Category Archives: Human reproductive or urinary

April 21, 2021

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General microbiome

Assessment of the microbiome during bacteriophage therapy in combination with systemic antibiotics to treat a case of staphylococcal device infection – Mu et al. – Microbiome

Pregnancy and early life

A Microbiota-Directed Food Intervention for Undernourished Children – Chen et al. – The New England Journal of Medicine

Bacterial-fungal interactions in the neonatal gut influence asthma outcomes later in life – Boutin et al. – eLife

Human vaginal microbiome

[REVIEW]The effect of different contraceptive methods on the vaginal microbiome – Bastianelli et al. – Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology

Human gut microbiome and virome

The Gut Microbiome in Progressive Multiple Sclerosis – Cox et al. – Annals of Neurology

Temporal landscape of human gut RNA and DNA virome in SARS-CoV-2 infection and severity – Zuo et al. – Microbiome

[REVIEW]The Gut Microbiome: a New Frontier in Musculoskeletal Research – Li et al. – Current Osteoporosis Reports

[REVIEW]Inflammation‐driven brain and gut barrier dysfunction in stress and mood disorders – Doney et al. – European Journal of Neuroscience

The gut microbiota is associated with clinical response to statin treatment in patients with coronary artery disease – Wang et al. – Atherosclerosis

[REVIEW]Dietary restrictions modulate the gut microbiota: Implications for health and disease – Schmidt and Lorentz – Nutrition Research

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

Altering the microbiome inhibits tumorigenesis in a mouse model of oviductal high-grade serous carcinoma – Chen et al. – Cancer Research

Screening of probiotic candidates in a simulated piglet small intestine in vitro model – Hansen et al. – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Microbiome reduction and endosymbiont gain from a switch in sea urchin life history – Carrier et al. – PNAS

[PREPRINT]Evidence that faecal carriage of resistant Escherichia coli by 16-week-old dogs in the United Kingdom is associated with raw feeding and that E. coli from these dogs are shared with humans and cause opportunistic infections – Mounsey et al. – bioRxiv

Diversity structure of the microbial communities in the guts of four neotropical termite species – Vikram et al. – PeerJ

Alteration of gut microbiota with a broad‐spectrum antibiotic does not impair maternal care in the European earwig – van Meyel et al. – Journal of Evolutionary Biology

Food microbiology

The effects of vegetable pickling conditions on the dynamics of microbiota and metabolites – Sawada et al. – PeerJ

Techniques

[PREPRINT]Development of Microbiome Biomarkers for IgA: a Joint Modeling Approach – Sengupta et al. – bioRxiv

April 16, 2021

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In today’s digest read about the presence/absence of ACBP orthologues in human gut metagenomes and how the gut microbiome links nutrition with cardiometabolic health, LEGO-based microscope, SIAMCAT for statistical inference of associations between microbial communities and host phenotypes, bacteriophage plaques size tool, and more. Check out a list of awesome webinars and courses. Happy Friday!

OPEN #NSURP2021 CALL for mentors and mentees: The National Summer Undergraduate Research Project – A community-driven initiative to create rewarding remote summer research opportunities for BIPOC and Latinx undergraduate students in the microbial sciences.

Microbiome in the news

*Microbiome research in general and business newspapers: How many microbiome articles are published and which study designs make the news the most? – Andreu Prados-Bo and Gonzalo Casino – PlosOne

General

Prokaryotic taxonomy and nomenclature in the age of big sequence data – Philip Hugenholtz – The ISME Journal

The metabolic network of the last bacterial common ancestor – Joana C. Xavier – Communications Biology

Techniques

*Designing a high-resolution, LEGO-based microscope for an educational setting – Bart Eduard Vos – bioRxiv

Genome-Based Targeted Sequencing as a Reproducible Microbial Community Profiling Assay – Jacquelynn Benjamino – mSphere

Gut microbiome

*Microbial ACBP/DBI-like genes are rare in the human gut microbiome and show no links with obesity – Andrew Maltez Thomas – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

The long-term genetic stability and individual specificity of the human gut microbiome – Lianmin Chen – Cell

Review: Emulating the gut–liver axis: Dissecting the microbiome’s effect on drug metabolism using multiorgan-on-chip models – Mara Lucchetti – Current Opinion in Endocrine and Metabolic Research

