Category Archives: Human gut

June 16, 2020

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Sorry for the late afternoon digest. We are in the midst of trying to get our lab back up and running! There are several interesting papers today, including a commentary on the holobiont model and the usefulness of integrating microbiome and GWAS data, the development of a “Microbiome-Derived Metabolism Screen” for personalized medicine published in Cell, and a paper investigating phylosymbiosis in the skin microbiome of fish. My non-microbiology pick is a urine sampling method to assess diet, which could be very useful to gut microbiome scientists.

General microbiome

Commentary: Re-evaluating the relationship between missing heritability and the microbiome – Gavin M. Douglas – Microbiome

Book chapter: Pharmacomicrobiomics – Weihua Huang – Pharmacogenomics in Precision Medicine

Human gut microbiome

Review: Altered Composition of Gut Microbiota in Depression: A Systematic Review – Zahra Amirkhanzadeh Barandouzi – Frontiers in Psychiatry

Review: Tryptophan Metabolites Along the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: An Interkingdom Communication System Influencing the Gut in Health and Disease – Annalisa Bosi – International Journal of Tryptophan Research

Personalized Mapping of Drug Metabolism by the Human Gut Microbiome – Bahar Javdan – Cell

Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron-derived outer membrane vesicles promote regulatory dendritic cell responses in health but not in inflammatory bowel disease – Lydia Durant – Microbiome

Animal microbiome

The skin microbiome of elasmobranchs follows phylosymbiosis, but in teleost fishes, the microbiomes converge – Michael P. Doane – Microbiome

Whole-genome sequence analysis of environmental Escherichia coli from the faeces of straw-necked ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis) nesting on inland wetlands – Ethan R Wyrsch – Microbial Genomics

Intestinal Microbiota Analyses of Litopenaeus vannamei During a Case of Atypical Massive Mortality in Northwestern Mexico – Alejandro López-Cortés – Current Microbiology

Identification of hepatitis C virus in the common bed bug–a potential, but uncommon route for HCV infection? – Jiaxin Ling – Emerging Microbes & Infections

Eggshell and environmental bacteria contribute to the intestinal microbiota of growing chickens – Joel J. Maki – Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology

Topography of the respiratory tract bacterial microbiota in cattle – Christopher McMullen – Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Exploring slope spatial heterogeneity by nitrogen transfer and arbuscular mycorrhizal community – Yanyan Yu – Journal of Soils and Sediments

Disentangling drivers of soil microbial potential enzyme activity across rain regimes: An approach based on the functional trait framework – Gabin Piton – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Microbial communities in petroleum-contaminated seasonally frozen soil and their response to temperature changes – Xusheng Wang – Chemosphere

Review: The Plant Microbiome: From Ecology to Reductionism and Beyond – Connor R. Fitzpatrick – Annual Review of Microbiology

Biogeographic patterns of microbial co-occurrence ecological networks in six American forests – Qichao Tu – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Water, air, and extremophile microbiome

Microbial communities of container aquatic habitats shift in response to Culex restuans larvae – Ephantus J. Muturi – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Climate mediates continental scale patterns of stream microbial functional diversity – Félix Picazo – Microbiome

Bacterial diversity of a high-altitude permafrost thaw pond located on Ojos del Salado (Dry Andes, Altiplano-Atacama region) – Júlia Margit Aszalós – Astrobiology  

Effects of active volcanism on bacterial communities in the highest-altitude crater lake of Ojos del Salado (Dry Andes, Altiplano-Atacama Region) – Júlia Margit Aszalós – Astrobiology  

Methanogenesis in the Lake Elton saline aquatic system – Anna Kallistova – Extremophiles

Auxotrophic interactions: A stabilizing attribute of aquatic microbial communities? – Winifred Johnson – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Food microbiology

Lactic acid accumulation under heat stress related to accelerated glycolysis and mitochondrial dysfunction inhibits the mycelial growth of Pleurotus ostreatus – Zhiyu Yan – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Evaluation and comparison of the microbial communities and volatile profiles in homemade suansun from Guangdong and Yunnan provinces in China – Qianqian Guan – Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture


Non-Microbiology Pick

Developing community-based urine sampling methods to deploy biomarker technology for the assessment of dietary exposure – Amanda J. Lloyd – Public Health Nutrition

June 13, 2020

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Somewhat of a brief digest for today, but to make up for that, the long-awaited results of the PREDICT I study were published in Nature Medicine!

