Category Archives: Human reproductive or urinary

February 12, 2021

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Today’s quite diverse digest features: the role of gut commensal fungi mycobiota in shaping the human protective IgG antibody repertoire, Mouse Microbial Genome Collection, gut microbiome – lymphocytes – diet link, competition between Gardnerella species, microbiota-derived bile acids pool as a mediator of host–microbiota interactions, multiscale variation in genome graphs, and a list of awesome webinars, courses and podcasts. Check out two cool science and art projects, Bacterial Alphabet and Microbe Crayon. Happy Friday!

Gut microbiome

*Human gut mycobiota tune immunity via CARD9-dependent induction of anti-fungal IgG antibodies – Itai Doron – Cell

*Functional and taxonomic comparison of mouse and human gut microbiotas using extensive culturing and metagenomics – Benjamin S. Beresford-Jones – bioRxiv

*High intake of vegetables is linked to lower white blood cell profile and the effect is mediated by the gut microbiome – Cristina Menni – BMC Medicine

The Reactobiome Unravels a New Paradigm in Human Gut Microbiome Metabolism – Gholamreza Bidkhori – bioRxiv

Spatial analysis of gut microbiome reveals a distinct ecological niche associated with the mucus layer – Kellyanne Duncan – Gut Microbes

Review: Diversity and dynamism of IgA−microbiota interactions – Kelsey E. Huus – Nature Reviews Immunology

Antibiotic-associated dysbiosis affects the ability of the gut microbiota to control intestinal inflammation upon fecal microbiota transplantation in experimental colitis models – Francesco Strati – Microbiome

Adherent-invasive E. coli metabolism of propanediol in Crohn’s disease regulates phagocytes to drive intestinal inflammation – Monica Viladomiu – Cell Host & Microbe

Adults with Prader–Willi syndrome exhibit a unique microbiota profile – Wendy J. Dahl – BMC Research Notes

Vaginal microbiome

*Population density affects the outcome of competition in co-cultures of Gardnerella species isolated from the human vaginal microbiome – Salahuddin Khan and Janet E. Hill – bioRxiv

Review: Lactic acid-containing products for bacterial vaginosis and their impact on the vaginal microbiota: A systematic review – Erica L. Plummer – PlosOne

Urinary microbiome

Functional and Taxonomic Dysbiosis of the Gut, Urine, and Semen Microbiomes in Male Infertility – Scott D. Lundy – European Urology

Review: The microbiome and host mucosal interactions in urinary tract diseases – Bernadette Jones-Freeman – Mucosal Immunology

Epidemiology of urinary tract infections in children: Causative bacteria and antimicrobial therapy – Yuhei Tanaka – Paediatrics International

Human milk microbiome

Repeatability and reproducibility assessment in a large-scale population-based microbiota study: case study on human milk microbiota – Shirin Moossavi – Microbiome

Respiratory microbiome

Review: Respiratory microbiome in mechanically ventilated patients: a narrative review – Mélanie Fromentin – Intensive Care Medicine

Animal microbiome

Genomic and functional analyses of fungal and bacterial consortia that enable lignocellulose breakdown in goat gut microbiomes – Xuefeng Peng – Nature Microbiology

Metagenomics of antimicrobial and heavy metal resistance in the cecal microbiome of fattening pigs raised without antibiotics – Paiboon Tunsagool – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Unravelling the Role of Rumen Microbial Communities, Genes, and Activities on Milk Fatty Acid Profile Using a Combination of Omics Approaches – Sokratis Stergiadis – Frontiers in Microbiology

Evaluation of the ocular surface mycobiota in clinically normal horses – Mary L. Walsh – PlosOne

Animal experiments

Colonization at birth with human CST IV cervicovaginal microbiota alters development and increases neonatal mortality in mice – Eldin Jašarević – bioRxiv

Novel gut pathobionts confound results in a widely used mouse model of human inflammatory disease – Samuel C Forster – bioRxiv

Low-dose exposure of glyphosate-based herbicides disrupt the urine metabolome and its interaction with gut microbiota – Jianzhong Hu – Scientific Reports

Microbiota control of maternal behavior regulates early postnatal growth of offspring – Yujung Michelle Lee – Science Advances

Probiotics

Minireview: Lactic acid bacteria as probiotics for the nose? – Ilke De Boeck – Microbial Biotechnology

*Lactobacillus bile salt hydrolase substrate specificity governs bacterial fitness and host colonization – Matthew H. Foley – PNAS

Probiotic nasal spray development by spray drying – Katarina Jokicevic – European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics

Water microbiome

Microbiota analysis of rural and urban surface waters and sediments in Bangladesh identifies human waste as driver of antibiotic resistance – Ross S. McInnes – bioRxiv

Depth-discrete metagenomics reveals the roles of microbes in biogeochemical cycling in the tropical freshwater Lake Tanganyika – Patricia Q. Tran – The ISME Journal

Soil microbiome

Trace gas oxidizers are widespread and active members of soil microbial communities – Sean K. Bay – Nature Microbiology

Bacterial communities regulate temporal variations of the antibiotic resistome in soil following manure amendment – Jianhua Cheng – Environmental Science and Pollution Research