Urinary microbiome

The human urobiome – Linda Brubaker – Mammalian Genome

Urinary microbiota of women with recurrent urinary tract infection: collection and culture methods – Baylie R. Hochstedler – International Urogynecology Journal

Vaginal microbiome

Characterization of the first vaginal Lactobacillus crispatus genomes isolated in Brazil – Marcelle Oliveira de Almeida – PeerJ

Comparative Genome Analyses of Lactobacillus crispatus Isolates from Different Ecological Niches Reveal an Adaptation of This Species to the Human Vaginal Environment – Leonardo Mancabelli – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Probiotics

Review: Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GR-1, a.k.a. Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1: Past and Future Perspectives – Mariya I.Petrova – Trends in Microbiology

Probiotic Lactobacillus sp. Strains Inhibit Growth, Adhesion, Biofilm Formation, and Gene Expression of Bacterial Vaginosis-Inducing Gardnerella vaginalis – Zhixiang Qian – Microorganisms

Oral microbiome

Dental biofilm microbiota dysbiosis is associated with the risk of acute graft-versus-host disease after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation – Vitor Heidrich – medRxiv

Soil microbiome

Shotgun metagenomics reveals distinct functional diversity and metabolic capabilities between 12 000-year-old permafrost and active layers on Muot da Barba Peider (Swiss Alps) – Carla Perez-Mon – Microbial Genomics

Phages and viruses

*Plaque Size Tool: an automated plaque analysis tool for simplifying and standardising bacteriophage plaque morphology measurements – Ellina Trofimova and Paul R Jaschke – bioRxiv

The gut virome of healthy children during the first year of life is diverse and dynamic – Blanca Taboada – PlosOne

Bioinformatics

Taxonomic analysis of metagenomic data with kASA – Silvio Weging – Nucleic Acids Research

*Microbiome meta-analysis and cross-disease comparison enabled by the SIAMCAT machine learning toolbox – Jakob Wirbel – Genome Biology

Review: Integrating pan-genome with metagenome for microbial community profiling – Chaofang Zhong – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Connecting structure to function with the recovery of over 1000 high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes from activated sludge using long-read sequencing – Caitlin M. Singleton – Nature Communications

Evaluation of the effects of library preparation procedure and sample characteristics on the accuracy of metagenomic profiles – Christopher Gaulke – bioRxiv

Democratising deep learning for microscopy with ZeroCostDL4Mic – Lucas von Chamier – Nature Communications

Webinars

Offered talks on Plasmids and Mobile Elements for 2021 – Plasmids around the globe – International Society for Plasmid Biology and Other Mobile Genetic Elements

Spring 2021 Microbiome Informatics webinars – OSU Center of Microbiome Science

EMBARK Spring Webinars – AMR focused webinars – EMBARK project

BISMiS Live – Microbial taxonomy: where are we now and where are we going? Iain Sutcliffe – Bergey’s Intl. Society for Microbial Systematics; registration here

Berkeley Lab Live Science – Exploring Earth – Berkeley Lab – April 23

Conferences

ISAPP 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting – International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics – June 1–2

Courses

Open Online R Stream – Wolfgang Viechtbauer

RaukR: Advanced R for Bioinformatics Summer School – NBIS/SciLifeLab – June 14-24

March 12, 2021

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Today’s digest is HUGE.

Read about the healthy urogenital microbiome profiling by culturomics, gutSMASH (Specialized Primary Metabolite Analysis From Anaerobic Bacteria), (sub)strains evolution in mice, and AMPSphere (a comprehensive catalog of antimicrobial peptides).

There are interesting results of a new metaanalysis of the neonatal microbiome, maternal strain inheritance, and persistence into adolescence, evaluation of the effect of long-term freezing storage temperature on fecal samples, and estimation of the bioinformatic carbon footprint using the freely available Green Algorithms calculator. Find out more about statistics & challenges in molecular microbiology (with a reproducible research appendix!).

NEWS: The Transbiome project is a community driven research program using crowdfunding and co-creation to discover the diversity of the neo-vaginal microbiome. You can support the project here.

Check out a list of awesome webinars, courses and podcasts. Happy Friday!

