScience

Predicting antimicrobial resistance using conserved genes – Nguyen et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques

Review: Innovations to culturing the uncultured microbial majority – Lewis et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Comparison of the diversity of cultured and total bacterial communities in marine sediment using culture-dependent and sequencing methods – Wang et al. – PeerJ

Science, publishing, and career

Comment: Crowdsourcing virtual summer research opportunities to support minorities in microbiology – Johnson et al. – Nature Microbiology

October 22, 2020

Good morning! A relatively short collection of articles to share with you today—highlights include a human microbiome study that evaluated disease markers in more than 3,000 subjects, a study of emerging antibiotic resistance in melting Alaskan permafrost, and a preprint that found multiple immune responses typically associated with the microbiome may actually be more closely linked to viruses.

Human gut microbiome

Health and disease markers correlate with gut microbiome composition across thousands of people, Ohad Manor et al., Nature Communications

Newly Explored Faecalibacterium Diversity Is Connected to Age, Lifestyle, Geography, and Disease, Francesca De Filippis et al., Current Biology

Preprint: Extraintestinal pathogenic (ExPEC) lineages explain prolonged faecal carriage of travel-acquired extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli, Boas CL van der Putten et al., bioRxiv

Intestinal microbiology shapes population health impacts of diet and lifestyle risk exposures in Torres Strait Islander communities, Fredrick M Mobegi et al., eLife

Animal experiments

A longitudinal study reveals the alterations of the Microtus fortis colonic microbiota during the natural resistance to Schistosoma japonicum infection, Du Zhang et al., Experimental Parasitology

Animal microbiome

Seasonal variation in the gut microbiota of rhesus macaques inhabiting limestone forests of southwest Guangxi, China, Yuhui Li et al., Archives of Microbiology

Preprint: Persistence of the ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) microbiome to diet manipulation, Anita Silver et al., bioRxiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Unearthing the Boreal Soil Resistome Associated with Permafrost Thaw, Haan and Drown, bioRxiv

Phages and viruses

Preprint: Enteric viruses evoke broad host immune responses resembling bacterial microbiome, Simone Dallari et al., bioRxiv

October 21, 2020

Good morning from Northern Germany,

Today’s selection comprises among others new research about intestinal microbiome and breast cancer (by Koren lab), a perspective about the human microbiome in the 21st century and the diversity in marine sediments. Additionally, we selected a study about linking genetics, microbiome and autoimmunity (multiple sclerosis) in a mouse model and a study about postmortomics.

Conferences

The 3rd Microbiome Movement – Skin Health & Dermatology Summit unites leaders from academia and industry to address the unique challenges that working within the skin microbiome possesses, with the goal to accelerate microbiome-targeted therapeutics and cosmetics.
View the event website for more details.

General microbiome

[Review] Metabolomics Signatures of Aging: Recent Advances – Sunil and Yulan – Aging and Disease

The human microbiome in the 21st century – Rackaityte & Lynch – Nature Communications

Human gut microbiome

The intestinal microbiome, weight, and metabolic changes in women treated by adjuvant chemotherapy for breast and gynecological malignancies – Uzan-Yulzari et al. BMC Medicine

[Review] The Role of the Gut Microbiota in Coronary Heart Disease – Liu et al. – Coronary Heart Disease

[Review] Gut microbial molecules in behavioural and neurodegenerative conditions – Needham, Kaddurah & Mazmanian – Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Animal experiments

Interactions between host genetics and gut microbiota determine susceptibility to CNS autoimmunity – Montgomery et al. – PNAS

Bifidobacterium alters the gut microbiota and modulates the functional metabolism of T regulatory cells in the context of immune checkpoint blockade – Sun et al. – PNAS

Bugs and drugs: a systems biology approach to characterising the effect of moxidectin on the horse’s faecal microbiome – Daniels, Swann & Proudman – Animal Microbiome

A pioneer calf foetus microbiome – Guzman et al. – Scientific Reports

Water and extremophile microbiome

Global diversity of microbial communities in marine sediment – Hoshino et al. – PNAS

Bioinformatics

[Review] Statistical and Machine-Learning Analyses in Nutritional Genomics Studies – Khorraminezhad et al. – nutrients
[Review] A need to consider the evolutionary genetics of host‐symbiont mutualisms – Stoy et al. – Journal of Evolutionary Biology

Techniques

Postmortomics: The Potential of Untargeted Metabolomics to Highlight Markers for Time Since Death – Pesko et al. – OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology

October 16, 2020

In today’s digest read about how food additives affect the intestinal microbiota and induce intestinal inflammation, the role of the gut microbiome in honey bee nestmate recognition, how to use gene-level analysis to identify microbial “genome islands” associated with human health, and more. Check out the list of audiobooks about microbes. Happy Friday!

General microbiome

Time as a microbial resource – Karen G. Lloyd – Environmental Microbiology Reports

Review: The Central Role of Interbacterial Antagonism in Bacterial Life – S. Brook Peterson – Current Biology

Gut microbiome

*Dietary Emulsifiers Directly Impact Adherent-Invasive E. coli Gene Expression to Drive Chronic Intestinal Inflammation – Emilie Viennois – Cell Reports

Microbial Strain Engraftment, Persistence and Replacement after Fecal Microbiota Transplantation – Daniel Podlesny – medRxiv

Characterization of presumptive vancomycin-resistant enterococci recovered during infection control surveillance in Dallas, Texas – Sara Ping – bioRxiv

Metabolic dissimilarity determines the establishment of cross-feeding interactions in bacteria – Samir Giri – bioRxiv

Metabolic Response of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii to Cell-Free Supernatants from Lactic Acid Bacteria – Mathilde Lebas – Microorganisms

A combination of metagenomic and cultivation approaches reveals hypermutator phenotypes within Vibrio cholerae infected patients – Inès Levade – bioRxiv

Safety and functional enrichment of gut microbiome in healthy subjects consuming a multi-strain fermented milk product: a randomised controlled trial – Anne-Sophie Alvarez – Scientific Reports

Skin microbiome

Microbial and transcriptional differences elucidate atopic dermatitis heterogeneity across skin sites – Noora Ottman – Allergy

Respiratory microbiome

Multicenter analysis of sputum microbiota in tuberculosis patients – Claudia Sala – PlosOne

Lacticaseibacillus casei AMBR2 modulates the epithelial barrier function and immune response in a donor-derived nasal microbiota manner – Charlotte De Rudder – Scientific Reports

Animal microbiome

*The gut microbiome defines social group membership in honey bee colonies – Cassondra L. Vernier – Science Advances

Early-life gut dysbiosis linked to juvenile mortality in ostriches – Elin Videvall – Microbiome

Animal experiment

The Immune System Fails to Mount a Protective Response to Gram-Positive or Gram-Negative Bacterial Prostatitis – Federico Lupo – Journal of Immunology

The aging mouse microbiome has obesogenic characteristics – Dana Binyamin – Genome Medicine

Tetracycline Antibiotics Induce Host-Dependent Disease Tolerance to Infection – Henrique G. Colaço – Immunity

Water microbiome

Impact of phosphate dosing on the microbial ecology of drinking water distribution systems: Fieldwork studies in chlorinated networks – Isabel Douterelo – Water Research

Sustained nitrogen loss in a symbiotic association of Comammox Nitrospira and Anammox bacteria – Ekaterina Y. Gottshall – bioRxiv

Viruses and phages

Culturing novel and abundant pelagiphages in the ocean – Zefeng Zhang – Environmental Microbiology

High-throughput mapping of the phage resistance landscape in E. coli – Vivek K. Mutalik – PlosBiology

Fungi

Minireview: Fun(gi)omics: Advanced and Diverse Technologies to Explore Emerging Fungal Pathogens and Define Mechanisms of Antifungal Resistance – Brianna Ball – mBio

Technique

Bac-PULCE: Bacterial Strain and AMR Profiling Using Long Reads via CRISPR Enrichment – Andrea Sajuthi – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

*Gene-level metagenomics identifies genome islands associated with immunotherapy response – Samuel S Minot – bioRxiv

PUMAA: A Platform for Accessible Microbiome Analysis in the Undergraduate Classroom – Keith Mitchell – Frontiers in Microbiology

Raman2imzML converts Raman imaging data into the standard mass spectrometry imaging format – Stefania Alexandra Iakab – BMC Bioinformatics

Scientific writing

Eight problems with literature reviews and how to fix them – Neal R. Haddaway – Nature Ecology & Evolution

Scientific art

Inktober2020 #PathogenPortraits by Dr Eliza Wolfson

Citizen science

The Human Diets & Microbiome Initiative in the US (THDMI): A unique opportunity to become a citizen scientist. Join for FREE to uncover the secret of the gut microbiome.

Books

11 Audiobooks About Microbes – Justine Dees – Joyful Microbe

October 13, 2020

Today’s mid-week digest is about – meta analysis of metabolic benefits of probiotics, probiotics and synbiotics, microbiome association with narcolepsy type 1, design of microbial consortium for reduced C. difficle colonization, new sequencing technique for pathogen identification in cerebrospinal fluid and many more… Happy reading!

Human microbiome

The effect of probiotics, prebiotics or synbiotics on metabolic outcomes in individuals with diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis – Patricia M. Bock – Diabetologia

Effect of a Nonoptimal Cervicovaginal Microbiota and Psychosocial Stress on Recurrent Spontaneous Preterm Birth – Kristin D. Gerson – American Journal of Perinatology

Targeting the microbiome-gut-brain axis for improving cognition in schizophrenia and major mood disorders: A narrative review – Miquel Bioque – Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry

Inflammatory Bowel Disease Environmental Risk Factors: Diet and Gut Microbiota – Sarah Altajar – Current Gastroenterology Reports

Co‐ and polymicrobial infections in the gut mucosa: the host‐microbiota‐pathogen perspective – Teresa Frisan – Cellular Microbiology

Gut microbiota composition is associated with narcolepsy type 1 – Alexandre Lecomte – Neurology

A parental transcriptional response to microsporidia infection induces inherited immunity in offspring – Alexandra R. Willis – BioRxiv

Melamine contamination and associated health risks: Gut microbiota does make a difference – Meenakshi Rajpoot – Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry

Animal microbiome

Rational design of a microbial consortium of mucosal sugar utilizers reduces Clostridiodes difficile colonization – Fátima C. Pereira – Nature Communications

Effects of seasonality and previous logging on faecal helminth-microbiota associations in wild lemurs – I. I. de Winter – Scientific Reports

Bacterial community analysis on the different mucosal immune inductive sites of gastrointestinal tract in Bactrian camels – Wang-Dong Zhang – PlosOne

Sows affect their piglets’ faecal microbiota until fattening but not their Salmonella enterica shedding status – Guillaume Larivière‐Gauthier – Letters in Applied Microbiology

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Comparison of soil microbial community between reseeding grassland and natural grassland in Songnen Meadow – Ruifen Zhu – Scientific Reports

Evidence for signatures of ancient microbial life in paleosols – Katharina Frindte – Scientific Reports

Techniques

Pathogen identification in culture-negative cerebrospinal fluid specimens of patients with purulent meningitis using next-generation sequencing technology – Xin Men – International Journal of Clinical Experimental Pathology

October 09, 2020

COVID-19
Face masks: what the data say – Lynne Peeples – Nature

Pregnancy and early life

[REVIEW] Can we prevent allergic disease? Understanding the links between the early life microbiome and allergic diseases of childhood – Petersen & Turvey – Current Opinions in Pediatrics

Human skin microbiome

Atopic Dermatitis and the Role of the Skin Microbiome in Choosing Prevention, Treatment, and Maintenance Options – Baldwin ety al. – Journal of Drugs in Dermatology

Animal experiments (mouse/rat experiments, chickens/pigs on different diets)

[PREPRINT] Western-style diet impedes colonization and clearance of gut bacterial pathogens – Gewirtz et al. – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Taxonomic profiling of individual nematodes isolated from copse soils using deep amplicon sequencing of four distinct regions of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene – Kenmotsu et al. – PLOS One

The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum: A model for host-microbiome interactions – Agarwal & Agashe – PLOS One

[PREPRINT] Meta-transcriptomic identification of divergent Amnoonviridae in fish – Turnbull et al. – bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome (sea, rivers, lakes, glaciers, permafrost, high-salt)

Metagenome analysis from the sediment of river Ganga and Yamuna: In search of beneficial microbiome – Behera et al. – PLOS One

Phages and viruses

[PREPRINT] Thousands of previously unknown phages discovered in whole-community human gut metagenomes – Benler et al. – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

Metabolic pathway inference using multi-label classification with rich pathway features – Basher, McLaughlin & Hallam – PLOS Computational Biology

Big Data in metagenomics: Apache Spark vs MPI – Abuin et al. – PLOS One

October 07, 2020

Grant application (US specific grant)
2020 Biocodex Microbiota Foundation US $50,000 grant, supporting cutting edge research on the relationship between gut microbiota and chronic disease.
Deadline: October 15th.
Link: https://www.biocodexmicrobiotafoundation.com/national-call-projects/usa

General microbiome

Understanding the potential of lactobacilli in recurrent UTI prevention – Vagios, Hesham & Mitchel – Microbial Pathogenesis

Throat microbial community structure and functional changes in post-surgery laryngeal carcinoma patients – Hsueh et al. – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Bacterial diversity and prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in the oral microbiome – Almeida et al. – PLOS One

Metagenomics of the modern and historical human oral microbiome with phylogenetic studies on Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus – Achtman & Zhou – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

Pregnancy and early life

In utero human intestine harbors unique metabolomic features including bacterial metabolites – Li et al. – JCI insight

Interactions between Environmental Exposures and the Microbiome: Implications for Fetal Programming – Banerjee, Suter & Aagaard – Current Opinion in Endocrine and Metabolic Research

Human nearly-sterile sites (blood, organs, brain)

Alterations in blood microbiota after colonic cancer surgery – Søby et al. – BJS Open

Human gut microbiome

Estimating molecular preservation of the intestinal microbiome via metagenomic analyses of latrine sediments from two medieval cities – Sabin et al. – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

Gut microbiota composition in obese and non-obese adult relatives from the highlands of Papua New Guinea – Jonduo et al. – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Fecal Bacteria as Biomarkers for Predicting Food Intake in Healthy Adults – Shinn et al. – The Journal of Nutrition

Animal experiments

Inulin fermentation by lactobacilli and bifidobacteria from dairy calves – Zhu et al. – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Alpine Stream Soil – Rasool et al. – Geomicrobiology Journal

Food microbiology

Impact of dietary fibers in infant formula on gut microbiota and the intestinal immune barrier – Kong et al. – Food & Function

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT] A framework for comparing microbial networks reveals core associations – Rottjers et al. – bioRxiv

Microbes in the news (popular press, EurekAlert, ScienceDaily, Youtube, NPR, etc)

Gut health benefits begin in utero – Brita Belli – YaleNews

Medieval poo holds clues to health of modern-day gut microbiome – Sara Rigby – Science Focus