Techniques

Quantifying Variation in Bacterial Reproductive Fitness: a High-Throughput Method – Pascal M. Frey – mSystems

Bioinformatics

*Enabling multiscale variation analysis with genome graphs – Brice Letcher – bioRxiv

HMD-ARG: hierarchical multi-task deep learning for annotating antibiotic resistance genes – Yu Li – Microbiome

BAGET 2.0: an updated web tool for the effortless retrieval of prokaryotic gene context and sequence – Benjamin Hepp – Bioinformatics

Metagenomics workflow for hybrid assembly, differential coverage binning, metatranscriptomics and pathway analysis (MUFFIN) – Renaud Van Damme – Plos Computational Biology

PATO: Pangenome Analysis Toolkit – Miguel D. Fernández-de-Bobadilla – bioRxiv

Struo2: efficient metagenome profiling database construction for ever-expanding microbial genome datasets – Nicholas D. Youngblut and Ruth E. Ley – bioRxiv

Webinars

UCC Science Society STEMinar: The Gut Microbiome, Health & Disease. You truly are what you eat – Paul O’Toole – 15 February

SGBUG (Singapore Bacterial Ultra Group) seminar: Human Gut Bacteria, Bile Acids, and Host Physiology – Sloan Devlin – 18 February

MicroSeminars 2021 – Free Web-based Microbiology Seminar Series

Biofilm Baithak – An India-specific Meetup – India Biofilms Society- 20-27 February 2021.

Klebsiella Virtual Seminar Series 2021 #KlebClub2021 – Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan

Courses

Bioinformatics for Biologists: An Introduction to Linux, Bash Scripting, and R – The Wellcome Genome Campus

Next Generation Sequencing Bioinformatics course – Wellcome Genome Campus Advanced Courses & Scientific Conferences – H3Abionet

Biobanking – Institut Pasteur

Podcasts

Season 2, Ep. 2: Building Biomes with Jack Gilbert – Ruairi Robertson – Biomes

Reverse mentoring with Martin Dougherty – Alice Matimba – Your Digital Mentor

Episode 17: Post-docs Part 2: Hiring – Stephanie Hicks and John Muschelli – The Corresponding Author

Episode 235: Green algae and fatty acids – Vincent Racaniello, Elio Schaechter, Michele Swanson, and Michael Schmidt – This week in microbiology podcast

Dr. Heer Mehta: Antibiotic Resistance and Experimental Evolution – Leo Elworth – The Bioinformatics and Beyond Podcast

Science and Art

Microbe Crayon Project – Anne A. Madden

Drawing the #BacterialAlphabet – Noémie Matthey

January 24, 2021

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Hyvää Päivää from Helsinki, Finland ! Today’s digest contains quite a lot of different topics. If you are interested in  early-life microbiome, I recommend taking a look at the paper from Mortensen and collaborators. To understand the role of the maternal vaginal microbiome’s in seeding their child and the importance of the delivery mode in early-life microbiome acquisition, they studied 665 mother–child dyads and modeled the transfer of the vaginal microbiota from mother to infants.

In today’s digest, you’ll also find a really interesting preprint from Abiriga and collaborators, looking at the microbiome of a groundwater aquifer contaminated by a municipal landfill while undergoing intrinsic bioremediation. This preprint is particularly notable because studies looking at the microbiome of contaminated aquifers are particularly rare, despite groundwater contaminations from landfills being a very common issue.

Today’s non-microbiology pick takes a look at the difficulty of detecting scientificly fraudulent images produced by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). They demonstrate that this deep-learning method can generate realistic western blot images that are indistinguishable from real western blots. In conclusion, the authors argues that additional information should be required to ensure that the western blots published in scientific publication are not generated images. 

Have a great Sunday!

Human respiratory microbiome

Functional lower airways genomic profiling of the microbiome to capture active microbial metabolism – Sulaiman et al. – European respiratory journal

Human skin microbiome

Preprint: Comparative investigation of the Diabetic foot ulcer microbiome – Saeb et al. – BioRxiv

Human vaginal microbiome

Preprint: Vaginal bacterial load in the second trimester is associated with early preterm birth recurrence: a nested case-control – Goodfellow et al. – MedRxiv

Modeling transfer of vaginal microbiota from mother to infant in early life – Mortensen et al. – eLife

Human gut microbiome

Review: Linking Gut Microbiome and Lipid Metabolism: Moving beyond Associations – Lamichhane et al. – Metabolites

Animal microbiome

Individual fate and gut microbiome composition in the European wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) – Funosas et al. – Scientific reports

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Microbiome structure and functional potential in permafrost soils of the Western Canadian Arctic – Varsadiya et al. – FEMS Microbial ecology

Book chapter: Microbial Diversity of Phyllosphere – Dhankhar et al. – Phytomicrobiome Interactions and Sustainable Agriculture

Review: Novel and Emerging Capabilities that Can Provide a Holistic Understanding of the Plant Root Microbiome – Singer et al. – Phytomes journal

Water and extremophile microbiome

Book chapter: Potential of Extremophiles for Bioremediation – Kaushik et al. – Microbial Rejuvenation of Polluted Environment. Microorganisms for Sustainability, vol 25. Springer, Singapore.