Gut microbiome

*A systematic analysis of metabolic pathways in the human gut microbiota – Victòria Pascal Andreu – bioRxiv

*Strain inheritance and neonatal gut microbiota development: A meta-analysis – Daniel Podlesny and W. Florian Fricke – International Journal of Medical Microbiology

Adaptive ecological processes and metabolic independence drive microbial colonization and resilience in the human gut – Andrea R. Watson – bioRixv

Effect of fecal microbiota transplantation on neurological restoration in a spinal cord injury mouse model: involvement of brain-gut axis – Yingli Jing – Microbiome

Review: Association between antibiotics and gut microbiome dysbiosis in children: systematic review and meta-analysis – Lucy McDonnell – Gut Microbes

Review: Salmonella versus the Microbiome – Andrew W. L. Rogers – Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews

Respiratory microbiome

Strain-Resolved Dynamics of the Lung Microbiome in Patients with Cystic Fibrosis – Marija Dmitrijeva – mBio

Oral microbiome

Review: Resilience of the oral microbiome – William G. Wade – Periodontology 2000

Skin microbiome

Skin microbiota and clinical associations in Netherton sindrome – Veera Sillanpää – JID Innovations

Urogenital microbiome

*Long-term stability of the urogenital microbiota of asymptomatic European women – Magdalena Ksiezarek – BMC Microbiology

Limosilactobacillus urinaemulieris sp. nov. and Limosilactobacillus portuensis sp. nov. isolated from urine of healthy women – Magdalena Ksiezarek – International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

The structure and diversity of strain-level variation in vaginal bacteria – Brett A. Tortelli – Microbial Genomics

Obesity is associated with lower bacterial vaginosis prevalence in menopausal but not pre-menopausal women in a retrospective analysis of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study – Elizabeth Daubert – PlosOne

Bacterial biofilm formation on vaginal ring pessaries used for pelvic organ prolapse – Felicity G. Gould – International Urogynecology Journal

Animal microbiome

*Long-term storage of feces at −80 °C versus −20 °C is negligible for 16S rRNA amplicon profiling of the equine bacterial microbiome – Stefan Gavriliuc – PeerJ

Differences in the gut microbiomes of dogs and wolves: roles of antibiotics and starch – Yuting Liu – BMC Veterinary Research

An Expanded Gene Catalog of Mouse Gut Metagenomes – Jiahui Zhu – mSphere

Animal experiments

*Long-term evolution and short-term adaptation of microbiota strains and sub-strains in mice – Bahtiyar Yilmaz – Cell Host & Microbe

The gut mycobiome of healthy mice is shaped by the environment and correlates with metabolic outcomes in response to diet – Tahliyah S. Mims – Communications Biology

Functional genetics of human gut commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron reveals metabolic requirements for growth across environments – Hualan Liu – Cell Reports

Tea polyphenols regulate gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by antibiotic in mice – Jie Li – Food Research International

Plant microbiome

Designing a home for beneficial plant microbiomes – Chunxu Song – Current Opinion in Plant Biology

Food

Review: Polymicrobial interaction between Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae: coexistence-relevant mechanisms – Zhenbo Xu – Critical Reviews in Microbiology

Viruses and phages

Viromes outperform total metagenomes in revealing the spatiotemporal patterns of agricultural soil viral communities – Christian Santos-Medellin – The ISME Journal

Review: Biases in Viral Metagenomics-Based Detection, Cataloguing and Quantification of Bacteriophage Genomes in Human Faeces, a Review – Julie Callanan – Microorganisms

Techniques

High molecular weight DNA extraction strategies for long-read sequencing of complex metagenomes – Florian Trigodet – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

*AMPSphere: the worldwide survey of prokaryotic antimicrobial peptides – Célio Dias Santos-Júnior – Zenodo

*A Statistical Perspective on the Challenges in Molecular Microbial Biology – Pratheepa Jeganathan and Susan P. Holmes – arXiv

*The carbon footprint of bioinformatics – Jason Grealey – bioRxiv

*Make Interactive Complex Heatmaps in R – Zuguang Gu and Daniel Huebschmann – bioRxiv

Machine learning applications in microbial ecology, human microbiome studies, and environmental monitoring – Ryan B.Ghannam and Stephen M.Techtmann – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Tutorial: assessing metagenomics software with the CAMI benchmarking toolkit – Fernando Meyer – Nature Protocols