Human gut microbiome

Human postprandial responses to food and potential for precision nutrition – Berry et al. – Nature Medicine

Insect microbiome

Shotgun sequencing of honey DNA can describe honey bee derived environmental signatures and the honey bee hologenome complexity – Bovo et al. – Scientific Reports

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Low Turnover of Soil Bacterial rRNA at Low Temperatures – Schostag et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: Diatom Modulation of Microbial Consortia Through Use of Two Unique Secondary Metabolites – Shibl et al. – bioRxiv

Complementary sampling methods for coral histology, metabolomics, and microbiome – Greene et al. – Methods in Ecology and Evolution

Phages and viruses

Preprint: Phage infection mediates inhibition of bystander bacteria – Chatterjee et al. – bioRxiv

Depth-related variability in viral communities in highly stratified sulfidic mine tailings – Gao et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

GAD: A Python Script for Dividing Genome Annotation Files into Feature-Based Files – Yasser et al. – Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences

Towards virtual physiological humans: integrating metabolism, physiology, and gut-microbiome

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Science communication on a recently published paper

Precision Medicine

A milestone in precision medicine would be the ability to explore generative models that can capture the real-world complexity of human physiology. If computational models can successfully integrate physiology, metabolism, and host-microbiome data – thereby achieving personalization of predictive models of virtual physiological humans – this would be a key stepping-stone in yielding promising therapeutic targets that are both individual-specific and case-specific. Thus, the science (and art) of generating and exploring virtual physiological humans could be a boon to systems physiology and precision medicine.

Whole-body metabolic reconstructions

Towards this end, Thiele et al. recently published an intriguing paper. Thiele et al. demonstrate building and validation of sex-specific curated Whole-Body Metabolic (WBM) reconstructions. Computational models derived from such WBM reconstructions offer a novel molecular-level, anatomically and physiologically consistent, sex-specific genome-scale reconstructions of human physiology and metabolism. Thiele et al. further demonstrated that the WBM reconstructions can be ‘personalized’ via integration of quantitative physiological data with multi-omics such as metabolomics, and gut-microbiome. Thus, Thiele et al. introduce Harvey and Harvetta, the male and female WBM reconstructions, respectively. These reconstructions and the derived models and analysis enable novel assessment of, e.g., host-microbiome co-metabolism that is individual-specific and is resolved at an organ-level.

Complexity

The extreme complexity of real-world metabolic modelling of host-microbiome in humans can hardly be overstated. Thiele et al. address this critical challenge via constraint-based reconstruction – their models account for the enormous diversity of microbiome-associated microbial genes that are meaningful both physiologically and is individual-specific such as in host-microbiome co-metabolism. Thus this approach allows case-specific investigation of human metabolism, such as for studying inherited metabolic diseases.

Approach

Previously the Thiele Lab , extensive metabolic modelling of metabolic and physiologically relevant pathways (curated algorithmically and manually) led to a comprehensive model that allows investigation via constraint-based reconstruction of over 80,000 pathways. Thiele et al. approached the problem into a smaller sub-problems that they have previously addressed. First – by compiling organ-specific information from previous literature and including experimental-omics data, Thiele Lab generated WBM reconstructions. Second – Thiele Lab imposed constraints the WBM reconstructions via (large-scale) physiology, dietary constraints and quantitative metabolomic data.

Highlights

A key challenge that Thiele et al. addressed in this current 2020 paper is the integration of more than 80,000 biochemical reactions, that were both anatomically and physiologically consistent. These WBM reconstructions describe 26 organs and 6 blood cell types and capture whole-body organ-resolved metabolism. Importantly, these recapitulate previously known inter-organ metabolic cycles and energy use. Interestingly, WBM models can also predict biomarkers. This might, e.g., elucidate new pathways or targets that are implicated in heritable metabolic diseases.

Take-home-message and future ahead

Exploring such quantitative metabolic models could reveal new molecular insights pertaining to (co-dependence of host-microbiome) metabolism and overall human physiology and homeostasis – both in health and disease. The power of computational models is further exemplified if these allow addressing questions via novel hypothesis-testing that go beyond the scope of wet-lab experiments.

written by: Div Prasad

I’m interested in quantitative biology (at the intersection) of human genetics, machine learning, and host-microbiome interactions.

Twitter: @divyaePrasad
github: divprasad

June 08, 2020

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Today, we present a broad spectrum of new studies covering among others the mycobiome of human milk, gut microbes and their association with brain development and cognitive function, and a catalogue of previously unseen microbial genomes. Of particular interest is a study that integrates different sources of data to model a personalized gut microbiome. Last but not least we selected a pre-print on the design and characterization of multiepitopes vaccine for SARS-CoV.