Built environment

Microbial Diversity Analysis of Sediment from Yeosu New Harbor of South Korea Using 16S rRNA Gene Amplicon Sequencing – Lee et al. – Microbiology ressource announcements

Preprint: Characterisation of the bacterial microbiota of a landfill-contaminated confined aquifer undergoing intrinsic remediation – Abiriga et al. – BioRxiv

Phages and viruses

Reduced metagenomic sequencing (RMS) approach to determine the gut-associated phageome in mother-child – Manohar et al. – Human Microbiome Journal

Review: Enteric Viruses and Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Tarris et al. – Viruses

Bioinformatics

book chapter: Advances in Omics and Bioinformatics Tools for Phyllosphere Studies – Bansal – Phytomicrobiome Interactions and Sustainable Agriculture

MegaR: an interactive R package for rapid sample classification and phenotype prediction using metagenome profiles and machine learning – Dhungel et al. – BMC Bioinformatics

My non-microbiology picks

Preprint: Emerging Concern of Scientific Fraud: Deep Learning and Image Manipulation – Qi et al. – BioRxiv

January 21, 2021

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Today’s post include review article on gut-liver axis, research articles on diet-microbiota interaction in Chinese adults, association between microbiome and type1 diabetes, and new metagenomic profiling method using phylogenetic markers.

General microbiome

Bacterial and eukaryotic extracellular vesicles and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: new players in the gut-liver axis? – Alexandre Villard – American Joural of Physiology Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology

Potential Contribution of the Intestinal Microbiome to Phenethylamine-Induced Hyperthermia – Aburahma A. – Brain, Behavior and Evolution

Human microbiome

Long-term diet quality is associated with gut microbiome diversity and composition among urban Chinese adults – Danxia Yu – American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Long-term dietary intake from infancy to late adolescence is associated with gut microbiota composition in young adulthood – Kolade Oluwagbemigun – American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

The gut microbiota metabolite propionate ameliorates intestinal epithelial barrier dysfunction-mediated Parkinson’s disease via the AKT signaling pathway – Tingting Huang – Neuroreport

Fecal and mucosal microbiota profiling in pediatric inflammatory bowel diseases – Lorenza Putignani – European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Associations between diet, the gut microbiome and short chain fatty acids in youth with islet autoimmunity and type 1 diabetes – Jessica E. Harbison – Pediatric Diabetes

Reproducing the scalp microbiota community: co‐colonization of a 3D reconstructed human epidermis with C. acnes and M. restricta – Marisa Melon – International Journal of Cosmetic Science

Hepatic steatosis relates to gastrointestinal microbiota changes in obese girls with polycystic ovary syndrome – Beza Jobira – PlosOne

Animal microbiome

Infection trains the host for microbiota-enhanced resistance to pathogens – Apollo Stacy – Cell

Changes of Gut Microbiota and Its Correlation With Short Chain Fatty Acids and Bioamine in Piglets at the Early Growth Stage – Renli Qi – Frontiers in Veterinary Science

Functional Foods

Prospecting Human Milk Oligosaccharides as a Defense Against Viral Infections – Rebecca E Moore- ACS Infectious Diseases

Techniques

TIPP2: metagenomic taxonomic profiling using phylogenetic markers – Nidhi Shah – Bioinformatics

Precision long-read metagenomics sequencing for food safety by detection and assembly of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli in irrigation water – Meghan Maguire – PlosOne

Microbes in news

Your Microbiome Isn’t Shaped Just By What You Feed It – Discover

Taurine Enhances the Microbiome’s Resistance to Future Pathogens – Genetic Engineering and Biotech News

January 15, 2021

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Today’s digest features a collection of reviews, opinion pieces, discussion on prenatal microbiome, pipeline to extract metabolic models from whole metagenome sequencing data (metaGEM), novel type of colistin resistance genes, mechanisms that shape microbial pangenomes, and more. Check out a list of free web-based microbial seminars. Happy reading/listening!

General microbiome

*Mechanisms That Shape Microbial Pangenomes – Maria Rosa Domingo-Sananes
and James O. McInerney – Trends in Microbiology

Evolution to alternative levels of stable diversity leaves areas of niche space unexplored – Ilan Naftali Rubin – bioRxiv

Prenatal microbiome

*The prenatal in utero microbiome controversy: Microbiome or no microbiome: are we looking at the prenatal environment through the right lens? – W. Florian Fricke and Jacques Ravel – BMC Microbiome

Urinary microbiome

The Urinary Microbiome in Postmenopausal Women with Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections – Monique H. Vaughan – bioRxiv

Alterations in Urobiome in Patients With Bladder Cancer and Implications for Clinical Outcome: A Single-Institution Study – Jiarong Zeng – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Bare Versus Hair: Do Pubic Hair Grooming Preferences Dictate the Urogenital Microbiome? – Geynisman-Tan J – Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery

Vaginal microbiome

Amylases in the Human Vagina – Kenetta L. Nunn – mSphere

Gut microbiome

Predicting drug-metagenome interactions: Variation in the microbial β-glucuronidase level in the human gut metagenomes – Moamen M. Elmassry – PlosOne

