Probiotics to precision probiotics

After “precision medicine”, it is now time to conceptualize the term “precision probiotics”. In simple words, fundamental idea of precision medicine is to develop “new taxonomy” of disease employing molecular characterization of disease based on individual data that will enable better stratification of patients and determining most effective treatments. On similar lines, Veiga and colleagues offer strategies to develop precision probiotics, combine with multi-omics host response data to find most optimal probiotic modality in stratified individuals/populations.

I would recommend to read the review in full. To motivate you, following are some excerpts from the review:

“Historically, the discovery of probiotics relied on a top-down approach, where a microorganism enriched in healthy individuals (compared to an altered health state) is suggested to be beneficial and correlates with a health benefit upon administration to humans…While this empirical top-down approach provides robust leads for the development of probiotics, in the absence of prior mechanistic information, it inherently necessitates multiple cycles of trial and error to identify health benefits.”

Problems with top-down approach

  • “Probiotic efficacy being both strain- and indication-specific
  • Person-specific factors also contribute to heterogeneity in the outcome of probiotic supplementations, including diet, age and the microbiome. Colonization-resistant microbiomes are more resilient to probiotic interventions compared to colonization-permissive individuals.”

Bottom up approach

“The phenotypic approach is based on screening for probiotic effects using in vitro and ex vivo cell cultures as well as animal models with immune, neuronal, metabolic or microbial read-outs.

Target-based discovery relies on the selection of probiotic candidates based primarily on in silico prediction of their capacity to produce molecular effectors that are potentially able to modulate host or microbial pathways, which are foreseen to play a critical role in health or disease. Such in silico predictions would require the use of multi-omics (such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and proteomics) possibly coupled to metabolic reconstruction to infer the metabolic capacity of the screened microorganisms.”

Challenges with bottom-up approach

  • “A greater challenge lies in applying a person-specific approach to predict efficacy, which likely requires obtaining profound individualized host data (including genetics, anthropometrics and immune profiling) and microbiome data (such as strain-level composition, transcriptomics and metabolomics), as well as identifying relevant biomarkers that predict colonization resistance and/or a health outcome.
  • As stool samples do not accurately reflect colonization and impact on the gut microbiota along the gastrointestinal tract during probiotic supplementation, there is a great need to devise non-invasive means for identifying compatible probiotic–individual matches.
  • Another important factor to consider is safety, as exogenous microorganisms can have unexpected effects on the microbiome, and can even compromise the health of vulnerable subjects and result in bacteraemia or fungaemia.”

I believe that these challenges also hold true for top-down approach

Precision probiotics strategies

The big aim

“…developing algorithms that, when provided with these individualized parameters, can suggest the optimal probiotic modality that would result in a beneficial outcome.”

  • “To achieve this goal, on one hand, scientists need to better characterize the physiological or pathological pathways that can be modulated by probiotics, in line with the increasing effort to use bottom-up approaches.
  • On the other hand, further digitization of tools for the collection and processing of person-specific data, and their integration with genomic and metabolomic host and microbiome profiles, will be required.
  • Setting up standardized protocols that allow bio-citizens to self-experiment in ‘N-of-1 trials’ and report their experiences with probiotics, coupled with individualized measurements, would greatly expand our understanding of differential probiotic activity in the heterogenous human population. This approach will require devising strict validation and safety measurements for promising centralized data collection while maintaining participants’ anonymity.

“…While today, this (refers to microbiome data) personal information is poorly actionable, tomorrow it could serve as the basis for microbiome-centred precision nutrition and preventive medicine, including precision probiotics.”

May 8, 2020.

The highlighted paper of the day looked at the relationship between statins and gut microbiome / enterotype prevalence, mined from data collected from the MetaCardis study which looked at over 2000 participants all across the EU and collected over 1,400 parameters.