STATegra: Multi-Omics Data Integration – A Conceptual Scheme With a Bioinformatics Pipeline – Nuria Planell – Frontiers in Genetics

Exploring bacterial diversity via a curated and searchable snapshot of archived DNA sequences – Grace A. Blackwell – bioRxiv

clinker & clustermap.js: automatic generation of gene cluster comparison figures – Cameron L M Gilchrist & Yit-Heng Chooi – Bioinformatics

gapseq: informed prediction of bacterial metabolic pathways and reconstruction of accurate metabolic models – Johannes Zimmermann – Genome Biology

Webinars

mSystems Thinking Series: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Microbiology – ASM – March 26

The Microbiome Centers Consortium Seminar Series – weekly seminars featuring early career researchers – Thursdays

Americas Webinar: Mother’s Milk & Baby’s Bacteria: Discoveries from the CHILD Cohort Study – Meghan Azad – April 14

Courses & Workshops

Get R Done: R Tutorials video series – Chad C. Williams

Machine Learning in Genomics: Tools, Resources, Clinical Applications and Ethics – the NHGRI Genomic Data Science Working Group of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research – April 13-14

Podcast

February 2021 Pod: Global Chang‪e‬ – Bengtsson-Palme Lab – Microbiology Lab Pod

Enhancers with Molly Gasperini – Jacob Schreiber – The Bioinformatics Chat

Matthew Schechter: Metagenomics History Part 1 and 2 – Leo Elworth – The Bioinformatics and Beyond Podcast

Ep. 33 Oyster Microbiome with Dr. Rachel Diner – Julie Laurin – Planet B612

Art

UMich Microbial Masterpieces – Community for microbe enthusiasts and artists – Erica Gardner, Anna Urso, Bruna Iunes Sanches
*Check out their giant Winogradsky Panel in the Duderstadt Center gallery

March 4, 2021

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Happy Thursday from San Francisco! Today’s Microbiome Digest includes: a paper by Marbouty et al. in which a large number of phages and their interacting bacteria were identified in the healthy human gut; a thorough examination by Zhu et al. of the composition and metabolic potential of cave-dwelling bacteria, including sequencing of 14 new bacterial species; and a study by Mu et al. which found that the maternally-derived microbe Lactobacillus reuteri promotes immunoglobulin A production in the neonatal gut.

There is also a study by Serrano-Villar et al. which examined the use of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMTs) in HIV patients. The authors observed that FMT led to engraftment of two bacterial families–Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae–typically depleted in HIV-infected subjects and decreased levels of a plasma biomarker of intestinal permeability. While the findings are interesting, I remain skeptical of the appropriateness of FMTs in this context. Instead of an FMT–which requires donors and screening of their stool to ensure quality and safety–why not use a probiotic cocktail of Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae family members and perhaps include prebiotic factors to try to promote engraftment?

Additionally, there is a great article by Ras et al. discussing the results of a pilot study that successfully implemented microbiome-related bioinformatics courses across 11 African countries.

Pregnancy and Early Life
Distinct Changes Occur in the Human Breast Milk Microbiome Between Early and Established Lactation in Breastfeeding Guatemalan Mothers. – Gonzales, E. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology.

Human Skin Microbiome
Spermidine-induced recovery of human dermal structure and barrier function by skin microbiome. – Kim, G. et al. Communications Biology.

Human Vaginal Microbiome
Influence of dapivirine vaginal ring use on cervicovaginal immunity and functional microbiome in adolescent girls. – Farr Zuend, C. et al., AIDS.

Mapping the entire functionally active endometrial microbiota. – Sola-Leyva, A. et al., Human Reproduction.

Genomic relatedness and clinical significance of Streptococcus mitis strains isolated from the urogenital tract of sexual partners. – Mores, C.R. et al., Microbial Genomics.

Human Gut Microbiome
Identification of an N-acetylneuraminic acid-presenting bacteria isolated from a human microbiome. – Han, Z. et al., Scientific Reports.

Fecal microbiota transplantation in HIV: A pilot placebo-controlled study. – Serrano-Villar, S. et al., Nature Communications.