General microbiome

Cultivation-independent and cultivation-dependent metagenomes reveal genetic and enzymatic potential of microbial community involved in the degradation of a complex microbial polymer – Costa et al. – Microbiome

REVIEW: Conceptualizing the vertebrate sterolbiome – Ridlon – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Human milk mycobiome

Human milk fungi: environmental determinants and inter-kingdom associations with milk bacteria in the CHILD Cohort Study – Moossavi et al. – BMC Microbiology

Human skin microbiome

Skin microbiota analysis-inspired development of novel anti-infectives – Liu et al. – Microbiome

Human vaginal microbiome

PREPRINT: Vaginal microbiota of adolescents and their mothers: A preliminary study of vertical transmission and persistence – Bassis – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Personalized whole‐body models integrate metabolism, physiology, and the gut microbiome – Thiele et al. – Mol Syst Biol

REVIEW: The gut microbiota profile of adults with kidney disease and kidney stones: a systematic review of the literature – Stanford et al. – BMC Nephrology

PREPRINT: Gut microbes and their genes are associated with brain development and cognitive function in healthy children – Bonham et al. – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Microbial environment shapes immune function and cloacal microbiota dynamics in zebra finches Taeniopygia guttata – van Veelen et al. – Animal Microbiome

PREPRINT: Large scale metagenome assembly reveals novel animal-associated microbial genomes, biosynthetic gene clusters, and other genetic diversity – Youngblut – bioRxiv

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

Novel insights into the Thaumarchaeota in the deepest oceans: their metabolism and potential adaptation mechanisms – Zhong et al. – Microbiome

The role of metal contamination in shaping microbial communities in heavily polluted marine sediments – Di Cesare et al. – Environmental Pollution

Techniques

Engineering CRISPR/Cas9 to mitigate abundant host contamination for 16S rRNA gene-based amplicon sequencing – Song & Xie – Microbiome

SARS-CoV-2

PREPRINT: In silico design and characterization of multiepitopes vaccine for SARS-CoV from its Spike proteins – Kathwate – bioRxiv

June 6, 2020

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Short digest for today, but I’d like to draw attention to two studies on creative techniques to reduce contamination by host DNA sequences: one using PCR blocking primers to improve 16S rDNA sequencing, and the other on using CRISPR-Cas systems to assist with 18S rDNA sequencing. Happy reading!

Human gut microbiome

Review: Gut Microbial Metabolites and Blood Pressure Regulation: Focus on SCFAs and TMAO – Poll et al. – Physiology

Review: Trial Watch: the gut microbiota as a tool to boost the clinical efficacy of anticancer immunotherapy – Daillerè et al. – OncoImmunology

Human oral microbiome

Well‐maintained patients with a history of periodontitis still harbor a more disbiotic microbiome than health – Lu et al. – Periodontology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Contrasting soil microbial abundance and diversity on and between pasture drill rows in the third growing season after sowing – Hayes et al. – Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems

A novel PCR clamping assay reducing plant host DNA amplification significantly improves prokaryotic endo-microbiome community characterization – Lefèvre et al. – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Diverse viruses have restricted biogeography in deep-sea hydrothermal vent fluids – Thomas et al. – bioRxiv

Mercury methylation by metabolically versatile and cosmopolitan marine bacteria – Lin et al. – bioRxiv

Phages and viruses

A tissue level atlas of the healthy human virome – Kumata et al. – BMC Biology

Review: Deep Roots and Splendid Boughs of the Global Plant Virome – Dolja et al. – Annual Review of Phytopathology

Bioinformatics

An empirical Bayes approach to normalization and differential abundance testing for microbiome data – Liu et al. – BMC Bioinformatics

Techniques

The use of CRISPR-Cas Selective Amplicon Sequencing (CCSAS) to reveal the eukaryotic microbiome of metazoans – Zhong et al. – bioRxiv

June 5, 2020

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Today’s digest features a review on genetic variability within species in microbiomes, a study on Lactobacilli in the human nose, a new episode of Microbiology Lab Pod with the latest science news on functional metagenomics, a novel resistance gene called GAR, and more. Happy reading/listening!

