Category Archives: Bik’s Non-Microbiology Picks

February 24, 2023

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Human and General Microbiome

Review: Gut microbiome lipid metabolism and its impact on host physiology – Brown et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Review: Modelling human immune responses using microbial exposures in rodents – Li and Baldridge. Nature Microbiology

Gut commensal Parabacteroides distasonis alleviates inflammatory arthritis – Sun et al. Gut

An open label, non-randomized study assessing a prebiotic fiber intervention in a small cohort of Parkinson’s disease participants – Hall et al. Nature Communications

Antibiotic use and inflammatory bowel disease: number needed to harm? – Ludvigsson. Gut

Oral & Respiratory Microbiome

Oral mucosal breaks trigger anti-citrullinated bacterial and human protein antibody responses in rheumatoid arthritis – Brewer et al. Science Translational Medicine

Sputum bacterial load and bacterial composition correlate with lung function and are altered by long-term azithromycin treatment in children with HIV-associated chronic lung disease – Abotsi et al. Microbiome

Animal experiments

Genetic mapping of microbial and host traits reveals production of immunomodulatory lipids by Akkermansia muciniphila in the murine gut – Zhang et al. Nature Microbiology

Microbe-mediated intestinal NOD2 stimulation improves linear growth of undernourished infant mice – Schwarzer et al. Science

Gamma-delta T cells modulate the microbiota and fecal micro-RNAs to maintain mucosal tolerance – Rezende et al. Microbiome

Phages and viruses

Review: Bacteriophage discovery to advance biotechnology and biotherapeutics – Mu and Lawley Nature Reviews Microbiology

Bioinformatics

Impact of microbial genome completeness on metagenomic functional inference – Eisenhofer et al. ISME

Pharokka: a fast scalable bacteriophage annotation tool – Bouras et al. Bioinformatics

Non Microbiome Picks

A systems immunology study comparing innate and adaptive immune responses in adults to COVID-19 mRNA and adenovirus vectored vaccines – Ryan et al. Cell Reports Medicine

Influenza-trained mucosal-resident alveolar macrophages confer long-term antitumor immunity in the lungs – Wang et al. Nature Immunology

January 18, 2022

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Today’s digest contains interesting gut-brain axis articles, developments in bioinformatic multi-omic analyses, and some recent developments in long COVID research highlighted under non microbiome picks below. 

General microbiome

Substantial overlap between symptomatic and asymptomatic genitourinary microbiota states – Adu oppong et al. – Microbiome 

Human gut microbiome

Gut Ruminococcaceae levels at baseline correlate with risk of antibiotic-associated diarrhea – Gu et al. – iScience

Home or hospital birth: the neonatal microbiota perspective – Stojanov et al. – The Lancet Microbe

A pilot exploration of multi-omics research of gut microbiome in major depressive disorders – Zhao et al – Translational Psychiatry

Post-ischemic protein restriction induces sustained neuroprotection, neurological recovery, brain remodeling, and gut microbiota rebalancing – de Carvalho et al. – Brain Behavior and Immunity

Bifidobacterium breve CCFM1025 attenuates major depression disorder via regulating gut microbiome and tryptophan metabolism: A randomized clinical trial – Tian et al.  – Brain Behavior and Immunity

Gestational insulin resistance is mediated by the gut microbiome-indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase axis – Priyadarshini et al. – Gastroenterology

A natural polyphenol exerts antitumor activity and circumvents anti-PD-1 resistance through effects on the gut microbiota – Messaoudene et al. – Cancer Discovery

Virome

[Research Highlight] Virome holds back a vaccine – York – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Plant & Soil microbiome

Genome-Resolved Metagenomics Reveals Distinct Phosphorus Acquisition Strategies between Soil Microbiomes – Wu et al. – mSystems

Bioinformatics

M&Ms: a versatile software for building microbial mock communities – García-García et al. – Bioinformatics

