Category Archives: Human reproductive or urinary

July 6, 2021

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Several great papers today including a very interesting Cell paper on how Bifidobacterium interacts with the immune system and an mBio article on how different types of dietary fibre shape the gut microbiota.

To our Australian readers I’d like to wish a happy NAIDOC week, which is a time to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

General microbiome

Microbiota regulate social behaviour via stress response neurons in the brain – Wu et al. Nature. 

Defining the resilience of the human salivary microbiota by a 520-day longitudinal study in a confined environment: the Mars500 mission – Bacci et al. Microbiome

A MicroRNA Gene Panel Predicts the Vaginal Microbiota Composition. Cheng et al. mSystems

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiota mediate the FGF21 adaptive stress response to chronic dietary protein-restriction in mice – Martin et al. Nature Communications. 

Gut microbes impact stroke severity via the trimethylamine N-oxide pathway – Zhu et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Dietary Fiber Hierarchical Specificity: the Missing Link for Predictable and Strong Shifts in Gut Bacterial Communities – Centu-Jungles et al. mBio

Pregnancy and Early-Life

Bifidobacteria-mediated immune system imprinting early in life – Henrick et al. Cell

Animal microbiome

Temporal patterns in Ixodes ricinus microbial communities: an insight into tick-borne microbe interactions – Lejal et al. Microbiome

Water Microbiome

Microbiome diversity and host immune functions influence survivorship of sponge holobionts under future ocean conditions – Posadas et al. ISME

Soil microbiome

A Community Effort: Combining Functional Amplicon Sequencing and Metagenomics Reveals Potential Biosynthetic Gene Clusters Associated with Protective Phenotypes in Rhizosphere Microbiomes – Winter. mSystems.

Bioinformatics

METAnnotatorX2: a Comprehensive Tool for Deep and Shallow Metagenomic Data Set Analyses – Milani et al. mSystems

June 25, 2021

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This week, the microbial sciences community worldwide (virtually) united at the World Microbe Forum – meeting highlights you can find here #WorldMicrobeForum.

Today’s digest features studies on group B Streptococcus pathogenesis, dental microbiota and aGVHD Risk, a book about writing and publishing papers, and more. Also, check out a collection of FREE, ONLINE microbiome events. Happy Friday!

Read about the experiences of 338 early career researchers from 36 countries with their mentors in Mentorship in life sciences: voices of mentees by A. Murat Eren (Meren)!

General microbiome

Behind the paper: Describing and naming bacteria in the 21st century – Thomas Hitch – Nature blog

Hierarchical control of microbial community assembly – Sammy Pontrelli – bioRxiv

Resistome

*L-form switching confers antibiotic, phage and stress tolerance in pathogenic Escherichia coli – Aleksandra Petrovic Fabijan – bioRxiv

Gut microbiome

A newly identified protein from Akkermansia muciniphila stimulates GLP-1 secretion – Patrice D. Cani and Claude Knauf – Cell Metabolism

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

Dispersal strategies shape persistence and evolution of human gut bacteria – Falk Hildebrand – Cell Host & Microbe

Urinary microbiome

Review: Urinary Microbiome: Yin and Yang of the Urinary Tract – Virginia Perez-Carrasco – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

Cysteine dependence in Lactobacillus iners constitutes a novel therapeutic target to modify the vaginal microbiota – Seth M. Bloom – bioRxiv

*A type VII secretion system in Group B Streptococcus mediates cytotoxicity and virulence – Brady L Spencer – bioRxiv

Life History Recorded in the Vagino-cervical Microbiome Along with Multi-omics – Zhuye Jie – Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics

Predictive functional analysis reveals inferred features unique to cervicovaginal microbiota of African women with bacterial vaginosis and high-risk human papillomavirus infection – Harris Onywera – PlosOne

Effect of metronidazole on vaginal microbiota associated with asymptomatic bacterial vaginosis – Daniel Ruiz-Perez – Access Microbiology

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 – Frontiers in Immunology

Fusobacterium nucleatum metabolically integrates commensals and pathogens in oral biofilms – Akito Sakanaka – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome

*Microbiomes attached to fresh perennial ryegrass are temporally resilient and adapt to changing ecological niches – Sharon A. Huws – Microbiome