General microbiome

*Diversity within species: interpreting strains in microbiomes – Thea Van Rossum – Nature Reviews

Earth microbial co-occurrence network reveals interconnection pattern across microbiomes – Bin Ma – Microbiome

Oral and nasal microbiome

Local oral and nasal microbiome diversity in age-related macular degeneration – Jacob Rullo – Scientific Reports

*Lactobacilli Have a Niche in the Human Nose – Ilke De Boeck – Cell Reports

Gut microbiome

Resistant maltodextrin intake reduces virulent metabolites in the gut environment: randomized control study in a Japanese cohort – Yuichiro Nishimoto – MedRxiv

Pregnancy and early life

One year cross-sectional study in adult and neonatal intensive care units reveals the bacterial and antimicrobial resistance genes profiles in patients and hospital surfaces – Ana Paula Christoff – PlosOne

Animal microbiome

Cecal microbiome composition and metabolic function in probiotic treated broilers – Denise R. Rodrigues – PlosOne

Characterization of native Escherichia coli populations from bovine vagina of healthy heifers and cows with postpartum uterine disease – Candelaria Gonzalez Moreno – PlosOne

Animal experiments

Structural and Functional Changes of Gut Microbiota in Ovariectomized Rats and Their Correlations With Altered Bone Mass – Sicong Ma – Aging

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Dissecting the effect of continuous cropping of potato on soil bacterial communities as revealed by high-throughput sequencing – Jing Zhao – Plos One

Water microbiome

Increasing flow rate reduces biofouling and colonization by filamentous bacteria in drippers fed with reclaimed wastewater – Kevin Lequette – bioRxiv

Phages and viruses

Integration of phage and yeast display platforms: A reliable and cost effective approach for binning of peptides as displayed on-phage – Priyanka Pandya – PlosOne

Freshwater viral metagenome reveals novel and functional phage-borne antibiotic resistance genes – Kira Moon – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

Estimating Microbial Interaction Network: Zero-inflated Latent Ising Model Based Approach– Jie Zhou – bioRxiv

Assessment of statistical methods from single cell, bulk RNA-seq and metagenomics applied to microbiome data – Matteo Calgaro – bioRxiv

Metabolomics

Updated ATLAS of Biochemistry with New Metabolites and Improved Enzyme Prediction Power– Jasmin Hafner – Synthetic Biology

Inferring Active Metabolic Pathways from Proteomics and Essentiality Data – Ariadna Montero-Blay – Cell Reports

Podcast

*May 2020 Pod: Discovering novel resistance genes and how bacteria become virulent – Bengtsson-Palme Lab and Marlies Böhm – Microbiology Lab Pod

June 4, 2020

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General microbiome

Cultivation-independent and cultivation-dependent metagenomes reveal genetic and enzymatic potential of microbial community involved in the degradation of a complex microbial polymer – Costa et al. – Microbiome

Human microbiome

Review – Host–microbiota interactions in immune-mediated diseases. Ruff et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbial diversity, inflammation, and oxidative stress are associated with tacrolimus dosing requirements early after heart transplantation – Jennings et al. PLOS One

Review – Interaction between drugs and the gut microbiome – Weersma et al. – Gut

Mucosal Microbiota and Metabolome along the Intestinal Tract Reveal a Location-Specific Relationship – Yuan et al. mSystems

Animal microbiome

The Gut Microbiota Communities of Wild Arboreal and Ground-Feeding Tropical Primates Are Affected Differently by Habitat Disturbance – Barelli et al. mSystems.

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Diversity of isoprene-degrading bacteria in phyllosphere and soil communities from a high isoprene-emitting environment: a Malaysian oil palm plantation – Carrion et al. Microbiome

Probiotics

Probiotics for the prevention of antibiotic-associated adverse events in children—A scoping review to inform development of a core outcome set – Lukasik et al. –  PLOS One

Phages and viruses

Predicting host taxonomic information from viral genomes: A comparison of feature representations – Young et al. PLOS Comp Biology. 

Freshwater viral metagenome reveals novel and functional phage-borne antibiotic resistance genes – Moon et al. Microbiome.

Bioinformatics

The hidden layers of microbial community structure: extracting the concealed diversity dimensions from our sequencing data – Fasolo et al. – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Compositional Lotka-Volterra describes microbial dynamics in the simplex – Joseph et al. PLOS Computational Biology.

Techniques

Prokaryotic single-cell RNA sequencing by in situ combinatorial indexing – Blattman et al. – Nature Microbiology.

June 3, 2020

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Today’s post covers articles on role of microbiome in sepsis, early life microbiota related to cystic fibrosis and respiratory syncitial virus disease, promise and challenge with cancer microbiome, effect of probiotics on intestinal homeostasis after chemotherapy and many more!