If you’re looking for a review/news article of the paper head to: Statin drugs might boost healthy gut microbes

If you’re looking for the paper: Statin therapy is associated with lower prevalence of gut microbiota dysbiosis – Sara Silva – Nature

COVID-19


Identification of Drugs Blocking SARS-CoV-2 Infection using Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-derived Colonic Organoids – Xiaohua Duan – bioRxiv

Whose coronavirus strategy worked best? Scientists hunt most effective policies – Elizabeth Gibney – Nature

Coronavirus activates a stem cell-mediated defense mechanism that accelerates the activation of dormant tuberculosis: implications for the COVID-19 pandemic – Lekhika Pathak – bioRxiv

General Microbiome

Multi ‘Omics Profiling of the HIV Airway Epithelium: Integration of the Microbiome, Methylome, and Transcriptome – MS Jude – Am J Respir Crit Care Med

Intracellular Staphylococcus aureus persisters upon antibiotic exposure – Frederuc Peyrusson – Nature Communications

Isolation and characterization of bacteriophages that infect Citrobacter rodentium, a model pathogen for investigating human intestinal diseases – Carolina Mizuno – bioRxiv

MiniReview: A toxic environment: a growing understanding of how microbial communities affect Shiga toxin expression by E. coli O157:H7 – Erin M. Nawrocki – American Society for Microbiology, Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Pregnancy and early life

Gut microbiota derived metabolites contribute to intestinal barrier maturation at the suckling-to- weaning transition – Martin Beaumont – Gut Microbes

Gut Microbiome Derived 12,13 Dihome Promotes Antigen Presenting Cell Dysfunction In Vitro and Airway Allergic Inflammation In Vivo – S Levan – Atsjournal


Multi-site human microbiome

The Microbiome and the Gut‐Liver‐Brain Axis for CNS Clinical Pharmacology: Challenges in Specifying and Integrating In Vitro and In Silico Models – Kyle Hawkins – Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Gut Check: The Intestinal Microbiome Does Not Predict or Protect from Vancomycin- Resistant Enterococcus Acquisition Among Critically Ill Patients – Chanderraj – Atsjournal

The Tumour-Resident Microbiome Is Associated with Cancer Hypomethylation Status in Lung Adenocarcinoma – Marshall – atsjournal

An association between the gut microbiota and immune cell dynamics in humans. – Jonas Schluter – bioRxiv

Metabolomics

Analyzing the impact of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection on primary human macrophages by combined exploratory and targeted metabolomics – Vrieling Frank

Review: Metabolome–Microbiome Crosstalk and Human Disease – Kathleen Lee-Sarwar – metabolites

Animal Microbiome

Review – Mycobacterium bovis: From Genotyping to Genome Sequencing – Ana Guimaraeas – Microorganism

Animal experiments

Staphylococcus aureus-induced proteomic changes in the mammary tissue of rats: A TMT-based study – Lirong Cai – Plos One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome


Effects of earthworms on the microbiomes and antibiotic resistomes of detritus fauna and phyllosphere – Dong Zhu – Environmental Science and Technology

Surface runoff alters cave microbial community structure and function – Madison Davis – Plos One

Water and extremophile microbiome

Culturing of ‘Unculturable’ Subsurface Microbes: Natural Organic Carbon Source Fuels the Growth of Diverse and Distinct Bacteria from Groundwater – Xiaoqin Wu – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics & Techniques

Sequence count data are poorly fit by the negative binomial distribution – Stjin Hawinkel – Plos One

Book Chappter: Meta-Pangenome: At the Crossroad of Pangenomics and Metagenomics – Bing MA – The Pangenome, Springer.

Snipe: Highly sensitive pathogen detection from metagenomic sequencing data – Lihong Huang – bioRxiv

Validated Method for the Study of Human Lung Microbiota from Excised Tissue – Dumont-Leblond – atsjounal

Microbes in the news

Bad to the Bone – Matthew Greseth- MUSC Health

Meet the ‘psychobiome’: the gut bacteria that may alter how you think, feel, and act – Elizabeth Pennisi – ScienceMag

Decoding the Microbiome: Essential to Advancing Precision Medicine – Heather Hall – rdworldonline

Harithaa’s non-microbiology picks!

Mass spectrometry for future atomic clocks – Marianna Safrova – Nature (news & views)

May 2nd, 2020

Another month has passed! Hope everyone is staying at home and being well. Today’s highlights include a paper applying NMR to monitor neonatal metabolic adaptations, how oil influence microbial community assembly off the Gulf of Mexico and a preprint for a Bayesian Multi-task method to identify global microbiome associations.