GraphOmics: an interactive platform to explore and integrate multi-omics data – Wandy & Daly – BMC Bioinformatics

Aristotle: stratified causal discovery for omics data – Mansouri et al.  – BMC Bioinformatics

Non Microbiome Picks

The last few weeks has seen several big studies of ‘long COVID’ published, as well as a letter in The Guardian, which I wanted to highlight

Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection – Phetsouphanh et al. – Nature Immunology

Long-term perturbation of the peripheral immune system months after SARS-CoV-2 infection – Ryan et al. BMC Medicine

Post-acute neurological consequences of COVID-19: an unequal burden – Nolen et al. – Nature Medicine 

Long COVID in children – Gurdasani et al. – The Lancet Child Adolescent Health
I’m leading a long Covid trial – it’s clear Britain has underestimated its impact – Amitava Banerjee – The Guardian

December 20, 2021

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Today’s digest is a grab bag that includes research articles on the vaginal microbiota, the gut microbiota of dairy calves, microbial loads in medical waste, and more! I’ve also highlighted a non-microbiology article that found that pet dog owners were significantly less depressed than non-pet owners during the pandemic. So if you’re looking for more reasons to adopt a new furry friend, you can add this one to the list!

General microbiome

Genomic comparison and phenotypic profiling of small colony variants of Burkholderia pseudomallei – Zulkefli et al. – PLOS One

Human vaginal microbiome

Vaginal microbiota of American Indian women and associations with measures of psychosocial stress – Borgogna et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiota features associated with Clostridioides difficile colonization in dairy calves – Redding et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

Culicoides Latreille (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) as potential vectors for Leishmania martiniquensis and Trypanosoma sp. in northern Thailand – Sunantaraporn et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Migratory wild birds carrying multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli as potential transmitters of antimicrobial resistance in China – Yuan et al. – PLOS One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Characterization of soils conducive and non-conducive to Prunus replant disease – Khan et al. – Plos One

Built environment

Disposal habits and microbial load of solid medical waste in sub-district healthcare facilities and households in Yilo-Krobo municipality, Ghana – Egbenyah et al. – PLOS One

Phages and viruses

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the potential non-human animal reservoirs and arthropod vectors of the Mayaro virus – Celone et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Bioinformatics

Genomic prediction using low-coverage portable Nanopore sequencing – Lamb et al. – PLOS One

Development of an efficient Sanger sequencing-based assay for detecting SARS-CoV-2 spike mutations – Lim et al. – PLOS One

Kara’s non-microbiology pick

***Depression, anxiety, and happiness in dog owners and potential dog owners during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States – Martin et al. – PLOS One

August 17, 2021

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Today’s digest covers a variety of topics including an interesting preprint on how the maternal immune system shapes offspring immunity in a microbiota dependent fashion and a large human study of the Rotavirus vaccine and gut microbiota. Non microbiology picks cover some recent COVID-19 advances and a very interesting article in Science investigating energy expenditure through the human life course.

COVID-19 

No evidence of human genome integration of SARS-CoV-2 found by long-read DNA sequencing – Smits et al. Cell Reports

Ultrapotent antibodies against diverse and highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants. Wang et al. Science 

Long-term perturbation of the peripheral immune system months after SARS-CoV-2 infection -Ryan et al. MedRxiv

General microbiome

Bacterial colonization dynamics and antibiotic resistance gene dissemination in the hospital environment after first patient occupancy: a longitudinal metagenetic study – Klassert et al. Microbiome

Acute SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with an increased abundance of bacterial pathogens, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the nose – Rhoades et al. Cell Reports 

Meta-analysis of Clinical Microbiome Studies in Urolithiasis Reveal Age, Stone Composition, and Study Location as the Predominant Factors in Urolithiasis-Associated Microbiome Composition – mBio. Kachroo et al. 

Human gut microbiome

The fecal microbiome and rotavirus vaccine immunogenicity in rural Zimbabwean infants – Robertson et al. Vaccine

Gut microbiome ADP-ribosyltransferases are widespread phage-encoded fitness factors – Brown et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Pregnancy and Early-Life

Maternal γδ T Cells Shape Offspring Pulmonary Type-2 Immunity In A Microbiota-Dependent Manner – Papotto et al. BioRxiv

Food Microbiology

Functional strain redundancy and persistent phage infection in Swiss hard cheese starter cultures – Somerville et al. ISME

Water Microbiome

Ecogenomics and Adaptation Strategies of Southern Ocean Viral Communities – Alarcón-Schumacher et al. mSystems

Soil microbiome

Bog ecosystems as a playground for plant–microbe coevolution: bryophytes and vascular plants harbour functionally adapted bacteria – Wicaksono et al. Microbiome

Bioinformatics

HoPhage: an ab initio tool for identifying hosts of phage fragments from metaviromes. Tan et al. Bioinformatics

Sparse least trimmed squares regression with compositional covariates for high dimensional data. Monti and Filzmoser. Bioinformatics. 

Ribovore: ribosomal RNA sequence analysis for GenBank submissions and database curation. Schaffer et al. BMC Bioinformatics.

Non-microbiome picks

Daily energy expenditure through the human life course – Pontzer et al. Science

Analysis of scientific society honors reveals disparities – Le et al. Cell Systems

March 18, 2021

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Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Today’s digest has a lot of food and agriculture associated articles. Several articles focus on the effects of various pathogens on dairy cows, beef steers, and poultry breeds! For those of us who are more interested in plants, there is an article on biogas production from tomato waste and a preprint on how the microbial community of food waste changes during the composting process. Finally, I included a research article about social media during the pandemic since I’m sure I’m not the only one who has relied on it a little too heavily over the last year…

Happy reading!

General microbiome

Preprint: Toward quantifying the adaptive role of bacterial pangenomes during environmental perturbations – Conrad et al. – bioRxiv

BlueFeather, the singleton that wasn’t: Shared gene content analysis supports expansion of Arthrobacter phage Cluster FE – Demo et al. – PLOS ONE

Review: The gut microbiota–brain axis in behaviour and brain disorders – Morais et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Preprint: Cross-species evolutionary rewiring in the enteric bacterium Campylobacter – Taylor et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiota profiles in diarrheic patients with co-occurrence of Clostridioides difficile and Blastocystis – Vega et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal experiments

Preprint: Low pathogenic avian influenza virus infection retards colon microbiome diversification in two different chicken lines – Chrzastek et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Borrelia infection in rodent host has dramatic effects on the microbiome of ticks – Hamilton et al. – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome

Preprint: The discovery, distribution and diversity of DNA viruses associated with Drosophila melanogaster in Europe – Wallace et al. – bioRxiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Effects of precipitation change and nitrogen addition on the composition, diversity, and molecular ecological network of soil bacterial communities in a desert steppe – Jia et al. – PLOS ONE

Preprint: Changes and composition of microbial community during aerobic composting of household food waste – Jin et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: What’s under the Christmas tree? Soil acidification alters fir tree rhizosphere bacterial and eukaryotic communities, their interactions, and functional traits – Steven et al. – bioRxiv

A comparative analysis of biogas production from tomato bio-waste in mesophilic batch and continuous anaerobic digestion systems – Szilágyi et al. – PLOS ONE

Food microbiology

Red seaweed (Asparagopsis taxiformis) supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80 percent in beef steers – Roque et al. – PLOS ONE

Prevalence and distribution of multilocus sequence types of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from bulk tank milk and cows with mastitis in Pennsylvania – Thomas et al. – PLOS ONE

Multidrug-resistant enterobacteria in newborn dairy calves in Germany – Waade et al. – PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

Review: Viral and host heterogeneity and their effects on the viral life cycle – Jones et al. – Nature Review Microbiology

Bioinformatics

Dcmd: Distance-based classification using mixture distributions on microbiome data – Shestopaloff et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Kara’s non-microbiology pick

Don’t put all social network sites in one basket: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and their relations with well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic – Masciantonio et al. – PLOS ONE

December 31, 2020

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General microbiome

Review: Brain-gut axis: From the conditioned reflex to the microbiota-gut-brain communication system – Klara Gyires – Integrative Physiology

Human skin microbiome

Microbiological profile of diabetic foot ulcers in Kuwait – Asma Alhubail – PLOS ONE

Human respiratory microbiome

The airways microbiome of individuals with asthma treated with high and low doses of inhaled corticosteroids – Matthew J Martin – PLOS ONE

Human gut microbiome

The beneficial or detrimental fluoride to gut microbiota depends on its dosages – Guijie Chen – Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Review: Synthetic Gut Microbiome: Advances and Challenges – Humphrey A. Mabwi – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Review: Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis as a Regulator of Reward Process – Rubén García-Cabrerizo – Journal of Neurochemistry

Review: Modulatory effects of gut microbiome in cancer immunotherapy: A novel paradigm for blockade of immune checkpoint inhibitors – Sama Rezasoltani – Cancer Medicine

Animal experiments

Effects of heat-killed Enterococcus faecalis T-110 supplementation on gut immunity, gut flora, and intestinal infection in naturally aged hamsters – Takio Inatomi – PLOS ONE

Nasal Tissue Extraction Is Essential for Characterization of the Murine Upper Respiratory Tract Microbiota – L Patrick Schenck – mSphere

Animal microbiome

Review: Gut microbiota of animals living in polluted environments are a potential resource of anticancer molecules – Morhanavallee Soopramanien – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Metabarcoding on both environmental DNA and RNA highlights differences between fungal communities sampled in different habitats  – Martino Adamo – PLOS ONE

Changes in microbial communities at different soil depths through the first rainy season following severe wildfire in North China artificial Pinus tabulaeformis forest – Qianqian Qin – Journal of Environment Management

Shifts in a Phenanthrene-Degrading Microbial Community are Driven by Carbohydrate Metabolism Selection in a Ryegrass Rhizosphere – Longfei Jiang – ACS

Forest gaps mediate the structure and function of the soil microbial community in a Castanopsis kawakamii forest – Xuelin Wang – Ecological Indicators

Review: Herbicide bioremediation: from strains to bacterial communities – Marcos Pileggi – Heliyon

Spatial scale structure soil bacterial communities across an Arctic landscape – Lucie A Malard – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Metagenomic Analysis of Rhizosphere Bacteria in Desert Plant Calotropis procera – Ahmed M Ramadan

Water and extremophile microbiome

Archaeal communities of low and high microbial abundance sponges inhabiting the remote western Indian Ocean island of Mayotte – Ana Rita Moura Polónia – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Preprint: Novel integrative elements and genomic plasticity in ocean ecosystems – Thomas Hackl – bioRxiv

Food microbiology

The diversity of microbial communities in Chinese milk fan and their effects on volatile organic compound profiles – Chen Chen – Journal of Dairy Science

Characterizing Relationship of Microbial Community in Xiaoqu and Volatiles of Light-aroma-type Xiaoqu Baijiu – Zhe Wang – Food Science and Technology Research

Virus and phages

Acquisition, prevalence and clearance of type-specific human papillomavirus infections in young sexually active Indian women: A community-based multicentric cohort study – Richard Muwonge – PLOS ONE

Techniques

Informed sequential pooling approach to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection – Renato Millioni – PLOS ONE

Thesis: Statistical Methods for Longitudinal Data Analysis and Reproducible Feature Selection in – Lingjing Jiang – UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations

MicroGMT: A Mutation Tracker for SARS-CoV-2 and Other Microbial Genome Sequences – Yue Xing – Frontiers in Microbiology

Microbes and evolution

Long-term experimental evolution of HIV-1 reveals effects of environment and mutational history – Eva Brons – PLOS BIOLOGY

The role of Ulva fasciata in the evolution of the microbial community and antibiotic resistance genes in maricultural sediments – Yuqin Luo – Marine Pollution Bulletin

Preprint: The Diversity and Evolution of Microbial Dissimilatory Phosphite Oxidation – Sophia D Ewens – bioRxiv

Microbes in the news

Synthetic Biologics Inc. (SYN) Soars 5.43% on December 25 – equities.com

The Brain, Gut and Consciousness: Microbiology of Our Mind – Inquiries Journal

Non-microbiology pick

Preprint: National Institutes of Health Institute and Center Award Rates and Funding Disparities – Michael S Lauer – bioRxiv

Communicating risk in human-wildlife interactions: How stories and images move minds – Sarah K Guenther – PLOS ONE

October 2, 2020

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Today’s exciting updates – FMT method to restore normal microbial development in caesarean-born infants, mechanism unveiled how dietary tryptophan improves alcohol induced liver injury, advance in droplet based microfluidics to study host-microbiome interactions, prebiotics encapsulation of probiotic to suppress colon cancer and new hope to curb plastic waste by discovery of plastic-eating enzyme cocktail. Happy weekend, stay safe!

General microbiome

Eligible blood donors’ decisions about donating stool for fecal microbiota transplantation: Does ambivalence play a role? – Melissa K. Hyde – Transfusion

Microbiota-Dependent Effects of IL-22 – Morsal Sabihi – Cells

Human microbiome

Maternal Fecal Microbiota Transplantation in Cesarean-Born Infants Rapidly Restores Normal Gut Microbial Development: A Proof-of-Concept Study – Katri Korpela – Cell

Comparative analysis of the tonsillar microbiota in IgA nephropathy and other glomerular diseases – Ji In Park – Scientific Reports

Dysbiosis in the oral microbiomes of anti-CCP positive individuals at risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis – Zijian Cheng – Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases

Animal microbiome

Microbiota tryptophan metabolism induces aryl hydrocarbon receptor activation and improves alcohol-induced liver injury – Laura Wrzosek – Gut

Faecal microbiota transplant from aged donor mice affects spatial learning and memory via modulating hippocampal synaptic plasticity- and neurotransmission-related proteins in young recipients – Alfonsina D’Amato – Microbiome

Competitive reduction of poultry-borne enteric bacterial pathogens in chicken gut with bioactive Lactobacillus casei – Zajeba Tabashsum – Scientific Reports

Offspring susceptibility to metabolic alterations due to maternal high-fat diet and the impact of inhaled ozone used as a stressor – Samantha J. Snow – Scientific Reports

Beneficial effects of mung bean seed coat on the prevention of high-fat diet-induced obesity and the modulation of gut microbiota in mice – Dianzhi Hou – European Journal of Nutrition

Prebiotics‐Encapsulated Probiotic Spores Regulate Gut Microbiota and Suppress Colon Cancer – Di‐Wei Zheng – Advanced Materials

Multi-Omic Analysis Reveals Different Effects of Sulforaphane on the Microbiome and Metabolome in Old Compared to Young Mice – Se-Ran Jun – Microorganisms

Plant microbiome

Protists as catalyzers of microbial litter breakdown and carbon cycling at different temperature regimes – Stefan Geisen – Isme Journal

Techniques

Investigating host-microbiome interactions by droplet based microfluidics – Alexandra S. Tauzin – Microbiome

Non-specific amplification of human DNA is a major challenge for 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis – Sidney P. Walker – Scientific Reports

Non-microbiology picks

Plastic-eating enzyme ‘cocktail’ heralds new hope for plastic waste – Science Daily

August 21, 2020

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Events
HAPPENING TODAY: Microbiome sequencing in high-host and low biomass samples. August 21, 2020.