General microbiome

Predictive biology: modelling, understanding and harnessing microbial complexity – Allison J. Lopatkin – Nature Reviews Microbiology

The Gut Microbiome’s Role in the Development, Maintenance, and Outcomes of Sepsis – Max W Adelman – Critical Care

The Promise and Challenge of Cancer Microbiome Research – Sumeed Syed Manzoor – Genome Biology

Antidiabetic Effects of Flavan-3-ols and Their Microbial Metabolites – Estefanía Márquez Campos – Nutrients

Human microbiome

Longitudinal analysis reveals transition barriers between dominant ecological states in the gut microbiome – Roie Levy – PNAS

Strain-resolved microbiome sequencing reveals mobile elements that drive bacterial competition on a clinical timescale – Soumaya Zlitni – Genome Medicine

Comparative Assessment of Faecal Microbial Composition and Metabonome of Swine, Farmers and Human Control – Shiang Chiet Tan – Scientific Reports

Matching Between Donors and Ulcerative Colitis Patients Is Important for Long-Term Maintenance After Fecal Microbiota Transplantation – Koki Okahara – Journal of Clinical Medicine

Preganancy and early life

Alterations in Vaginal Microbiota and Associated Metabolome in Women With Recurrent Implantation Failure – Min Fu – mBio

Development of the Gut Microbiota in Early Life: The Impact of Cystic Fibrosis and Antibiotic Treatment – Maartje Kristensen – Journal of Cystic Fibrosis

Altered Gut Microbiota in Infants Is Associated With Respiratory Syncytial Virus Disease Severity – Jeffrey N Harding – BMC Microbiology

Ecological Succession in the Vaginal Microbiota During Pregnancy and Birth – M A Rasmussen – Isme Journal

Animal experiments

Host genotype and exercise exhibit species-level selection for members of the gut bacterial communities in the mouse digestive system – R. A. Dowden – Scientific Reports

Repetitive, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Results in a Progressive White Matter Pathology, Cognitive Deterioration, and a Transient Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis – Mariana Angoa-Pérez – Scientific Reports

Association of Gut Microbiota Composition and Function With an Aged Rat Model of Senile Osteoporosis Using 16S rRNA and Metagenomic Sequencing Analysis – Sicong Ma – Aging

Increasing the Hindgut Carbohydrate/Protein Ratio by Cecal Infusion of Corn Starch or Casein Hydrolysate Drives Gut Microbiota-Related Bile Acid Metabolism To Stimulate Colonic Barrier Function – Yu Pi – mSystems

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Using Soil Bacterial Communities to Predict Physico-Chemical Variables and Soil Quality – Syrie M Hermans – Microbiome

Analysis of bacterial and archaeal communities associated with Fogo volcanic soils of different ages – Corinne Biderre-Petit – Fems Microbial Ecology

Water microbiome

Functional potential and assembly of microbes from sediments in a lake bay and adjoining river ecosystem for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon biodegradation – Zaisheng Yan – Environmental Microbiology

Functional foods

Effect of Probiotics on the Maintenance of Intestinal Homeostasis After Chemotherapy: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Pre-Clinical Studies – W G Lima – Beneficial Microbes

Non microbiology picks

Racial Disparities in Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Related to COVID-19 in the USA– Wilson M Alobuia – Journal of Public Health

Ozone Treatment for Elimination of Bacteria and SARS-CoV-2 for Medical Environments – Craig Westover – BioRxiv

June 2, 2020

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Happy Month of June to all,
June serves as the national month for Alzheimer’s and brain awareness. So I will start today’s digest with some news articles about the same.
Further the digest covers some very fascinating research articles about how the microbiome influences transcriptional profile in Drosophila melanogaster to peripheral blood microbial signatures in COPD. Digest also features some awesome microbe related science communication articles.
Enjoy reading!!!
Have a Safe, Healthy, Happy, and Productive month ahead.

Alzheimer’s and brain awareness news posts

Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month 2020 – Bankston – ASBMB Today

Could the gut microbiome be linked to autism? – Svoboda – Nature Outlook

General microbiome
*Interactions between the microbiome and mating influence the female’s transcriptional profile in Drosophila melanogaster – Delbare et al – bioRxiv

Phenotypic changes of bacteria through opportunity and global methylation leads to antibiotic resistance – Neerathilingam et al – bioRxiv

Human nearly-sterile sites
Peripheral blood microbial signatures in COPD – Morrow et al – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome
Prebiotics and community composition influence gas production of the human gut microbiota – Yu et al – bioRxiv