Microbiome and ischemic stroke: A systematic review – Yee Teng Lee – PlosOne

Antimicrobial resistance

*A novel type of colistin resistance genes selected from random sequence space – Michael Knopp – Plos Genetics

Identifying novel β-lactamase substrate activity through in silico prediction of antimicrobial resistance – Kara K. Tsang – Microbial Genomics

A framework for identifying the recent origins of mobile antibiotic resistance genes – Stefan Ebmeyer – Communications Biology

Minimal biophysical model of combined antibiotic action – Bor Kavčič – Plos Computational Biology

Mobilization of antibiotic resistance genes differ by resistance mechanism – Tue Kjaergaard Nielsen – bioRxiv

Carbapenem and Colistin Resistance in Enterobacter: Determinants and Clones – Zhiyong Zong – Trends in Microbiology

Animal microbiome

Fermented traditional Chinese medicine alters the intestinal microbiota composition of broiler chickens – Peng Huang – Research in Veterinary Science

Plant/root/soil microbiome

Coordination between microbiota and root endodermis supports plant mineral nutrient homeostasis – Isai Salas-González – Science

Food microbiome

Metabolic cooperation and spatiotemporal niche partitioning in a kefir microbial community – Sonja Blasche – Nature Microbiology

Generation of lactose and protease positive probiotic Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG by conjugation with Lactococcus lactis NCDO 712 – Nazar Hussain – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Phages and Viruses

Engineered Phage Endolysin Eliminates Gardnerella Biofilm without Damaging Beneficial Bacteria in Bacterial Vaginosis Ex Vivo – Christine Landlinger – Pathogens

Bioinformatics

*metaGEM: reconstruction of genome scale metabolic models directly from metagenomes – Francisco Zorrilla – bioRxiv

Whole genome phylogenies reflect the distributions of recombination rates for many bacterial species – Thomas Sakoparnig – eLife

CAFE: a software suite for analysis of paired-sample transposon insertion sequencing data – Anna Abramova – Bioinformatics

Finding orthologous gene blocks in bacteria: the computational hardness of the problem and novel methods to address it – Huy N Nguyen – Bioinformatics

Unraveling city-specific signature and identifying sample origin locations for the data from CAMDA MetaSUB challenge – Runzhi Zhang – Biology Direct

RefSeq: expanding the Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline reach with protein family model curation – Wenjun Li – Nucleic Acids Research

Techniques

A co-culture microplate for real-time measurement of microbial interactions – Charles Jo – bioRxiv

Webinars

Mind, Mood & Microbes Expert Q&A: From Mechanisms to Clinical Applications – Jane Foster, Mauro Costa-Mattioli, John Cryan, Eldin Jašarević, Aletta D. Kraneveld, Filip Scheperjans, Elaine Hsiao – 21 January

SGBUG (Singapore Bacterial Ultra Group) seminar: Silencing bacterial genes with CRISPR-dCas9: from basic insights to high-throughput screens – David Bikard – 21 January

LoopSeq Solo Webinar: High Resolution Metagenomic Sequencing using DADA2 and LoopSeq Long-Read Sequencing – Benjamin Callahan – 21 January

FEMS Yeast Research Webinar on Genomic Insights into Yeast Diversity and Evolution – FEMS – 28 January

SSB Seminar: Double Trouble: Inappropriate Image Duplications in Biomedical Publications – Elisabeth Bik – 29 January

Geomicrobiology Network Seminar Series – The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Winter 2021 WESTalks – Weekly seminars related to Water and the Environment with speakers from around the globe – IC-IMPACTS Student Engagement Committee (SEC) and the University of British Columbia’s Future Waters

MicroSeminars 2021 – Free Web-based Microbiology Seminar Series

Conferences &c

1st Microbiome PT Summit – The Portuguese Microbiome Community – 4 February

The 2021 UK Cellular Microbiology Network meeting – The Francis Crick Institute – 1-2 March

The Biology and Physics of Bacterial Chromosomes meeting – 4 March

Symposium Celebrating 100th Birthday and Research Accomplishments of Dr. Evelyn M. Witkin – Waksman Institute of Microbiology – 13 April

Podcast

TWiM 233: Antivirals made by bacteria – Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Elio Schaechter, Michele Swanson, and Michael Schmidt – This week in microbiology podcast

December 27, 2020

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Joyeuses fêtes from Paris, France ! In today’s digest, you will find great papers looking at various animal and plant microbiomes. In particular, I recommend taking some time to look at a preprint from Brealey and collaborators exploring the impact of human antibiotic use on oral microbiome in wild animals. The authors used shotgun metagenomics to determine the abundance and diversity of antimicrobial resistance genes in the oral microbiome of brown bears from Swedish museum specimens. Importantly, they show a significant increase in antimicrobial resistance genes in correlation with modern human antibiotics use, showing an impact even on wildlife of our antibiotic consumption.

Today’s non-microbiology pick takes a look back at the history of bioinformatics through the data analysis and visualization of papers published between 1998 and 2019. In addition of reading this very interesting paper, you can take a look at the data collected through interactive visualizations available at http://bioinfo.dcc.ufmg.br/history !

Have a great Sunday!