Animal experiments

A standardized gnotobiotic mouse model harboring a minimal 15-member mouse gut microbiota recapitulates SOPF/SPF phenotypes – Marion Darnaud – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

GUNC: detection of chimerism and contamination in prokaryotic genomes – Askarbek Orakov – BMC Genome Biology

metaMIC: reference-free Misassembly Identification and Correction of de novo metagenomic assemblies – Senying Lai – bioRxiv

Open challenges for microbial network construction and analysis – Karoline Faust – The ISME Journal 2021

STRipy: a graphical application for enhanced genotyping of pathogenic short tandem repeats in sequencing data – Andreas Halman – bioRxiv

Adapting macroecology to microbiology: using occupancy modelling to assess functional profiles across metagenomes – Angus S Hilts – bioRxiv

Webinars &c

Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – September 14

The International Conference on Group B Strep (ICGBS) – July 20-22

World Enterococcus Day – July 15 – Registration here

BiATA2021 Bioinformatics: from Algorithms to Applications – July 12–15 


LSfM Lecture Series & Workshops : “The Dark Side of Science: Misconduct in Biomedical Research” Dr. Elisabeth Bik – more info here – June 30

EMBARK Webinars – Kimberly Kline “Pathogenesis and persistence during Enterococcus faecalis biofilm-associated infection” and Sofia Forslund “High-throughput measurement of host and microbiota” – EMBARK project – June 30

Writing

Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers: A Primer for the Non-English Speaker – Gábor Lövei – OpenBook Publishers

Art

From Scientist to SciArtist – Eliza Wolfson


June 23, 2021

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Happy Wednesday!

Today’s digest includes a review on the microbial transformations of human bile acids as well as research articles focused on extremophiles including Arthrobacter, Acidithiobacillus, and Atribacteria. Also included are a wide variety of preprints on topics such as CRISPR-Cas, the vaginal microbiome, immunocompetence in pigs, the evaluation of RNAlater for preserving field samples for metaproteomics, and more!

Happy reading!

General microbiome

Preprint: CRISPR-Cas systems are widespread accessory elements across bacterial and archaeal plasmids – Pinilla-Redondo et al. – bioRxiv

Human respiratory microbiome

Indoor bacterial, fungal and viral species and functional genes in urban and rural schools in Shanxi Province, China–association with asthma, rhinitis and rhinoconjunctivitis in high school students – Fu et al. – Microbiome

Human vaginal microbiome

Preprint: Insight into the ecology of vaginal bacteria through integrative analyses of metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data – France et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Review: Microbial transformations of human bile acids – Guzior & Quinn – Microbiome

Preprint: Targeted high-resolution taxonomic identification of Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis using human milk oligosaccharide metabolizing genes – Tso et al. – bioRxiv

An integrated gene catalog and over 10,000 metagenome-assembled genomes from the gastrointestinal microbiome of ruminants – Xie et al. – Microbiome

Animal experiments

Preprint: Leveraging host-genetics and gut microbiota to determine immunocompetence in pigs – Ramayo-Caldas et al. – bioRxiv

Joint contributions of the gut microbiota and host genetics to feed efficiency in chickens – Wen et al. – Microbiome

Animal microbiome

Holobiont nitrogen control and its potential for eutrophication resistance in an obligate photosymbiotic jellyfish – Röthig et al. – Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Microbial metabolism and adaptations in Atribacteria-dominated methane hydrate sediments – Glass et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Seed microbiota revealed by a large-scale meta-analysis including 50 plant species – Simonin et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: The activity and functions of subarctic soil microbial communities vary across vegetation types – Viitamäki et al. – bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: Revealing the full biosphere structure and versatile metabolic functions in the deepest ocean sediment of the Challenger Deep – Chen et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Mechanistic insights into the success of xenobiotic degraders resolved from metagenomes of microbial enrichment cultures – Li et al. – bioRxiv

Low shifts in salinity determined assembly processes and network stability of microeukaryotic plankton communities in a subtropical urban reservoir – Mo et al. – Microbiome

Linking genomic and physiological characteristics of psychrophilic Arthrobacter to metagenomic data to explain global environmental distribution – Shen et al. – Microbiome

Genomic adaptations enabling Acidithiobacillus distribution across wide-ranging hot spring temperatures and pHs – Sriaporn et al. – Microbiome

Built environment

Preprint: Metagenome-based comparisons of decay rates and host-specificity of fecal microbial communities for improved microbial source tracking – Suttner et al. – bioRxiv

Phages and viruses

Preprint: Expanding clinical phage microbiology: Simulating phage inhalation for respiratory tract infections – Porat et al. – bioRxiv

Techniques

Ultra-accurate microbial amplicon sequencing with synthetic long reads – Callahan et al. – Microbiome

Preprint: Evaluation of RNAlater as a field-compatible preservation method for metaproteomic analyses of bacteria-animal symbioses – Jensen et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Predicting microbiome compositions through deep learning – Michel-Mata et al. – bioRxiv

May 18, 2021

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Review articles on exciting microbiome topics dominate today’s post. My personal favorite review is by Berthoud et al. on gut-brain communication with focus on understanding functions of the vagus nerve. Others include – rumen microbiome, gut microbiota in neuronal feeding circuits, gut-brain axis in gastrointestinal cancer and a beautiful snapshot illustrating summary of microbiota effects on host physiology. Happy reading!

General Microbiome

Gut microbiota as a transducer of dietary cues to regulate host circadian rhythms and metabolism – Hyoann Choi – Nature Reviews Gatsroenterology and Hepatology

SnapShot: Microbiota effects on host physiology – Jennifer H.Hill – Cell

Roles for the gut microbiota in regulating neuronal feeding circuits – Kristie B. Yu – Journal of Clinical Investigation

Gut-brain communication and obesity: understanding functions of the vagus nerve – Hans-Rudolf Berthoud – Journal of Clinical Investigation

Exploiting unique features of the gut-brain interface to combat gastrointestinal cancer – Alyssa Schledwitz – Journal of Clinical Investigation

Human Microbiome

Evaluation of saliva as a source of accurate whole‐genome and microbiome sequencing data – Anthony F. Herzig – Genetic Epidemiology

The effects of nondigestible fermentable carbohydrates on adults with overweight or obesity: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials – Bocheng Xu – Nutrition Reviews

Altered gut microbiota correlates with cognitive impairment in Chinese children with Down’s syndrome – Shimeng Ren – European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

A synthetic consortium of 100 gut commensals modulates the composition and function in a colon model of the microbiome of elderly subjects – Marta Perez – Gut Microbes

Animal Microbiome

The rumen microbiome: balancing food security and environmental impacts – Itzhak Mizrahi – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Components of the Gut Microbiome that Influence Bone Tissue‐Level Strength – Marysol Luna – Journal of Bone and Mineral Research

Characterization of growth phenotypes and gastrointestinal tract microbiota in sheep fed with caragana – Ke Zhang – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Techniques

‘GutFeel’: an in silico method for predicting gut health status based on the metabolic functional capabilities of the resident microbiome – Swadha Anand – Febs Letters

MiMeNet: Exploring microbiome-metabolome relationships using neural networks – Derek Reiman – Plos Computational Biology

Bacteria

Anatomy promotes neutral coexistence of strains in the human skin microbiome – Arolyn Conwill – BioRxiv

May 14, 2021

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Today’s digest features Emu for microbial community profiling with expectation-maximization algorithm to generate taxonomic abundance profiles from full-length 16S rRNA reads, glycobiology of UTI, profiling canine fecal microbiome by long-read metagenomics with Nanopore sequencing, spatial-temporal assessment of drinking water microbiome in Puerto Rico, ancient microbial genomes from paleofeces (with 61 previously undescribed species), and more.

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

Today is the last day for #NSURP2021 applications:

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.

Share your experience as an early career researcher with your academic mentor and take part in this important survey on mentorship!

Gut microbiome

Reconstruction of ancient microbial genomes from the human gut – Marsha C. Wibowo – Nature

Human and preclinical studies of the host–gut microbiome co-metabolite hippurate as a marker and mediator of metabolic health – François Brial – Gut Microbiota

Oral microbiome

*Mechanical biofilm disruption causes microbial and immunological shifts in periodontitis patients – William Johnston – Scientific Reports

Vaginal microbiome

Review: The Complex Link between the Female Genital Microbiota, Genital Infections, and Inflammation – Smritee Dabee – Infection and Immunity

Urinary microbiome

*Review: The glycobiology of uropathogenic E. coli infection: the sweet and bitter role of sugars in urinary tract immunity – Federico Lupo – Immunology

The Good and the Bad: Ecological Interaction Measurements Between the Urinary Microbiota and Uropathogens – Laurens E. Zandbergen – Frontiers in Microbiology

Urinary prostaglandin E2 as a biomarker for recurrent UTI in postmenopausal women – Tahmineh Ebrahimzadeh – Life Science Alliance

Impact of Vaginal Estrogen on the Urobiome in Postmenopausal Women With Recurrent Urinary Tract Infection – Carrie E. Jung – Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery

Animal microbiome

*Long-read metagenomics retrieves complete single-contig bacterial genomes from canine feces – Anna Cuscó – BMC Genomics

Perinatal exposure to tetracycline contributes to lasting developmental effects on offspring – Elizabeth M. Hill – Animal Microbiome

Drinking water microbiome

*Spatial-temporal targeted and non-targeted surveys to assess microbiological composition of drinking water in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria – Maria Catalina Sevillano – bioRxiv

Technique

Predicting the presence and abundance of bacterial taxa in environmental communities through flow cytometric fingerprinting – Jasmine Heyse – bioRixv

Sample preservation

Critical evaluation of faecal microbiome preservation using metagenomic analysis – Alena L. Pribyl – ISME Communications

Bioinformatics

*Emu: Species-Level Microbial Community Profiling for Full-Length Nanopore 16S Reads – Kristen D. Curry – bioRxiv

Microbiome differential abundance methods produce disturbingly different results across 38 datasets – Jacob T Nearing – bioRxiv

Improving metagenomic binning results with overlapped bins using assembly graphs – Vijini G. Mallawaarachchi – Algorithms for Molecular Biology

A method for achieving complete microbial genomes and improving bins from metagenomics data – Lauren M. Lui – Plos Computational Biology

Taxonomic annotation of 16S rRNA sequences of pig intestinal samples using MG-RAST and QIIME2 generated different microbiota compositions – J. Lima – Journal of Microbiological Methods

Webinars

EMBARK Spring Webinars – Heike Schmitt “International efforts for One Health surveillance of AMR (WHO Tricycle)” and Etienne Ruppé “On the use of Tricycle in EMBARK” – EMBARK project – May 19
Registration here
More info here

BISMiS Live – GCM 2.0: WDCM 10K Sequencing Project for Type Strains by Juncai Ma – Bergey’s Intl. Society for Microbial Systematics – May 15
Registration here
More info here

Women in Data Science 2021 – Perspectives in Industry and Academia – Bayer AG and de.NBI, Elixir Germany Event – 18 June

PPGSND thesis seminar: The dark side os science: misconduct in biomedical research – Elisabeth Bik – 20 May

mSystems Thinking Series – ASM

Courses

Riffomonas Project – R tutorials and more – PatricK Schloss

Machine learning in Python with scikit-learn – Inria

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python – MIT

Using MOFA for integration of omics data – Ricard Argelaguet – May 25

Data Visualization: Use R, ggplot2, and the principles of graphic design to create beautiful and truthful visualizations of data – Andrew Heiss

Conferences

1st Young AMICI Symposium – Austrian Microbiome Initiative – May 25-26

Microbes, Social Equity, and Rural Health – The Microbes and Social Equity working group and The University of Maine Institute of Medicine – June 14–18

Podcast

Differential gene expression and DESeq2 with Michael Love – The Bioinformatics Chat – Roman Cheplyaka and Jacob Schreiber

The Fake Science Detectives with David Sanders and Elisabeth Bik – Follow the Science – Faye Flam

Research, networking and public perception of science with Linda J Kenney – Microbes and Us – Joseph Shuttleworth

The microbiome: Delicious food and solutions to the climate crisis with Lene Lange – Science Stories – Jens Degett

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