Short-term High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) Exercise Does Not Affect Gut Bacterial Community Diversity or Composition of Lean and Overweight Men -Rettedal et al – Experimental Physiology

Animal experiments
Integrative omics analysis of the termite gut system adaptation to Miscanthus diet identifies lignocellulose degradation enzymes – Clusinska et al – Communications Biology

Water and extremophile microbiome
Phylum-level Diversity of the Microbiome of the Extremophilic Basidiomycete Fungus Pisolithus Arhizus (Scop.) Rauschert: An Island of Biodiversity in a Thermal Soil Desert – Culling et al – MicrobiologyOpen

Food microbiology
Lactobacillus Rhamnosus 2016SWU.05.0601 Regulates Immune Balance in Ovalbumin-Sensitized Mice by Modulating the Immune-Related Transcription Factors Expression and Gut Microbiota – Song et al – Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture

Techniques
Harnessing Ultrasound-Stimulated Phase Change Contrast Agents to Improve Antibiotic Efficacy Against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Biofilms – Durham et al – bioRxiv

Microbiome Science communication articles
The hunt for a healthy microbiome – Eisenstein – Nature Outlook

The complex relationship between drugs and the microbiome – Savage -Nature Outlook

The Infant Gut Microbiome and Probiotics that Work – Smilowitz and Taft – The Scientist

May 28, 2020

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Hello and welcome to today’s microbiome digest! It’s a compact digest, but quite diverse. You will find a study investigating the effect of high-fat diet in Drosophila found a microbiota-dependent activation of stem-cells; electronic cigarettes were found to negatively influence the oral microbiome, and glycan epitopes present on enveloped viruses (as COVID-19) can be targeted and neutralized by human antibodies against these foreign glycan structures.
Finally, a helpful article during Corona-times, when more and more courses and meetings are held online, features the use of FAIR training material: Ten simple rules for making training materials FAIR. Enjoy!

COVID-19

Is social connectedness a risk factor for the spreading of COVID-19 among older adults? The Italian paradox – Giuseppe Liotta – PLOS ONE

General microbiome

Review: Enhancing bacterial survival through phenotypic heterogeneity – Leila M. Reyes Ruiz – PLOS PATHOGENS

Human respiratory microbiome

Adverse effects of electronic cigarettes on the disease-naive oral microbiome – Sukirth M. Ganesan – Science Advances

Human gut microbiome

Preprint: Shotgun Metagenomics of 361 elderly women reveals gut microbiome change in bone mass loss – Qi Wang – BioRxiv

Permissive microbiome characterizes human subjects with a neurovascular disease cavernous angioma – Sean P. Polster – Nature Communications

Persistent Diarrhea in Patients With Crohn’s Disease After Mucosal Healing Is Associated With Lower Diversity of the Intestinal Microbiome and Increased Dysbiosis – Karen Boland – Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Fecal microbiota transplantation in systemic sclerosis: A double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized pilot trial – Havard Fretheim – PLOS ONE

Animal experiments

A high-fat diet induces a microbiota-dependent increase in stem cell activity in the Drosophila intestine – Jakob con Frieling – PLOS GENETICS

The cecal and fecal microbiomes and metabolomes of horses before and after metronidazole administration – Carolyn E. Arnold – PLOS ONE

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Functional diversity of rhizosphere soil microbial communities in response to different tillage and crop residue retention in a double-cropping rice field – Haiming Tang – PLOS ONE

Water and extremophile microbiome

Microbiome analysis of healthy and diseased sponges Lubomirskia baicalensis by using cell cultures of primmorphs – Lubov Chernogor – PeerJ

Built environment

The use of ozone gas for the inactivation of Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus subtilis spores on building materials – Joseph P. Wood – PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

* Harnessing the natural anti-glycan immune response to limit the transmission of enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 – Adrien Breiman – PLOS PATHOGENS

Review: A viral journey to the brain: Current considerations and future developments – Nilda Vanesa Ayala-Nunez – PLOS PATHOGENS

Bioinformatics

Preprint: A global data-driven census of Salmonella small proteins and their potential functions in bacterial virulence – Elisa Venturini – BioRxiv

Techniques

Preprint: Fluorescent secreted bacterial effectors reveal an intravacuolar replication compartment for Listeria monocytogenes – Caroline Peron Cane – BioRxiv

Science, publishing, and career

2 Art Gallery Shows to Explore From Home – The New York Times – Check out the art by Anika Yi

Judith’s non-microbiology picks

* Ten simple rules for making training materials FAIR – Leyla Garcia – PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY