January 10, 2022

Today’s digest features studies on glycosaminoglycans degradation by urinary microbiome, social network of honeybees, improved DNA extraction for low biomass samples, the LotuS2 tool for amplicon sequencing analysis, and more. Happy Monday!


Gut microbiome

Review: The role of the microbiota in the management of intensive care patients – Piotr Szychowiak – Annals of Intensive Care

Review: The Gut Microbiome in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) – Rahel S. König – Frontiers in Immunology

Review: Opioid Use, Gut Dysbiosis, Inflammation, and the Nervous System – Richa Jalodia – Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology

Urinary microbiome

*A Semi-Quantitative Assay to Measure Glycosaminoglycan Degradation by the Urinary Microbiota – Vivian H. Nguyen – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

Composition and Stability of the Vaginal Microbiota of Pregnant Women With Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Janet E Hill – Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Skin microbiome

*Anatomy promotes neutral coexistence of strains in the human skin microbiome – Arolyn Conwill – Cell Host & Microbe

Water microbiome

Tenets of a Holistic Approach to Drinking Water-Associated Pathogen Research, Management, and Communication – Caitlin Proctor – Water Research

Animal microbiome

Review: Possibilities and limits for using the gut microbiome to improve captive animal health – Jessica Diaz & Aspen T. Reese – Animal Microbiome

The mosquito microbiome includes habitat-specific but rare symbionts – Hans Schrieke – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

*The gut microbiota affects the social network of honeybees – Joanito Liberti – bioRxiv

Techniques and methods

Combined assembly of long and short sequencing reads improve the efficiency of exploring the soil metagenome – Guoshun Xu – BMC Genomics

Enrichment of gut microbiome strains for cultivation-free genome sequencing using droplet microfluidics – Anna Pryszlak – Cell Report Methods

When to suspect contamination rather than colonization – lessons from a putative fetal sheep microbiome – Simone Bihl – Gut Microbes

*Microvolume DNA extraction methods for microscale amplicon and metagenomic studies – Anna R. Bramucci – ISME Communications

Bioinformatics

*LotuS2: An ultrafast and highly accurate tool for amplicon sequencing analysis – Ezgi Özkurt – bioRxiv

Generating lineage-resolved, complete metagenome-assembled genomes from complex microbial communities – Derek M. Bickhart – Nature Biotechnology



January 6, 2022

Human and General Microbiome

Mendelian randomization analyses support causal relationships between blood metabolites and the gut microbiome – Xiaomin Liu – Nature Genetics

Determine independent gut microbiota-diseases association by eliminating the effects of human lifestyle factors – Congmin Zhu – BMC Microbiology

Comparing Published Gut Microbiome Taxonomic Data Across Multinational Studies – Brianna K Meeks – Nursing Research

A Comprehensive Review on the Role of the Gut Microbiome in Human Neurological Disorders – Shokufeh Ghasemian Sorboni – Clinical Microbiology Reviews

Beneficial Microbes and Compounds

Lactobacillus casei Zhang exerts anti-obesity effect to obese glut1 and gut-specific-glut1 knockout mice via gut microbiota modulation mediated different metagenomic pathways – Qiuwen He – European Journal of Nutrition

Administration of Human Derived Upper gut Commensal Prevotella histicola delays the onset of type 1 diabetes in NOD mice – Eric Marietta – BMC Microbiology

Probiotic supplementation in neonates with congenital gastrointestinal surgical conditions: a pilot randomised controlled trial – Shripada Rao – Pediatric Research

Dietary supplementation with low-dose xylooligosaccharide promotes the anti-Salmonella activity of probiotic Lactiplantibacillus plantarum ZS2058 in a murine model – Junsheng Liu – Food Research International 

Review: Recent understanding of human milk oligosaccharides in establishing infant gut microbiome and roles in immune system – Ravindra Pal Singh – Food Research International

Microbiome and Metabolism

Gut Microbiota Diversity and Overweight/Obesity in Infancy: Results from a Nested Case-control Study – Hong Mei – Current Medical Science

Microbiome and Cancer

Microbiome composition indicate dysbiosis and lower richness in tumor breast tissues compared to healthy adjacent paired tissue, within the same women – Maria Valeria Esposito – BMC Cancer

Changes in the gut bacterial communities in colon cancer surgery patients: an observational study – Mohamed Abbas – Gut Pathogens

Urinary and Reproductive Tract Microbiome

Endometrial microbiota composition is associated with reproductive outcome in infertile patients – Inmaculada Moreno – Microbiome

Dysbiosis of vaginal microbiota associated with persistent high-risk human papilloma virus infection – Ling Mei – Journal of Translational Medicine

Urogenital Microbiota:Potentially Important Determinant of PD-L1 Expression in Male Patients with Non-muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer – Chunxiao Chen – BMC Microbiology

Animal Microbiome

Destabilization of the Bacterial Interactome Identifies Nutrient Restriction-Induced Dysbiosis in Insect Guts – Ramona Marasco – Microbiology Spectrum

Specific Strains of Honeybee Gut Lactobacillus Stimulate Host Immune System to Protect against Pathogenic Hafnia alvei – Haoyu Lang – Microbiology Spectrum

Characterization of captive and wild 13-lined ground squirrel cecal microbiotas using Illumina-based sequencing – Edna Chiang – Animal Microbiome

Metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses reveal minor-yet-crucial roles of gut microbiome in deep-sea hydrothermal vent snail – Yi Yang – Animal Microbiome

Host, microbiome, and complex space: applying population and landscape genetic approaches to gut microbiome research in wild populations – Claire E Couch – The Journal of Heredity

Antibiotic resistance and potential bacterial pathogens identified in red deer’s faecal DNA – Diana Dias – Transboundary and Emerging Diseases

Review: Gut microbiome-immune system interaction in reptiles – Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Plant and Soil Microbiome

Contrasting Effects of Local Environmental and Biogeographic Factors on the Composition and Structure of Bacterial Communities in Arid Monospecific Mangrove Soils – T Thomson – Microbiology Spectrum

Review: Endophytic Microbiota of Rice and Their Collective Impact on Host Fitness – Santosh Kumar Jana – Current Microbiology

Other Microbes

Spaceflight Virology: What Do We Know about Viral Threats in the Spaceflight Environment? – Bruno Pavletić – Astrobiology

Microbiome Analysis Methods

Cell-Free Paper-Based Analysis of Gut Microbiota and Host Biomarkers – Melissa K Takahashi – Methods in Molecular Biology 

Bioinformatics

CACONET: a novel classification framework for microbial correlation networks – Yuanwei Xu – Bioinformatics

December 22, 2021

General microbiome

[PREPRINT]Unconstrained coevolution of bacterial size and the latent period of plastic phage – Bonachela, Choua & Heath – bioRxiv

Not a ‘they’ but a ‘we’: the microbiome helps promote our well-being – Ragsdale – Journal of Biological Chemistry

Microbial metabolite delta-valerobetaine is a diet-dependent obesogen – Liu et al. – Nature Metabolism

[EDITORIAL]15 years of microbial biotechnology: the time has come to think big—and act soon – de Lorenzo – Microbial Biotechnology

Pregnancy and early life

Microbial community networks across body sites are associated with susceptibility to respiratory infections in infants – Reyman et al. – Communications Biology

Human oral microbiome

Profiling the oral microbiomes in patients with Alzheimer’s disease – Guo et al. – Oral Diseases

Human skin microbiome

[REVIEW]Human Skin Microbiota in Health and Disease – Bay & Ring – Journal of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology

Human vaginal microbiome

Human implantation: The complex interplay between endometrial receptivity, inflammation, and the microbiome – Sehring & Jeelani – Placenta

Large-scale characterisation of the pregnancy vaginal microbiome and sialidase activity in a low-risk Chinese population – Ng et al. – NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes

Human gut microbiome

The potential of gut microbiome as a non-invasive predictive biomarker for early detection of pancreatic cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma – Kaźmierczak-Siedlecka – European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences

The effect of antibiotics on the human microbiome: a systematic review – van Zyl et al. – International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents

[REVIEW]Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: the interplay between metabolism, microbes and immunity – Tilg et al. – Nature Metabolism

Clinical efficacy of fecal microbial transplantation treatment in adults with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis – Mashiah et al. – Immunity, Inflammation and Disease

Deviated and early unsustainable stunted development of gut microbiota in children with autism spectrum disorder – Lou et al. – Gut

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

Oat Fiber Modulates Hepatic Circadian Clock via Promoting Gut Microbiota-Derived Short Chain Fatty Acids – Han et al. – J. Agric. Food Chem.

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Effects of sublethal azadirachtin on the immune response and midgut microbiome of Apis cerana cerana (Hymenoptera: Apidae) – Zhao et al. – Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Analysis of the microbial diversity in the fecal material of the critically endangered African wild dog, Lycaon pictus – Sanches et al. – Archives of Microbiology

Divergence together with microbes: A comparative study of the associated microbiomes in the closely related Littorina species – Maltseva et al. – PLOS One

Gut microbiome composition, not alpha diversity, is associated with survival in a natural vertebrate population – Worsley et al. – Animal Microbiome

Clinical health issues, reproductive hormones, and metabolic hormones associated with gut microbiome structure in African and Asian elephants – Keady et al. – Animal Microbiome

Early life skin microbial trajectory as a function of vertical and environmental transmission in Bornean foam-nesting frogs – McGrath-Blaser et al. – Animal Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

[PRERPINT]Disentangling the genetic basis of rhizosphere microbiome assembly in tomato – Oyserman et al. – bioRxiv

[PREPRINT]Amino acid availability determines plant immune homeostasis in the rhizosphere microbiome – Liu et al. – bioRxiv

Techniques

Ancient Metagenomic Studies: Considerations for the Wider Scientific Community – der Sarkissian et al. – mSystems

Assessing the impact of storage time on the stability of stool microbiota richness, diversity, and composition – Holzhausen et al. – Gut Pathogens

December 20, 2021

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

November 10, 2021

Human urinary tract microbiome

[PREPRINT]Recurrent urinary tract infection and estrogen shape the taxonomic ecology and functional potential of the postmenopausal urobiome – Neugent et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

The Impact of a Mediterranean Diet on the Gut Microbiome in Healthy Human Subjects: A Pilot Study – Rejeski et al. – Digestion

Altered diversity and composition of gut microbiota in patients with allergic rhinitis – Zhou et al. – Microbial Pathogenesis

Fecal Microbiome Transplantation for Recurrent Clostridioides difficile Infection: Treatment Efficacy, Short and Long-term Follow-up Results from Consecutive Case Series – Urbonas et al. – Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases

Donor screening for fecal microbiota transplantation in China: Evaluation of 8,483 candidates – Zhang et al. – Gastroenterology

Faecal microbial biomarkers in early diagnosis of colorectal cancer – Olovo et al. – Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

Hepatocellular Cancer and Gut Microbiome: Time to Untie Gordian’s Knot – Aygün & Tözün – Journal of Gastrointestinal Cancer

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

Cinnamic acid suppresses bone loss via induction of osteoblast differentiation with alteration of gut microbiota – Hong et al. – The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry

Gut microbiome affects the metabolism of metronidazole in mice through regulation of hepatic cytochromes P450 expression – Zemanová et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

[PREPRINT]Maternal effects on early-life gut microbiome maturation in a wild nonhuman primate – Baniel et al. – bioRxiv

Evidence of MHC class I and II influencing viral and helminth infection via the microbiome in a non-human primate – Montero et al. – PLOS Pathogens

Gut Microbiome of Wild Baltic Salmon (Salmo salar L.) Parr – Skrodenytė-Arbačiauskienė – Microbial Ecology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Artificial selection of stable rhizosphere microbiota leads to heritable plant phenotype changes – Jacquiod et al. – Ecology Letters

Plastic mulch debris in rhizosphere: Interactions with soil-microbe-plant systems – Liu et al. – Science of The Total Environment

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

[PREPRINT]Urbanization promotes specific bacteria in freshwater microbiomes including potential pathogens – Numberger et al. – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT]specificity : an R package for generalized specificity analysis, with example analyses of Hawaiian foliar endophytic Fungi, human gut microbiome bacteria, and Antarctic glacier bacteria – Darcy et al. – bioRxiv

[PREPRINT]Unifying the known and unknown microbial coding sequence space – Vanni et al. – bioRxiv

Identifying prognostic pairwise relationships among bacterial species in microbiome studies – Devlin, Martin & Ostrovnaya – PLOS Computational Biology

HashSeq: a Simple, Scalable, and Conservative De Novo Variant Caller for 16S rRNA Gene Data Sets – Fouladi, Young & Fodor – mSystems

October 29, 2021

Sorry for the delayed post, WordPress was playing some mean tricks on me today and there were no treats! Good morning all and happy spooky season! It’s been a moment since I’ve written a post and I write to you now as a freshly (pepper)minted PhD! I’m feeling gourd and can’t wait to pumpkin spice things up with some fangtastic papers.

Some of the highlights include a paper by McAlpine et al. examining interkingdom relationships between bacteria and fungi. Specifically, they found that the gut commensal species Lactobacillus can produce a small molecule that blocks filamentous growth of the opportunistic pathogen Candida albicans. Another interesting paper comes from Michael Adams lab at the University of Georgia, Athens which showed that members of the gut microbiota have the capacity to assimilate the metal tungsten which, in turn, allows these microbes to oxidize a broad range of aldehydes in the gut. Additionally, a paper by Plummer et al. looked at the vaginal microbiota of women who have recurrent bacterial vaginosis as well as the penile microbiota of their partners, and found that when males also underwent antibiotic treatment it led to a decrease in bacterial vaginosis in their female partners.

Hope you enjoy reading these fa-boo-lous papers and may you eat, drink, and be scary this Halloween!

General Microbiome
A small molecule produced by Lactobacillus species blocks Candida albicans filamentation by inhibiting a DYRK1-family kinase. – MacAlpine, J. et al., Nature Communications.

Pregnancy and Early-Life
Bifidobacterium species associated with breastfeeding produce aromatic lactic acids in the infant gut. – Laursen, M.F. et al., Nature Microbiology.

Bifidobacterium catabolism of human milk oligosaccharides overrides endogenous competitive exclusion driving colonization and protection. – Heiss, B.E. et al., Gut Microbes.

Mother’s Milk Microbiome Shaping Fecal and Skin Microbiota in Infants with Food Allergy and Atopic Dermatitis: A Pilot Analysis. – Gołębiewski. M. et al., Nutrients.

Early-life formula feeding is associated with infant gut microbiota alterations and an increased antibiotic resistance load. – Pärnänen, K.M.M. et al., The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Human Vaginal Microbiome
A Prospective, Open-Label Pilot Study of Concurrent Male Partner Treatment for Bacterial Vaginosis. – Plummer, E.L. et al., mBio.

Human Gut Microbiome
Tungsten enzymes play a role in detoxifying food and antimicrobial aldehydes in the human gut microbiome. – Schut, G.J. et al., PNAS.

Commensal bacteria promote endocrine resistance in prostate cancer through androgen biosynthesis. – Pernigoni, N. et al., Science.

Vertebrate host phylogeny influences gut archaeal diversity. – Youngblut, N.D. et al., Nature Microbiology.

Gut microbiota dysbiosis contributes to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. – Li, N. et al., Respiratory Research.

Oral Administration of Latilactobacillus sakei ADM14 Improves Lipid Metabolism and Fecal Microbiota Profile Associated With Metabolic Dysfunction in a High-Fat Diet Mouse Model. – Won, S.-M. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology.

Human Oral Microbiome
Discrimination of Bacterial Community Structures among Healthy, Gingivitis, and Periodontitis Statuses through Integrated Metatranscriptomic and Network Analyses. – Nemoto, T. et al., mSystems.

Animal Experiments
Commensal segmented filamentous bacteria-derived retinoic acid primes host defense to intestinal infection. – Woo, V. et al., Cell Host & Microbe.

Intestinal microbiota shapes gut physiology and regulates enteric neurons and glia. – Vicentini, F.A. et al., Microbiome.

Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Derived Extracellular Vesicles Modulate Gut Microbiota and Attenuate Inflammatory in DSS-Induced Colitis Mice. – Tong, L. et al., Nutrients.

Animal Microbiome
Phage Treatment Trial to Eradicate LA-MRSA from Healthy Carrier Pigs. – Tuomala, H. et al., Viruses.

Characterization of the Eukaryotic Virome of Mice from Different Sources. – Zhang, C. et al., Microorganisms.

Supplemental L-Arginine Improves the Embryonic Intestine Development and Microbial Succession in a Chick Embryo Model. – Dai, D. et al., Frontiers in Nutrition.

Water and Extremophile Microbiome
Plastic-Degrading Potential across the Global Microbiome Correlates with Recent Pollution Trends. – Zrimec, J. et al., mBio.

Acrylate protects a marine bacterium from grazing by a ciliate predator. – Teng, Z.-J. et al., Nature Microbiology.

Plant, Root, and Soil Microbiome
The fungal root endophyte Serendipita vermifera displays inter-kingdom synergistic beneficial effects with the microbiota in Arabidopsis thaliana and barley. – Mahdi, L.K. et al., ISME Journal.

Spatial Characterization of Microbial Communities on Multi-Species Leafy Greens Grown Simultaneously in the Vegetable Production Systems on the International Space Station. – Hummerick, M.E. et al., Life (Basel).

Relationships between community composition, productivity and invasion resistance in semi-natural bacterial microcosms. – Jones, M.L. et al., Elife.

Probiotics
High-efficiency delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 by engineered probiotics enables precise microbiome editing. – Neil, K. et al., Molecular Systems Biology.

Techniques
Visualizing transfer of microbial biomolecules by outer membrane vesicles in microbe-host-communication in vivo. – Bittel, M. et al., Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.

October 8, 2021

Today’s digest features a metagenomic meta-study on faecal microbiota transplantation, RibDif for count and compare 16S rRNA genes within a genus, and more. Also, there is a new FEMS Microbiology Letters collection of articles highlighting the evolution of education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is still time to join in the second 🌎 Microbiome Virtual International Forum 🌏. Recordings from previous MVIF can be found here.

And, the #Microber2021 just started! Check out this microbe edition of #Inktober drawing challenge – during October, every day a new scientific art on microbiology topic.


Global microbiome

Cultivating Healthy Connections: Exploring and Engineering the Microbial Flow That Shapes Microbiomes – Travis J. Wiles – mSystems

Neonatal microbiome

Presence of distinctive microbiome in the first-pass meconium of newborn infants – Jenni Turunen – Scientific Reports

Respiratory microbiome

Divergence of bacterial communities in the lower airways of CF patients in early childhood – John B. O’Connor – PlosOne

Gut microbiome

Drivers and Determinants of Strain Dynamics Following Faecal Microbiota Transplantation – Thomas Schmidt – bioRxiv

Western and non-western gut microbiomes reveal new roles of Prevotella in carbohydrate metabolism and mouth–gut axis – Vishnu Prasoodanan P. K. – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Animal microbiome

Phylogenetic systematics of Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio genomes illustrate vast taxonomic diversity, open genomes and an abundance of carbohydrate-active enzyme family isoforms – Sara E. Pidcock – Microbial Genomics

Animal experiment

Metabolic modulation of tumours with engineered bacteria for immunotherapy – Fernando P. Canale – Nature

Citrobacter amalonaticus Inhibits the Growth of Citrobacter rodentium in the Gut Lumen – Caroline Mullineaux-Sanders – mBio

Regulation of blood–brain barrier integrity by microbiome-associated methylamines and cognition by trimethylamine N-oxide – Lesley Hoyles – bioRxiv

Effects of prebiotic oligofructose-enriched inulin on gut-derived uremic toxins and disease progression in rats with adenine-induced chronic kidney disease – Ebru Melekoglu – PlosOne

Plant microbiome

Prevalence and Specificity of Chemoreceptor Profiles in Plant-Associated Bacteria – Claudia Sanchis-López – mSystems

Food

Bacteriocinogenic lactic acid bacteria in the traditional cereal-based beverage Boza: a genomic and functional approach – Luciano Lopes Queiroz – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

metaGEM: reconstruction of genome scale metabolic models directly from metagenomes – Francisco Zorrilla – Nucleic Acids Research

RibDif: can individual species be differentiated by 16S sequencing? – Mikael Lenz Strube – Bioinformatics Advances

eggNOG-mapper v2: Functional Annotation, Orthology Assignments, and Domain Prediction at the Metagenomic Scale – Carlos P Cantalapiedra – Molecular Biology and Evolution

Sequencing DNA with nanopores: Troubles and biases – Clara Delahaye and Jacques Nicolas – PlosOne

Webinars &c

Conference: Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – October 14 (Pacific Live)/15 (Atlantic Reply)

Webinar: EMBARK Fall Webinars – a webinar series focused on AMR research

Microscopy Live! – Geology – an hour of live electron microscopy, guided by the audience – Plymouth Electron Microscopy Centre (October 29)

For more, check out a collection of microbiome events HERE!


Happy #Microber2021, sci-art October!

September 06, 2021

General microbiome

[PREPRINT]Host-microbiome protein-protein interactions capture mechanisms in human disease – Zhou, Beltran & Brito – bioRxiv

Prognostic correlations with the microbiome of breast cancer subtypes – Banerjee et al. – Cell Death & Disease

Pregnancy and early life

[REVIEW]Composition of the vaginal microbiota during pregnancy in women living in sub-Saharan Africa: a PRISMA-compliant review – Juliana et al. – BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Aberrant gut-microbiota-immune-brain axis development in premature neonates with brain damage – Seki et al. – Cell Host & Microbe

Multi-site human microbiome

[PREPRINT]Comparing Fecal, Saliva, and Chicha Microbiomes Between Mothers and Children in an Indigenous Ecuadorian Cohort – Adams et al. – bioRxiv

Human respiratory microbiome

Alterations of gut microbiota in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis in China: A pilot study – Shi et al. – International Journal of Infectious Diseases

Human oral microbiome

The effects of periodontitis associated microbiota on the development of oral squamous cell carcinoma – Hu, Shen & Tian – Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

Human gut microbiome

Parasites and diet as main drivers of the Malagasy gut microbiome richness and function – Mondot et al. – Scientific Reports

[REVIEW]The second brain: The connection between gut microbiota composition and multiple sclerosis = Farshbafnadi, Agah & Rezaei – Journal of Neuroimmunology

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

Thymic development of gut-microbiota-specific T cells – Zegarra-Ruiz et al – Nature

High-fat diet alters stress behavior, inflammatory parameters and gut microbiota in Tg APP mice in a sex-specific manner – Yanguas-Casas – Neurobiology of Diesease

Sex-dependent effects on the gut microbiota and host metabolome in type 1 diabetic mice – Zhang et al. – Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) – Molecular Basis of Disease

Bioinformatics

Efficient computation of Faith’s phylogenetic diversity with applications in characterizing microbiomes – Armstrong et al. – Genome Research

August 6, 2021

Today’s digest features a detailed temporal profiling of the rhizosphere and endosphere microbiomes of rice plants exposed to different drought durations, a review on microbiome and recurrent urinary tract infections, a new therapeutic strategy for treating pregnancy disorders via modulation of the maternal gut microbiome in mice, and more. Also, check out a collection of microbiome podcasts. Happy Friday!

First, important NEWS:
If you've recently published an Open-Access paper or Green-OA in peer-reviewed journals or a preprint on a publicly available repository, you can SUBMIT it as Open-Access Paper Highlight and present your work to the worldwide audience at the Microbiome Virtual International Forum!
And, today you can join the 2021 NSURP Closing Ceremony or later you can check out the presentations by NSURP students and their summer internship work on microbiology and immunology here!
New studies:

Global microbiome

A Scale-Free, Fully Connected Global Transition Network Underlies Known Microbiome Diversity – Gongchao Jing – mSystems


Gut microbiome

Perspective: Crosstalk between γδ T cells and the microbiota – Pedro H. Papotto – Nature Microbiology

Opinion: Microbiota and sleep: awakening the gut feeling – Paromita Sen – Trends in Molecular Medicine

Structural and quantitative alterations of gut microbiota in experimental small bowel obstruction – Jiali Mo – PlosOne

Host adaptation in gut Firmicutes is associated with sporulation loss and altered transmission cycle – Hilary P. Browne – Genome Biology


Urinary microbiome

*Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections: Unraveling the Complicated Environment of Uncomplicated rUTIs – Jonathan Josephs-Spaulding – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology


Vaginal microbiome

The association between the vaginal microenvironment and fecundability: a register-based cohort study among Chinese women – X Hong – BJOG


Animal experiments

*Maternal microbiota Bifidobacterium promotes placental vascularization, nutrient transport and fetal growth in mice – Jorge Lopez-Tello – bioRxiv

Early invasion of the bladder wall by solitary bacteria protects UPEC from antibiotics and neutrophil swarms in an organoid model – Kunal Sharma – Cell Reports


Root microbiome

*Prolonged drought imparts lasting compositional changes to the rice root microbiome – Christian Santos-Medellín – Nature Plants


Bioinformatics

COPLA, a taxonomic classifier of plasmids – Santiago Redondo‑Salvo – BMC Bioinformatics

Strainberry: automated strain separation in low-complexity metagenomes using long reads – Riccardo Vicedomini – Nature Communications

STRONG: metagenomics strain resolution on assembly graphs – Christopher Quince – Genome Biology

HumGut: a comprehensive human gut prokaryotic genomes collection filtered by metagenome data – Pranvera Hiseni – Microbiome

YouTube Tutorial: How to Critically Evaluate Machine Learning Methods – Thomas P. Quinn


Webinars &c

Conference: Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – September 14

Hackathon: Petabyte-Scale Sequence Search: Metagenomics Benchmarking Codeathon – Application deadline August 20; Event Dates: Sept. 27-Oct. – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Data Science Strategy, the National Center for Biotechnology and Information at the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

Conference: Microbiome Superheroes Connect – September 8 – Australasian Human Microbiome Research Network

Webinar: EMBARK Fall Webinars – a webinar series where invited speakers will be presenting their AMR research and be contrasted to EMBARK members presenting the work performed in the EMBARK project.

For more, check out a collection of microbiome events HERE!

Podcasts

July 14, 2021

General microbiome

Bacteriophage-Bacteria Interactions in the Gut: From Invertebrates to Mammals – Kirsch et al. – Annual Review of Virology

Helicobacter pylori infection has a detrimental impact on the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies – Oster et al. – Gut

Pregnancy and early life

Cervicovaginal microbiota and metabolome predict preterm birth risk in an ethnically diverse cohort – Flaviani et al. – JCI Insight

[REVIEW][Early-life gut microbiota and its connection to metabolic health in children: Perspective on ecological drivers and need for quantitative approach – Jian et al. – EBBioMedicine

Associations of air pollution and greenness with the nasal microbiota of healthy infants: A longitudinal study – Gisler et al. – Environmental Research

Human respiratory microbiome

Multi-omics profiling predicts allograft function after lung transplantation – Watzenböck et al. – European Respiratory Journal

Metagenomic Analysis Reveals A Possible Association Between Respiratory Infection and Periodontitis – Liu et al. – Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics

Human skin microbiome

[REVIEW]Novel mechanisms of microbial crosstalk with skin innate immunity – Chinnappan & Harris-Tyron – Experimental Dermatology

Shifts in the skin bacterial and fungal communities of healthy children transitioning through puberty – Park et al. – Journal of Investigative Dermatology

Human gut microbiome

Gut-microbiota-targeted diets modulate human immune status – Wastyk et al. – Cell

[REVIEW]Silent hypoxia in COVID-19: a gut microbiota connection – Gopal et al. – Current Opinion in Physiology

[REVIEW]The Athlete and Gut Microbiome: Short-chain Fatty Acids as Potential Ergogenic Aids for Exercise and Training – Bongiovanni, Yin & Heaney

Identification and engraftment of new bacterial strains by shotgun metagenomic sequence analysis in patients with recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection before and after fecal microbiota transplantation and in healthy human subjects – Verma et al. – PLOS One

Kefir Ameliorates Specific Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis Impairments in a Mouse Model Relevant to Autism Spectrum Disorder – van de Wouw et al. – Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Animal microbiome

Comparative analysis of oral-gut microbiota between captive and wild long-tailed macaque in Thailand – Sawaswong et al. – Scientific Reports

Impact of the dietary inclusion of dried food residues on the apparent nutrient digestibility and the intestinal microbiota of dogs – Paßlack et al. – Archives of Animal Nutrition

Triphenyltin exposure causes changes in health-associated gut microbiome and metabolites in marine medaka – He et al. – Environmental Pollution

The microbial metabolite p-Cresol induces autistic-like behaviors in mice by remodeling the gut microbiota – Bermudez-Martin et al. – Microbiome

Microbes in space

Seven years of Progress in Determining Fungal Diversity and Characterization of Fungi Isolated from the Japanese Experiment Module KIBO, International Space Station – Satoh et al. – Microbiology and Immunology

Food microbiology

[REVIEW]Virome studies of food production systems: time for ‘farm to fork’ analyses – Mahony & van Sinderen – Current Opinion in Biotechnology

Bioinformatics

D-MANOVA: fast distance-based multivariate analysis of variance for large-scale microbiome association studies – Chen & Zhang – Bioinformatics

Umibato: estimation of time-varying microbial interaction using continuous-time regression hidden Markov model – Hosoda, Fukunaga & Hamada – Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT]Stool Studies Don’t Pass the Sniff Test: A Systematic Review of Human Gut Microbiome Research Suggests Widespread Misuse of Machine Learning – Quinn – arXiv

Techniques

Characterizing Microbiomes via Sequencing of Marker Loci: Techniques To Improve Throughput, Account for Cross-Contamination, and Reduce Cost – Harrison, Randolph & Buerkle – mSystems

Two-Target Quantitative PCR To Predict Library Composition for Shallow Shotgun Sequencing – Cho et al. – mSystems

Statistical approaches for differential expression analysis in metatranscriptomics – Zhang et al. – Bioinformatics

Benchmark of 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing using Japanese gut microbiome data from the V1–V2 and V3–V4 primer sets – Kameoka et al. – BMC Genomics

In vitro models of gut digestion across childhood: current developments, challenges and future trends – Fournier et al. – Biotechnology Advances