COVID-19 Articles 

Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing – Ed Yong – The Atlantic

Aerodynamic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in two Wuhan hospitals – Liu & Ning et al. – Nature

Human microbiome

Fucosidases from the human gut symbiont Ruminococcus gnavus – Wu & Rebello et al– Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences

Temporal Dysbiosis of Infant Nasal Microbiota Relative to Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection – Grier et al. – bioRxiv **preprint**

Sex-specific Alterations in the Urinary and Tissue Microbiome in Therapy-naïve Urothelial Bladder Cancer Patients – Pederzoli et al.  – European Urology Oncology

Microbiome and Metabolomics 

Metabolic changes in early neonatal life: NMR analysis of the neonatal metabolic profile to monitor postnatal metabolic adaptations – Georgakopoulou, I., Chasapi, S.A., Bariamis, S.E. et al – Metabolomics

Analyzing the impact of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection on primary human macrophages by combined exploratory and targeted metabolomics – Vrieling & Kostidis et al. – Nature Scientific Reports

Soil microbiome

Structural and microbial evidence for different soil carbon sequestration after four-year successive biochar application in two different paddy soils – Bi & Cai et al. – Chemosphere

Soil pH and C/N ratio determines spatial variations in soil microbial communities and enzymatic activities of the agricultural ecosystems in Northeast China: Jilin Province case – Xu et al. – Applied Soil Ecology

Animal microbiome

Viral metagenomics revealed diverse CRESS-DNA virus genomes in faeces of forest musk deer – Liu & Wang et al. – Virology Journal

Links between the rumen microbiota, methane emissions and feed efficiency of finishing steers offered dietary lipid and nitrate supplementation – Bowen & Cormican et al– PLOS One

Microbiomes of the built environment 

Influence of oil, dispersant, and pressure on microbial communities from the Gulf of Mexico – Noirungsee et al. – Nature Scientific Reports

Passenger-surface microbiome interactions in the subway of Mexico City – Vargas-Robles et al.  – bioRxiv **preprint**

Pathogens 

Intra-species signaling between Pseudomonas aeruginosa genotypes increases production of quorum sensing controlled virulence factors – Mould et al. – bioRxiv **preprint**

Statistics and bioinformatics 

A Bayesian Multi-Task Approach for Detecting Global Microbiome Associations – Hatami et al. – bioRxiv (soon to be published in Bioinformatics) **preprint**

Extremophiles

Genomic sequencing of Gracilibacillus dipsosauri reveals key properties of a salt-tolerant a-amylase – Deutch & Yang – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Aquatic environments  

Cyanobacteria in inland waters: new monitoring, reporting, modelling and ecological research – Mitrovic et al. – Marine & Freshwater Research **review**

Contrast diversity patterns and processes of microbial community assembly in a river-lake continuum across a catchment scale in northwestern China – Tang et al. – Environmental Microbiome

Microbiome in the News

Coffee plants have a small but consistent core microbiome of fungi and bacteria – American Phytopathological Society – EurekAlert!

April 24, 2020

Events

Virtual Podium 2020 – Session 5 (Microbiome) – April 24, 2020

Scientific career and work-life balance – April 24, 2020

World Malaria Day – April 25, 2020 – Draws attention to the impact of the disease and (re)urges us to find a way to overcome it once and for all.
Join the #talkingmalaria tweetchat on April 24, 2020 at 12 noon BST.

COVID-19

GRAND CHALLENGE: A billion molecules against COVID-19 – Joint European Disruptive Initiative

General microbiome

Reversibility of propionic acid inhibition to anaerobic digestion: Inhibition kinetics and microbial mechanism – Youl Han – Chemosphere

Responses of microbial structures, functions, metabolic pathways and community interactions to different C/N ratios in aerobic nitrification – Hongwei Sun – Bioresource Technology

PERSPECTIVE: Cultivating fungal research – Heidi H. Kong – Science

Human microbiome

REVIEW: Microbiota–immune interactions in asthma pathogenesis and phenotype – Nicholas W.Lukacs – Current Opinion in Immunology

CANCER IN TRANSLATION: Microbiome genomics for cancer prediction – Lorenz Adlung – Nature Cancer

Human skin microbiome

BOOK CHAPTER: The wound microbiome – Aayushi Uberoi – In: Wound Healing, Tissue Repair, and Regeneration in Diabetes.

Human gut microbiome

BOOK CHAPTER: Dietary Fiber and Gut Microbiota – Carolina Senés-Guerrero – In: Science and Technology of Fibers in Food Systems

Animal experiments

Effect of in feed administration of different butyrate formulations on Salmonella Enteritidis colonization and cecal microbiota in broilers – Lonneke Onrust – Veterinary Research

Stochasticity constrained by deterministic effects of diet and age drive rumen microbiome assembly dynamics – Ori Furman – Nature Communications

Sequence variant analysis reveals poor correlations in microbial taxonomic abundance between humans and mice after gnotobiotic transfer – Farnaz Fouladi – ISME Journal

Temporal changes in microbial communities attached to forages with different lignocellulosic compositions in the cattle rumen – Javad Gharechahi – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Animal microbiome

Host-microbiota interaction helps to explain the bottom-up effects of climate change on a small rodent species – Guoliang Li – ISME Journal

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Tapping into the maize root microbiome to identify bacteria that promote growth under chilling conditions – Stien Beirinckx – Microbiome

Regulatory relationship between quality variation and environment of Cistanche deserticola in three ecotypes based on soil microbiome analysis – Xiao Sun – Scientific Reports

Effects of biodegradable plastic film mulching on soil microbial communities in two agroecosystems – Sreejata Bandopadhyay – PeerJ

Water microbiome

Total Microbial Activity and Sulfur Cycling Microbe Changes in Response to the Development of Hypoxia in a Shallow Estuary – Yunjung Park – Ocean Science Journal

Built environment

Associations Between Respiratory Infections and Bacterial Microbiome in Student Dormitories in Northern China – Xi Fu – Indoor Air

Bacterial community analysis of floor dust and HEPA filters in air purifiers used in office rooms in ILAS, Beijing – Jianguo Guo – Scientific Reports

Microbes in space

The influence of spaceflight on the astronaut salivary microbiome and the search for a microbiome biomarker for viral reactivation – Camilla Urbaniak – Microbiome

Food microbiology

Insights into the Microbiological Safety of Wooden Cutting Boards Used for Meat Processing in Hong Kong’s Wet Markets: A Focus on Food-Contact Surfaces, Cross-Contamination and the Efficacy of Traditional Hygiene Practices – Patrick T. Sekoai – Microorganisms

Pre-print

MicrobioLink: An integrated computational pipeline to infer functional effects of microbiome-host interactions – Tahila Andrighetti – bioRxiv

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

Mendelian randomization analysis revealed causal effects from gut microbiota to abdominal obesity – Qian Xu – bioRxiv

A quantitative measure of functional redundancy in microbial ecosystems – Taylor M Royalty – bioRxiv

Host association induces genome changes in Candida albicans which alters its virulence – Amanda C Smith – bioRxiv

Shirin’s non-microbiology picks

CAREER FEATURE: Safely conducting essential research in the face of COVID-19 – Virginia Gewin – Nature

Reaching a Large Urban Undergraduate Population through Microbial Ecology Course-Based Research Experiences – Samantha Parks – Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education

POLICY FORUM: Against pandemic research exceptionalism – Alex John London – Science

WORLD VIEW: On the 50th Earth Day, take collective action for the planet – Emma Marris – Nature

BEHIND THE PAPER: Annotating the unknown: Functional Gene Annotation using Untargeted Metabolomics – Robert Jansen – Nature Microbiology Community

April 20, 2020

God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. To all my friends who have lost the track of time during the quarantine, it is Monday and the beginning of a new week. Today’s digest is a very light one. However, it carries a super interesting preprint that studies the impact of the pandemic on publication speed of different medical journals. The study reports that, on average, the COVID-19 related papers were expedited through the peer-review process at a 49% (up to 80% in case of certain journals) higher pace than the mean pre-pandemic publishing speed (Yes, there is a pre-pandemic and, possibly, a post-pandemic era now). Although this is a controversial topic, I guess the preprint did a very good job of discussing the reasons behind and impact of accelerated publishing.

In my personal opinion, it is great to be able to get valuable scientific information as soon as it is produced. However, as the paper points out, there has to be some sort of trade-off between the quality of a publication and the time taken by the peer-review process. It could be argued that the quarantine measures might have made it easier for some reviewers to focus their attention on the peer-review, making it faster, but there is no information on ‘who’ reviewed these papers. Also, the article highlights what a lot of scholars have been warning about – the amount of post-publishing corrections that these papers would require (more work for Ms Bik!).

What do you think could be the reasons behind this unprecedented celerity of publishing? Could it be the availability of more spare time to review papers? or could this be an instance of politicization of science (as someone pointed out in the comments section of the article)? What could be the impact of this swiftness, both positive and negative, on the scientific realm? Would it be possible, or advisable, to keep up this trend of swift publishing in the post-pandemic era? Let’s discuss in the comments section.

Apart from this highly thought-provoking article, there is another interesting article on the identification of bacterial strains that may promote maize (corn, for my American friends) growth in chilling conditions.

There is another interesting article that tries to establish a link between the gut microbiome and memory. The study focused on microbiome-specific genetic and metabolomic changes that may impact memory. The study was performed in mice.

Enjoy the articles, have a great week, and stay safe!

COVID 19

Preprint: Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19 – Serge P.J.M. Horbach

Preprint: Coronavirus Infection and PARP Expression Dysregulate the NAD Metabolome: A Potentially Actionable Component of Innate Immunity – Collin D Heer, et al.

Animal microbiome

Genetic and metabolic links between the murine microbiome and memory – Jian-Hua Mao, et al. – Microbiome

Plant root-soil microbiome

Tapping into the maize root microbiome to identify bacteria that promote growth under chilling conditions – Stien Beirinckx, et al. – Microbiome

Microbial interactions

Preprint: Expanding the diversity of bacterioplankton isolates and modeling isolation efficacy with large scale dilution-to-extinction cultivation – Michael W. Henson, et al.

 

April 19, 2020

Hello from the Sonoran Desert! It is a lovely morning here in Tucson, Az. I am excited to send my first contribution to Microbiome Digest! There is a lot of diversity in today’s digest, but if microbes thriving in all kinds of strange, extreme conditions are your area of interest, you’ll be interested in the book compiling the latest studies on extremophiles. Each chapter focuses on a particular environment, ranging from deserts to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and explores the mechanisms allowing microbes to survive these incredible conditions.

If like me, you are a computational biology enthusiast and a machine learning addict, you should enjoy reading the last entry, a short perspective paper examining how machine learning algorithms can help predict antibiotic resistance!

Have a great Sunday!


General microbiology

Preprint: Interspecies interactions in bacterial colonies are determined by physiological traits and the environment – Booth – BioRxiv


Human gut and mouth microbiome

Bacterial colonization reprograms the neonatal gut metabolome – Bittinger – Nature microbiology

Salivary Factors that Maintain the Normal Oral Commensal Microflora – Carpenter – Journal of dental research

Preprint: Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing of Rectal Swabs for the Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistant Organisms on the Illumina Miseq and Oxford MinION Platforms – Yee – bioRxiv


Animal microbiome

Preprint: Mortality of native and invasive ladybirds co-infected by ectoparasitic and entomopathogenic fungi – Haelewaters – bioRxiv

Built environment

Preprint: The Microbes Found in the Honey of New York City Beehives – Weiss – BioRxiv

Correlation between autochthonous microbial communities and key odorants during the fermentation of red pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) – Xu – Food Microbiology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Book: Microbial Versatility in Varied Environments: Microbes in Sensitive Environments – collective – Springer Nature

The seasonal variation of microbial communities in drinking water sources in Shanghai – Guo – Journal of Cleaner Production

Plant, root and soil microbiome

LDPE microplastics significantly alter the temporal turnover of soil microbial communities –  Wang – Science of the total environment

High abundance of Ralstonia solanacearum changed tomato rhizosphere microbiome and metabolome – Wen – BMC Plant Biology


Phages and viruses

Preprint : First evidence of virus-like particles in the bacterial symbionts of Bryozoa – Vishnyakov – BioRxiv

Microbial community development on model particles in the deep sulfidic waters of the Black Sea – Suominen – Environmental microbiology

The stepwise assembly of the neonatal virome is modulated by breastfeeding – Liang – Nature

Bioinformatics

Preprint: Bayesian classification, anomaly detection, and survival analysis using network inputs with application to the microbiome – Josephs – arXiv

Techniques

Preprint: Expanding the diversity of bacterioplankton isolates and modeling isolation efficacy with large scale dilution-to-extinction cultivation – Henson – bioRxiv

Catalyzing rapid discovery of gold-precipitating bacterial lineages with university students – Riley – PeerJ


COVID-19 and career

Science-ing from home – Powell – Nature

My non-microbiology pick

Perspective: Lean, mean, learning machines – Wheeler – Nature review microbiology

March 26th, 2020

This is my first post on the site! There weren’t a lot of alerts today, so I dug around for other papers I can find. Today’s digest includes mostly human microbiome research, most notably a study identifying a staph peptide that induces acute exacerbation of pulmonary fibrosis, as well as a very diverse epidemiological study of the impact of diet on the gut microbiome in the United States.