Webinar Series on the Gut-Brain Axis and the Microbiome
August 28, 2020 – September 25, 2020

Funding
Functional effects of the human gut microbiome on autism. Biocodex Microbiota Foundation

Human microbiome
Focus on Microbiome in Health and Disease – A special microbiome issue in Cell Host Microbe

REVIEW: The Impact of the Microbiome on Immunity to Vaccination in Humans. Sanne E. de Jong et al. Cell Host & Microbe.

REVIEW: The Gut Microbiota and Unhealthy Aging: Disentangling Cause from Consequence. Erica N. DeJong et al. Cell Host & Microbe.

Helminth coinfection and COVID-19: An alternate hypothesis. Russell Hays et al. PLoS Negleced Tropical Diseases.

Gut microbiome
REVIEW: Mitochondria, the gut microbiome and ROS. and ROS. J. William O.Ballard & Samuel G. Towarnicki. Cellular Signalling.

Stool Microbiome Profiling of Patients with Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma Receiving Anti–PD-1 Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors. Nicholas J. Salgia et al. European Urology.

Programing of an Intravascular Immune Firewall by the Gut Microbiota Protects against Pathogen Dissemination during Infection. Braedon McDonald et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Oral microbiome
Analysis of microbial changes in the tonsillar formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue of Chinese patients with IgA nephropathy. Anchao Zhu. Pathology – Research and Practice

Early life microbiome
Breastmilk Feeding Practices Are Associated with the Co-Occurrence of Bacteria in Mothers’ Milk and the Infant Gut: the CHILD Cohort Study. Kelsey Fehr et al. Cell Host & Microbe.

Animal microbiome
Effects of Urbanization and Landscape on Gut Microbiomes in White-Crowned Sparrows. Mae Berlow. Microbial Ecology

Built environment
Passenger-surface microbiome interactions in the subway of Mexico City. Daniela Vargas-Robles et al. PLoS One.

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Plant resistance and leaf chemical characteristic jointly shape phyllosphere bacterial community. Tian Xueliang. World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology.

The role of land management and elevation in shaping soil microbial communities: Insights from the Central European Alps. Nadine Praega. Soil Biology and Biochemistry.

Composition, predicted functions, and co-occurrence networks of fungal and bacterial communities_ Links to soil organic carbon under long-term fertilization in a rice-wheat cropping system. Jie Chen. European Journal of Soil Biology

Diversity and structure of prokaryotic communities within organic and conventional farming systems in central highlands of Kenya. Edward Nderitu Karanja et al. PLoS One.

Water and wastewater
Turning harmful algal biomass to electricity by microbial fuel cell: A sustainable approach for waste management. Jafar Ali. Environmental Pollution.

Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants. Tawanda E. Maguvu et al. PLoS One.

Viruses
They are what you eat: Shaping of viral populations through nutrition and consequences for virulence. Rebekah Honce & Stacey Schultz-Cherry. PLoS Pathogens.

Bioinformatics
Assembly methods for nanopore-based metagenomic sequencing: a comparative study. Adriel Latorre-Pérez. Scientific Report.

Completion of draft bacterial genomes by long-read sequencing of synthetic genomic pools. Hooman Derakhshani et al. BMC Genomics.

Modeling microbial cross-feeding at intermediate scale portrays community dynamics and species coexistence. Chen Liao et al. PLoS Computational Biology

Pre-print
Bacterial modification of the host glycosaminoglycan heparan sulfate modulates SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. Cameron Martino et al. bioRxiv

Evaluation of Compatibility of 16S rRNA V3V4 and V4 Amplicon Libraries for Clinical Microbiome Profiling. Po-Yu Liu et al.bioRxiv

Shirin’s non-microbiology picks
MICROBIOME ART: François-Joseph Lapointe, when biology meets art. Jihane Mossalim. Convergence Initiative.

BEHIND THE PAPER: Early-life microbiota diversification facilitates enterocyte proliferation. Michael Dougherty. Nature Microbiology Research Community

JOP OPPURTUNITY: PhD positions in the ecology and evolution of metabolic cross-feeding interactions in soil-living bacterial communities and the gut microbiota in protecting the host against intestinal colonisation by multidrug-resistant organisms

August 9, 2020

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Good morning and a wonderful Sunday!
While you are eating your Sunday eggs and sipping your coffee, enjoy the small collection of microbiome et al. papers- exactly the right size for a Sunday morning.
Visit the microbial community living at Antarctic volcanoes with the preprint from Benda et al. or read the findings by Gibb et al. that indicate that human-managed ecosystems favor the presence of reservoirs of zoonotic diseases- very interesting in the light of the current pandemic. Enjoy!

Human gut microbiome

Essential oils and microbiota: Implications for diet and weight control – Nurhan Unusan – Trends in Food Science & Technology

Animal microbiome

The Gut Microbiota of Pheasant Lineages Reflects Their Host Genetic Variation – Jinmei Ding et al – Frontiers in Genetics

Water and extremophile microbiome

*Preprint: Metabolic potential and survival strategies of microbial communities across extreme temperature gradients on Deception Island volcano, Antarctica – Amanda G Benda – BioRxiv

Review: New Microbial Biodiversity in Marine Sediments – Brett J Baker et al. – Annual Review of Marine Science

Bioinformatics

Improved normalization of species count data in ecology by scaling with ranked subsampling (SRS): application to microbial communities – Lukas Beule et al – PeerJ

Techniques

Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper – Maureen A. Carey et al – PLOS Computational Biology

Judith’s non-microbiology picks

*Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems – Rory Gibb et al – Nature

July 25, 2020

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Good morning and happy Saturday y’all! Today’s digest is brief, but covers some fascinating papers including: small RNAs regulating gut microbe metabolism; epigenetics linking the early-life airway microbiota with allergic rhinitis; and the impact of gut microbial composition on vagal innervation. I’ve also included a non-microbiome pick discussing how to spot and resolve common statistical mistakes in research manuscripts. The authors of the article hope this will help improve robustness of scientific research. Happy reading!

Gut Microbiome
A high-resolution transcriptome map identifies small RNA regulation of metabolism in the gut microbe Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. Ryan, D. et al. Nature Communications.

Depicting SARS-CoV-2 faecal viral activity in association with gut microbiota composition in patients with COVID-19. Zuo, T. et al. Gut.

High microbiota reactivity of adult human intestinal IgA requires somatic mutations. Kabbert, J. et al. Journal of Experimental Medicine.

A unified catalog of 204,938 reference genomes from the human gut microbiome. Almeida, A. et al. Nature Biotechnology.

Airway Microbiome
Epigenetic landscape links upper airway microbiota in infancy with allergic rhinitis at 6 years of age. Morin, A. et al. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Early-Life Microbiome
Butyrate producing colonic Clostridiales metabolise human milk oligosaccharides and cross feed on mucin via conserved pathways. Pichler, M.J. et al. Nature Communications.

Animal Experiments
Bile acids drive the newborn’s gut microbiota maturation. van Best, N. et al. Nature Communications.

Gut microbiota composition modulates inflammation and structure of the vagal afferent pathway. Kim, J.S. et al. Physiology & Behavior.

TNFα regulates intestinal organoids from mice with both defined and conventional microbiota. Sun, L. et al. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.

Water Microbiome
Nutrient and microbial water quality of the upper Ganga River, India: identification of pollution sources. Bowed, M.J. et al. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.

Plant, Root, and Soil Microbiome
Global warming shifts the composition of the abundant bacterial phyllosphere microbiota as indicated by a cultivation-dependent and -independent study of the grassland phyllosphere of a long-term warming field experiment. Aydogan, E.L. FEMS Microbiology and Ecology.

Non-Microbiome Pick
Science Forum: Ten common statistical mistakes to watch out for when writing or reviewing a manuscript. Makin, T.R. and Orban de Xivry, JJ. eLife.