Gastrointestinal microbiota composition predicts peripheral inflammatory state during treatment of human tuberculosis. – Wipperman, M.F. et al., Nature Communications.

Animal Experiments
Regulation of neonatal IgA production by the maternal microbiota. – Mu, Q. et al., PNAS.

Lysates of Methylococcus capsulatus Bath induce a lean-like microbiota, intestinal FoxP3+RORγt+IL-17+ Tregs and improve metabolism. – Jensen, B.A.H., et al., Nature Communications.

Sex-dependent modulation of immune development by secretory IgA–coated Lactobacillus reuteri isolated from breast milk. – Qi, C. et al., Journal of Dairy Science.

Oral berberine improves brain dopa/dopamine levels to ameliorate Parkinson’s disease by regulating gut microbiota. – Wang, Y. et al., Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

Animal Microbiome
Lactobacillus reuteri-derived extracellular vesicles maintain intestinal immune homeostasis against lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory responses in broilers. – Hu, R. et al., Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology.

Plant, Root, and Soil Microbiome
Dicer-like proteins influence Arabidopsis root microbiota independent of RNA-directed DNA methylation. – Kaushal, R. et al., Microbiome.

Succession of the Resident Soil Microbial Community in Response to Periodic Inoculations. – Wang, Z. et al., Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Climate change alters temporal dynamics of alpine soil microbial functioning and biogeochemical cycling via earlier snowmelt. – Broadbent, A.A.D. et al., ISME Journal.

Water and Extremophile Microbiome
Microbial Community Structure Driven by a Volcanic Gradient in Glaciers of the Antarctic Archipelago South Shetland. – García-Lopez, E. et al., Microorganisms.

Effect of polymer type on the colonization of plastic pellets by marine bacteria. – Hansen, J. et al., FEMS Microbiology Letters.

Lifestyle of sponge symbiont phages by host prediction and correlative microscopy. – Jahn, M.T. et al., ISME Journal.

Bacteria and Metabolic Potential in Karst Caves Revealed by Intensive Bacterial Cultivation and Genome Assembly. – Zhue, H-Z et al., Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Phages and Viruses
MetaHiC phage-bacteria infection network reveals active cycling phages of the healthy human gut. – Marbouty, M. et al., Elife.

Bioinformatics
On the evolutionary origins of host–microbe associations. – Sieber, M. et al., PNAS.

Ecology-guided prediction of cross-feeding interactions in the human gut microbiome. – Goyal, A. et al., Nature Communications.

Using a multiple-delivery-mode training approach to develop local capacity and infrastructure for advanced bioinformatics in Africa. – Ras, V. et al., PLoS Computational Biology.

Techniques
Amplicon-based skin microbiome profiles collected by tape stripping with different adhesive film dressings: a comparative study. – Ogai, K. et al., BMC Microbiology.

High-Resolution Differentiation of Enteric Bacteria in Premature Infant Fecal Microbiomes Using a Novel rRNA Amplicon. – Graf, J. et al., mBio.

February 24, 2021

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Today’s digest is about functional analyses of microbial community in anoxic sites, microbial life in billions of years old fluid inclusions, development and use of human skin commensal, expanded pig metagenome catalogue and a brilliant review on advances in RNAseq technologies to decipher host-microbiota interactions. Happy reading!

General microbiome

Taxonomic and functional analyses of intact microbial communities thriving in extreme, astrobiology-relevant, anoxic sites – Alexandra Kristin Bashir – Microbiome

Pseudomonas kielensis sp. nov. and Pseudomonas baltica sp. nov., isolated from raw milk in Germany – Stefanie Gieschler – International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Human microbiome

Development of a human skin commensal microbe for bacteriotherapy of atopic dermatitis and use in a phase 1 randomized clinical trial – Teruaki Nakatsuji – Nature Medicine

Gut microbiome diversity is an independent predictor of survival in cervical cancer patients receiving chemoradiation – Travis T. Sims – Communications Biology

Characterization of the human skin resistome and identification of two microbiota cutotypes – Zhiming Li – Microbiome

Microbial analyses of blood spot surfaces collected from a laboratory and the bathroom of a female single-person household under different environmental conditions – Hee Sang You – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Animal microbiome

Antidepressants fluoxetine and amitriptyline induce alterations in intestinal microbiota and gut microbiome function in rats exposed to chronic unpredictable mild stress – Weijie Zhang – Translational Psychiatry

Ginsenoside Rk3 Ameliorates Obesity-Induced Colitis by Regulating of Intestinal Flora and the TLR4/NF-κB Signaling Pathway in C57BL/6 Mice – Hongwei Chen – Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Dietary anthocyanin-rich extract of açai protects from diet-induced obesity, liver steatosis, and insulin resistance with modulation of gut microbiota in mice – Haizhao Song – Nutrition

Effects of supplementing sow diets during late gestation with Pennisetum purpureum on antioxidant indices, immune parameters and faecal microbiota – Peng‐Fei Huang – veterinary Medicine and Science

Alterations in the gut microbiome and metabolic profile in rats acclimated to high environmental temperature – Yang Cao – Microbial Biotechnology

The pelvic flexure separates distinct microbial communities in the equine hindgut – Kailee J. Reed – Scientific Reports

Effects of urolithins on obesity-associated gut dysbiosis in rats fed on a high-fat diet – Abdulrasheed O. Abdulrahman – International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition

Functional Foods

Prebiotic Lactulose Ameliorates the Cognitive Deficit in Alzheimer’s Disease Mouse Model through Macroautophagy and Chaperone-Mediated Autophagy Pathways – Yan-Suan Lee – Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Water microbiome

Ingredients for microbial life preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old fluid inclusions – Helge Mißbach – Nature Communications

Techniques

Expanded catalog of microbial genes and metagenome-assembled genomes from the pig gut microbiome – Congying Chen – Nature Communications

Cross-species RNA-seq for deciphering host–microbe interactions – Alexander J. Westermann – Nature Reviews Genetics

Computational modeling of the gut microbiota reveals putative metabolic mechanisms of recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection – Michael A. Henson – Plos Computational Biology

An ambient-temperature storage and stabilization device performs comparably to flash-frozen collection for stool metabolomics in infants – Sivapriya Ramamoorthy – BMC Microbiology

Ecological rules for the assembly of microbiome communities – Katharine Z. Coyte – Plos Biology

February 19, 2021

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Good morning from New Jersey! There’s an amazing batch of microbiome papers to share with you today, including studies that use skin microbes to fight cancer, gut microbes to fight rotavirus, and evidence that the bird microbiome may harbor a mechanism that protects them from malaria. There’s also a fun story about dogs training a computer to detect prostate cancer.

General microbiome

Feasibility of integrating canine olfaction with chemical and microbial profiling of urine to detect lethal prostate cancer, Guest, Harris and Sfanos et al., PLOS ONE

Human skin microbiome

Preprint: Eliciting a potent antitumor immune response by expressing tumor antigens in a skin commensal, Yiyin Erin Chen et al., bioRxiv

Human nearly-sterile sites

Preprint: Fetal gut colonization: meconium does not have a detectable microbiota before birth, Katherine M. Kennedy et al., bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

The gut microbiome modulates the protective association between a Mediterranean diet and cardiometabolic disease risk, Dong D. Wang et al., Nature Medicine

Gut microbiome pattern reflects healthy ageing and predicts survival in humans, Tomasz Wilmanski et al., Nature Metabolism

The composition of the gut microbiome differs among community dwelling older people with good and poor appetite, Cox and Bowyer et al., Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle

Animal microbiome

The uropygial gland microbiome of house sparrows with malaria infection, Elin Videvall et al., Journal of Avian Biology

The amphibian microbiome exhibits poor resilience following pathogen-induced disturbance, Andrea J. Jani et al., The ISME Journal

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Carbon Fluxes and Microbial Activities from Boreal Peatlands Experiencing Permafrost Thaw, M.P. Waldrop et al., JGR Biogeosciences

Probiotics/prebiotics

Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 administered as a dextranomar microsphere biofilm enhances immune responses against human rotavirus in a neonatal malnourished pig model colonized with human infant fecal microbiota, Husheem Michael et al., PLOS ONE

Impact of Probiotic B. infantis EVC001 Feeding in Premature Infants on the Gut Microbiome, Nosocomially Acquired Antibiotic Resistance, and Enteric Inflammation, Marielle Nguyen et al., Frontiers in Pediatrics

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