General Human Microbiome

US nativity and dietary acculturation impact the gut microbiome in a diverse US population  – Peters, B.A., Yi, S.S., Beasley, J.M. et al. – ISME

Microbiome in Pregnancy and Birth

Maternal carriage of Prevotella during pregnancy associates with protection against food allergy in the offspring – Vuillermin, P.J., O’Hely, M., Collier, F. et al. – Nature Communications

Vaginal Microbiome of Pregnant Indian Women: Insights into the Genome of Dominant Lactobacillus Species – Mehta, O., Ghosh, T.S., Kothidar, A. et al. – Microbial Ecology

Translational human microbiome research

A Staphylococcus pro-apoptotic peptide induces acute exacerbation of pulmonary fibrosis – D’Alessandro-Gabazza, C.N., Kobayashi, T., Yasuma, T. et al. – Nature Communications

Effect of probiotics during vonoprazan‐containing triple therapy on gut microbiota in Helicobacter pylori infection: A randomized controlled trial – Kakiuchi et al. – Helicobacter

Rosuvastatin alters the genetic composition of the human gut microbiome – Kummen, M., Solberg, O.G., Storm-Larsen, C. et al. – Scientific Reports

Microbiome and Cancer

Metaproteomics characterizes human gut microbiome function in colorectal cancer – Long, S., Yang, Y., Shen, C. et al. – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Plant microbiome

Genome‐resolved metagenomics to study co‐occurrence patterns and intraspecific heterogeneity among plant pathogen metapopulations – Newberry et al. – Environmental Microbiology

Symbiotic nitrogen fixation and endophytic bacterial community structure in Bt-transgenic chickpea (Cicer arietinum L) – Alok, D., Annapragada, H., Singh, S. et al. – Scientific Reports

Soil microbiome

Soil Microbial Diversity Affects the Plant-Root Colonization by Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi – Ferreira et al. – Microbial Ecology

Bioinformatics/Sequencing analysis methods

Joining Illumina paired-end reads for classifying phylogenetic marker sequences – Liu et al. – BMC Bioinformatics

M2IA: a Web Server for Microbiome and Metabolome Integrative Analysis – Ni et al. – Bioinformatics

Culturomics

Alcohol pretreatment of stools effect on culturomics – Afouda, P., Hocquart, M., Pham, T. et al. – Scientific Reports

Pre-prints on bioRxiv to look forward to

Infant gut microbiome

Genetic and behavioral adaptation of Candida parapsilosis to the microbiome of hospitalized infants revealed by in situ genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics – West et al. (Side note: The Banfield lab produces a lot of good work!)

Laboratory work on bacterial motility in the gut

Bacterial Swarmers exhibit a Protective Response to Intestinal Stress – Chen et al.

Long-read sequencing of gut mycobiome

Assessing anaerobic gut fungal (Neocalliamstigomycota) diversity using PacBio D1/D2 LSU rRNA amplicon sequencing and multi-year isolation – Hanafy et al.

Databases

HumGut: A comprehensive Human Gut prokaryotic genomes collection filtered by metagenome data

 

March 16, 2020

To all the work-from-home researchers (like me!), today’s digest covers microbiome in memory recognition, enteric neuropathy and neurodevelopmental disorder in rodent models. Gut microbiome in cardiovascular disease, a dual mechanism antibiotic and shifts in human gut microbiome and metabolome following gastric bypass. An important preprint that Covid-19 could not induce reinfection in infected rhesus macaques and that Ibuprofen may aggravate Covid-19 infection.