Pregnancy and early life

Preprint: Metabolomic signature of the maternal microbiota in the fetus – Pessa-Morikawa et al. – BioRXiv

Human nearly-sterile sites

Preprint: The urinary microbiome in postmenopausal women with recurrent urinary tract infections – Hiersoux Vaughan et al. – BioRXiv

Preprint: Biofilm development on urinary catheters promotes the appearance of viable but non-culturable (VBNC) bacteria – Wilks et al. – BioRXiv

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Wild animal oral microbiomes reflect the history of human antibiotics use – Brealey et al. – BioRXiV

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Dissimilarity analysis of microbial communities in the rhizosphere and tissues of diseased and healthy cherry trees (Cerasus pseudocerasus) – Ding et al. – Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology

First Recorded Account of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in Sand Dunes in South Eastern Australia: Biogeography and Species Richness – Hanlon et al. – Journal of Coastal Research

Diversity and structural differences of bacterial microbial communities in rhizocompartments of desert leguminous plants – Zhou et al. – PLOS ONE

Preprint: Orchard management and landscape context mediate the floral microbiome of pear – Schaeffer et al. – BioRXiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Interplay of microbial communities with mineral environments incoralline algae – Valdespino-Castillo et al. – Science of the total environment

Acid Mine Drainage as Energizing Microbial Niches for the Formation of Iron Stromatolites: The Tintillo River in Southwest Spain – Chacon-Baca et al. – Astrobiology

Bioinformatics

PStrain: An Iterative Microbial Strains Profiling Algorithm for Shotgun Metagenomic Sequencing Data – Wang et al. – Bioinformatics

MegaPath: sensitive and rapid pathogen detection using metagenomic NGS data – Leung et al. – BMC Genomics

My non-microbiology picks

A Brief History of Bioinformatics Told by Data Visualization – Mariano et al. – Brazilian Symposium on Bioinformatics

 

December 16, 2020

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COVID19

Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19 – Brauner et al. – Science

COVID 19 mortality: Probable role of microbiome to explain disparity – Kumar & Chander – Medical Hyptheses

General microbiome

[PREPRINT] Theory of (antimicrobial) relativity: When competitors determine a species’ drug sensitivity. – Reding – bioRxiv

Human respiratory microbiome

Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing of Nasopharyngeal Specimens Collected from Confirmed and Suspect COVID-19 Patients – Mostafa et al. – mBio

Human oral microbiome

Variation in oral microbiome is associated with future risk of lung cancer among never-smokers – Hosgood et al. – Lung cancer

Human gut microbiome

Effect of an 8-week Exercise Training on Gut Microbiota in Physically Inactive Older Women – Zhong et al. – Int J Sports Med

Vitamin D metabolites and the gut microbiome in older men – Thomas et al. – Nature Communications

Animal microbiome

[PREPRINT] Longitudinal profiling of the macaque vaginal microbiome reveals similarities to diverse human vaginal communities: implications for use as a pre-clinical model for bacterial vaginosis – Rhoades et al. – bioRxiv

The earthworm microbiome is resilient to exposure to biocidal metal nanoparticles – Swart et al. – Environmental Pollution

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Environmental microbiome mapping as a strategy to improve quality and safety in the food industry – Filippis et al. – Current Opinion in Food Science

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

Nitrosophilus alvini gen. nov., sp. nov., a hydrogen-oxidizing chemolithoautotroph isolated from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent in the East Pacific Rise, inferred by a genome-based taxonomy of the phylum “Campylobacterota” – Shiotani et al. – PLOS One

Techniques

A rapid approach to profiling diverse fungal communities using the MinION™ nanopore sequencer – Mafune et al. – BioTechniques

[PREPRINT] Microbe-seq: high-throughput, single-microbe genomics with strain resolution, applied to a human gut microbiome – Zheng et al. – bioRxiv

Microbes in the news

Oral Microbiome Diversity and Species Abundance Linked to Lung Cancer in Nonsmokers

December 9, 2020

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In today’s digest read about the selection and microdiversity in glacier-fed streams, Gardnerella vaginalis contribution to the increased rate of group B Streptococcus vaginal colonization, making F1 hybrids in Escherichia coli using MAE (Mass Allelic Exchange), smORFinder (annotation tool to identify small proteins in microbial genomes and metagenomes), and more.
Check out the new Science Friday podcast episode on microbial interactions in cheese rinds and Svetlana’s pick for happy holidays.
Cheers!

Human microbiome

Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver – Holly Lutz – Frontiers in Microbiology

Gut microbiome

Landscapes of bacterial and metabolic signatures and their interaction in major depressive disorders – Jian Yang – Science Advances

Improved high-molecular-weight DNA extraction, nanopore sequencing and metagenomic assembly from the human gut microbiome – Dylan G. Maghini – Nature Protocols

Elucidation of Gut Microbiota-Associated Lipids Using LC-MS/MS and 16S rRNA Sequence Analyses – Shu Yasuda – iScience

The Healthy Microbiome (What is the definition of a healthy gut microbiome?) – Fergus Shanahan – Gastroenterology

The gut microbiota is associated with immune cell dynamics in humans – Jonas Schluter
– Nature

Utilizing the gut microbiome in decompensated cirrhosis and acute-on-chronic liver failure – Jonel Trebicka – Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Animal microbiome

Remodeling of the maternal gut microbiome during pregnancy is shaped by parity – Alexander SF Berry – bioRxiv

Animal experiments

*Gardnerella vaginalis promotes group B Streptococcus vaginal colonization, enabling ascending uteroplacental infection in pregnant mice – Nicole M. Gilbert – American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology

Akkermansia muciniphila: A potential novel mechanism of nuciferine to improve hyperlipidemia – Yue Yu – Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy

Gut microbiota modulation by both Lactobacillus fermentum MSK 408 and ketogenic diet in a murine model of pentylenetetrazole-induced acute seizure – Ju Young Eor – Epilepsy Research

Host-age prediction from fecal microbiome composition in laboratory mice – Adrian Low – bioRxiv

Commensal Microbiota Regulates Skin Barrier Function And Repair Via Signaling Through The Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor – Aayushi Uberoi – bioRxiv

Water microbiome

*Homogeneous selection promotes microdiversity in the glacier-fed stream microbiome – Stilianos Fodelianakis – bioRxiv

Phages and viruses

Long-term persistence of crAss-like phage crAss001 is associated with phase variation in Bacteroides intestinalis – Andrey N. Shkoporov – bioRxiv

Diversity and Distribution of a Novel Genus of Hyperthermophilic Aquificae Viruses Encoding a Proof-Reading Family-A DNA Polymerase – Marike Palmer – Frontiers in Microbiology

Broad Virus Detection and Variant Discovery in Fecal Samples of Hematopoietic Transplant Recipients Using Targeted Sequence Capture Metagenomics – Suze A. Jansen – Frontiers in Microbiology

Antimicrobial Resistance

Review: Multidrug-resistant high-risk Enterococcus faecium clones: can we really define them? – Ana R. Freitas – International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents

Review: Current Trends in Experimental and Computational Approaches to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance – Madangchanok Imchen – Frontiers in Genetics

Predicting clinical resistance prevalence using sewage metagenomic data – Antti Karkman – Communications Biology

Fermented-Food Metagenomics Reveals Substrate-Associated Differences in Taxonomy and Health-Associated and Antibiotic Resistance Determinants – John Leech – mSystems

Uncovering hidden antimicrobial resistance patterns within the hospital microbiome – Bastiaan W. Haak and W. Joost Wiersinga – Nature Medicine

Isolation and characterization of human pathogenic multidrug resistant bacteria associated with plastic litter collected in Zanzibar – Farah N. Rasool – Journal of Hazardous Materials

Integrated metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses of ultraviolet disinfection effects on antibiotic resistance genes and bacterial communities during wastewater treatment – Shuyu Jia – Ecotoxicology

A metagenomic glimpse into the gut of wild and domestic animals: Quantification of antimicrobial resistance and more – Magdalena Skarżyńska – Plos One

Techniques

*Mass allelic exchange: enabling sexual genetics in Escherichia coli – Varnica Khetrapal – bioRxiv

Review: Microbial model communities: To understand complexity, harness the power of simplicity – Johan Bengtsson-Palme – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for sub-typing of Streptococcus pneumoniae – Sivkheng Kann – BMC Microbiology

Bioinformatics

*Automated Prediction and Annotation of Small Open Reading Frames in Microbial Genomes – Matthew G. Durrant and Ami S. Bhatt – Cell Host Microbe

Accurate Microbiome Sequencing with Synthetic Long Read Sequencing – Nico Chung – bioRxiv

Species level resolution of female bladder microbiota from marker gene surveys – Carter Hoffman – bioRxiv

Synthetic Sequencing Standards: A Guide to Database Choice for Rumen Microbiota Amplicon Sequencing Analysis – Paul E. Smith – Frontiers in Microbiology

Events

H3ABioNet Seminars and Webinars – H3ABioNet Pan African Bioinformatics Network

Inspiring the next generation of scientists… online – The Young Microbiologists Symposium (YMS) 2020

MLCB 2020 Day 1 and 2 talks – Machine Learning in Computational Biology meeting

Podcast

Why We’re Giving Thanks To Microbes For Stinky Cheese with Benjamin Wolfe and Casey Cosetta – Katie Feather and Ira Flatow – Science Friday

Svetlana’s pick

Planning Our “Home-mas” this December – MissPond – Emma Pond

Holiday Gift Guide For Microbe Lovers – Justine Dees – Joyful Microbe

The 2020 cookbook giftlist – Fiona Beckett – Matching Food & Wine

November 20, 2020

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Today’s digest features a systematic assessment of best practices for the sequencing-based characterization of the human vaginal microbiome, studies on link between the plaque microbiome and peri-implantitis, cutimycin [a Cutibacterium acnes-produced antibiotic that affects niche competition among the human skin microbiota] and antibiotic resistance genes in shower drains, washing machines, and dishwashers. There is a new Micro Binfie Podcast episode about moving from the wet lab into the dry lab to become a bioinformatician. Also, check out a list of interesting (freely available) events. Happy reading/listening!

Oral microbiome

*Strong oral plaque microbiome signatures for dental implant diseases identified by strain-resolution metagenomics – Paolo Ghensi – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Skin microbiome

*A Cutibacterium acnes antibiotic modulates human skin microbiota composition in hair follicles – Jan Claesen – Science Translational Medicine

Review: Staphylococcus epidermidis—Skin friend or foe? – Morgan M. Brown and Alexander R. Horswill – Plos Pathogen

Gut microbiome

Preterm Infants Harbour a Rapidly Changing Mycobiota That Includes Candida Pathobionts – Stephen A. James – Journal of Fungi

Imidazole propionate is increased in diabetes and associated with dietary patterns and altered microbial ecology – Antonio Molinaro – Nature Communications

Gut microbiome stability and dynamics in healthy donors and patients with non-gastrointestinal cancers – Allyson L. Byrd – Journal of experimental medicine

Workshop report: Toward the development of a human whole stool reference material for metabolomic and metagenomic gut microbiome measurements – Rupasri Mandal – Metabolomics

Minireview: Communal Living: Glycan Utilization by the Human Gut Microbiota – Jonathon A. Briggs – Environmental Microbiology

Microbiota-directed fibre activates both targeted and secondary metabolic shifts in the distal gut – Leszek Michalak – Nature Communications

Vaginal microbiome

*Assessment of In Vitro and In Silico Protocols for Sequence-Based Characterization of the Human Vaginal Microbiome – Luisa W. Hugerth – mSphere

Shotgun sequencing of the vaginal microbiome reveals both a species and functional potential signature of preterm birth – Conor Feehily – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Intercepting genomic variability of Gardnerella vaginalis species through comparative genomics analyses: evolutionary and ecological implications – Chiara Tarracchini – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Engineered phage endolysin eliminates Gardnerella in bacterial vaginosis without damaging the healthy vaginal microbiome – Christine Landlinger – medRxiv

Adaptive response to iterative passages of five Lactobacillus species in simulated vaginal fluid – Katelyn Brandt & Rodolphe Barrangou – BMC Microbiology

Dominance network analysis of the healthy human vaginal microbiome not dominated by Lactobacillus species – Wendy Li and Zhanshan Sam Ma – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Animal microbiome

The haybiome: Characterising the viable bacterial community profile of four different hays for horses following different pre-feeding regimens – Simon Daniels – Plos One

Review: Value of Probiotics in Canine and Feline Gastroenterology – Silke Salavati Schmitz – Veterinary Clinics of North America: Small Animal Practice

Massive gene presence-absence variation shapes an open pan-genome in the Mediterranean mussel – Marco Gerdol – Genome Biology

Technique

Phylotype-Level Characterization of Complex Lactobacilli Communities Using a High-Throughput, High-Resolution Phenylalanyl-tRNA Synthetase (pheS) Gene Amplicon Sequencing Approach – Shaktheeshwari Silvaraju – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Metagenomics

Metagenomic assessment of the global distribution of bacteria and fungi – Mohammad Bahram – Environmental Microbiology

Bioinformatics

On the complexity of haplotyping a microbial community – Samuel M Nicholls – Bioinformatics

Challenges in Benchmarking Metagenomic Profilers – Zheng Sun – bioRxiv

Unifying the global coding sequence space enables the study of genes with unknown function across biomes – Chiara Vanni – bioRxiv

Nucleotide-resolution bacterial pan-genomics with reference graphs – Rachel M Colquhoun – bioRxiv

Efficient storage and analysis of quantitative genomics data with the Dense Depth Data Dump (D4) format and d4tools – Hao Hou – bioRxiv

An Integrated Workflow for Enhanced Taxonomic and Functional Coverage of the Mouse Faecal Metaproteome – Nicolas Nalpas – bioRxiv

The misuse of colour in science communication – Fabio Crameri – Nature Communications

Antimicrobial Resistance

*The Household Resistome: Frequency of β-Lactamases, Class 1 Integrons, and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in the Domestic Environment and Their Reduction during Automated Dishwashing and Laundering – Laura Schages – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

The unintended consequences of a surge in antibiotic resistance when removing wastewater drain biofilm – Shireen M Kotay – bioRxiv

fosM, a new family of fosfomycin resistance gene identified in bacterial species isolated from human microbiota – Sami Khabthani – Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy

Heme is crucial for medium-dependent metronidazole resistance in clinical isolates of C. difficile – Ilse M. Boekhoud – bioRxiv

Events

Black In Immuno Week – Black in Immuno – 22-28 November 2020
*A collective of scientists to celebrating, amplifying, and promoting the work of Black Immunologists across the globe.

Webinar: Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment – Organizer: Resistomap – Date: Tuesday, 24 November 2020

Webinar: Microbiology Webinars – FEMS – webinar recordings available

Virtual course and symposium: Harnessing Our Inner Ecology To Track and Treat Disease – Institute for Systems Biology – October 15 and 16, 2020
*all course materials/tutorials and talks are available for free on the website

Virtual Conference on Prokaryotic Small Proteins – Organizers: Todd Gray, Kai Papenfort, Gigi Storz and Joe Wade – January 12-14, 2021

Podcast

*Moving from wet to dry with Phil Ashton – Hosts: Andrew Page, Nabil-Fareed Alikhan and Lee Katz – Micro Binfie Podcast

Real-time quantitative proteomics with Devin Schweppe – Host: Jacob Schreiber – The Bioinformatics Chat

Interspecies collaborations with Mindaugas Gapševičius – Host: Aga Pokrywka – Ferment Radio

Microbiome as Organ: Researcher Colin Hill Talks Bacteria and Bacteriophages in Human Body with Colin Hill – Host: Richard Jacobs – The Finding Genius Podcast

What Does Your Microbiome Say About You? with Colin Hill – Host: Andrea Hardy – Let’s Gut Real

Colouring booklet

Microbes, diet and beyond by Microbiome Support EU project; Illustrations by Maria Pock

Boardgame

Drugs vs Bugs, a free and exciting Print’n’Play boardgame developed by Célia Souque

November 17, 2020

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Multi-site human microbiome

Microbiome diversity predicts surgical success in patients with rectovaginal fistula – Leach et al. – International Urogynecology Journal

Human oral microbiome

[REVIEW]Oral Microbiota and Cancer Development – Tuominen & Rautava – Pathobiology

Human vaginal/pregnancy microbiome

Shotgun sequencing of the vaginal microbiome reveals both a species and functional potential signature of preterm birth – Feehily et al. – npj biofilms and microbiomes

Human gut microbiome

[REVIEW]IBDs and the pediatric age: Their peculiarities and the involvement of the microbiota – Cococcioni et al. – Digestive and Liver Disease

Gut microbiome stability and dynamics in healthy donors and patients with non-gastrointestinal cancers – Byrd et al. – JEM

Species-dependent variation of the gut bacterial communities across Trypanosoma cruzi insect vectors – Arias-Giraldo – PLOS One

Gut Microbiota and Cancer Correlates – Malaviya et al. – Probiotic Research in Therapeutics

Short-Chain Fatty Acids and Lipopolysaccharide as Mediators Between Gut Dysbiosis and Amyloid Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease – Marizzoni et al. – Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease

Built environment (subways, indoor surfaces)
Unravelling the importance of the eukaryotic and bacterial communities and their relationship with Legionella spp. ecology in cooling towers: a complex network – Paranjape et al. – Microbiome

Techniques
Transductomics: sequencing-based detection and analysis of transduced DNA in pure cultures and microbial communities – Kleiner et al. – Microbiome

[REVIEW]NMR: Unique Strengths That Enhance Modern Metabolomics Research – Edison et al. – Analytical Chemistry

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

Study offers “indisputable” link between Alzheimer’s and gut microbiome – Lavars – New Atlas

November 12, 2020

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Good morning! There’s a really exciting collection of papers to share with you this morning. Among them, a study of gut archaea across multiple host domains, a link between F. nucleatum and esophageal cancer, and two new databases of shotgun metagenomic data. (There’s also a fun paper about environmental transmission of microbes aboard the International Space Station.)

General microbiome

Preprint – Strong influence of vertebrate host phylogeny on gut archaeal diversity, Nicholas D Youngblut et al., bioRxiv

A genomic catalog of Earth’s microbiomes, Stephen Nayfach et al., Nature Biotechnology

Human vaginal microbiome

Review – Vaginal microbiota and the potential of Lactobacillus derivatives in maintaining vaginal health, Wallace Jeng Yang Chee, Microbial Cell Factories

Human gut microbiome

Preprint – Fusobacterium Nucleatum Predicts a Risk for Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Chao Shi et al., Research Square

Preprint – Human reference gut microbiome comprising 5,414 prokaryotic species, including newly assembled genomes from under-represented Asian metagenomes, Kim and Lee et al., bioRxiv

Preprint – Genetic Evidence for Selective Transfer of Microbes Between the International Space Station and an Astronaut, David C. Danko et al., bioRxiv

Review: An infectious diseases perspective on the microbiome and allogeneic stem cell transplant, Olivia C. Smibert et al., Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases

Animal experiments

Preprint – Longitudinal effects of antibiotics and fecal transplant on lemur gut microbiota structure, associations, and resistomes, Sally L. Bornbusch et al., bioRxiv

Pinto beans modulate the gut microbiome, augment MHC II protein, and antimicrobial peptide gene expression in mice fed a normal or western-style diet, Babajide A. Ojo et al., Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry

Preprint – Contagious Antibiotic Resistance: Plasmid Transfer Among Bacterial Residents of the Zebrafish Gut, Wesley Loftie-Eaton et al., bioRxiv

Animal microbiome

Shifts in microbial diversity, composition, and functionality in the gut and genital microbiome during a natural SIV infection in vervet monkeys, Anna J. Jasinska et al., Microbiome

A multi-disciplinary comparison of great ape gut microbiota in a central African forest and European zoo, Narat and Amato et al., Scientific Reports

Bioinformatics

Preprint – AGORA2: Large scale reconstruction of the microbiome highlights wide-spread drug-metabolising capacities, Almut Heinken et al., bioRxiv

Techniques

Preprint – Benchmarking DNA isolation kits used in analyses of the urinary microbiome, Lisa Karstens et al., bioRxiv