General microbiome

Gut microbiota and cardiovascular disease: opportunities and challenges – Negin Kazemian – Microbiome

Human microbiome
Pharmacomicrobiomics in inflammatory arthritis: gut microbiome as modulator of therapeutic response – Jose U. Scher – Nature Reviews Rheumatology

Long-term metal exposure changes gut microbiota of residents surrounding a mining and smelting area – Mengmeng Shao – Scientific Reports

Temporospatial shifts in the human gut microbiome and metabolome after gastric bypass surgery – Zehra Esra Ilhan – NPJ biofilms and microbiomes

Animal experiments

Habitat and seasonality shape the structure of tench (Tinca tinca L.) gut microbiome – Tomasz Dulski – Scientific Reports

Microecological Koch’s postulates reveal that intestinal microbiota dysbiosis contributes to shrimp white feces syndrome – Zhijian Huang – Microbiome

Early-life microbial intervention reduces colitis risk promoted by antibiotic-induced gut dysbiosis – Jun Miyoshi – BioRxiv

Gut microbiota manipulation during the prepubertal period shapes behavioral abnormalities in a mouse neurodevelopmental disorder model – Justin M. Saunders – Scientific Reports

Minocycline-induced microbiome alterations predict cafeteria diet-induced spatial recognition memory impairments in rats – Sarah-Jane Leigh – Translational Psychiatry

A purified membrane protein from Akkermansia muciniphila or the pasteurised bacterium blunts colitis associated tumourigenesis by modulation of CD8+ T cells in mice – Lijuan Wang – Gut

PM2.5 exposure perturbs lung microbiome and its metabolic profile in mice – Jingli Li – Science of The Total Environment

High‐fat diet–induced alterations to gut microbiota and gut‐derived lipoteichoic acid contributes to the development of enteric neuropathy – Yvonne Nyavor – Neurogastroenterology and Motility

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Complementary Metagenomic Approaches Improve Reconstruction of Microbial Diversity in a Forest Soil – L. V. Alteio – mSystems

Impact of plants on the diversity and activity of methylotrophs in soil – Michael C. Macey – Microbiome

Conserved bacterial genomes from two geographically distinct peritidal stromatolite formations shed light on potential functional guilds – Samantha C. Waterworth – BioRxiv

Techniques

A framework for assessing 16S rRNA marker-gene survey data analysis methods using mixtures – Nathan D. Olson – Microbiome

Antibiotic resistance

A dual-mechanism antibiotic targets Gram-negative bacteria and avoids drug resistance – James K. Martin – BioRxiv

Non microbiology picks

Reinfection could not occur in SARS-CoV-2 infected rhesus macaques – Linlin Bao – BioRxiv

Anti-inflammatories may aggravate Covid-19, France advises – The Guardian

March 5, 2020

Today’s Digest is heavy, so you might want to pace yourself. It’s hard to pick the highlights, but I’m biased towards fungal research, so first about a wake-up call to look at the fungi seriously. The insects might provide for remedy against antibiotic resistance and is the dust settled on the sparse fetal intestinal microbiota? Stay healthy and keep reading.

Event

Call for papers – Global Outbreaks and Responses – BMC Medicine

General microbiology

** Viewpoints: Fungal diseases as neglected pathogens: A wake-up call to public health officials – Marcio L. Rodrigues & Joshua D. Nosanchuk – PLoS NTD

Inducible cell-to-cell signaling for tunable dynamics in microbial communities – Arianna Miano et al. – Nature Communications

Antimicrobial resistance

** The insect antimicrobial peptide cecropin A disrupts uropathogenic Escherichia coli biofilms – Miriam Kalsy et al. – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Using comparative genomics to understand molecular features of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii from South Korea causing invasive infections and their clinical implications – Min Hyung Kim – PLoS One

Factors associated with sufficient knowledge of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance in the Japanese general population – Shinya Tsuzuki et al. – Scientific Reports

Faeces and vaccines could be the key to tackling antimicrobial resistance – Elisabeth Mahase – BMJ

A survey of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae in urban wetlands in southwestern Nigeria as a step towards generating prevalence maps of antimicrobial resistance – Olawale Olufemi Adelowo et al. – PLoS One

Pregnancy and early life

** Viable bacterial colonization is highly limited in the human intestine in utero – E. Rackaityte et al. – Nature Medicine

Perinatal Antibiotic Exposure Affects the Transmission between Maternal and Neonatal Microbiota and Is Associated with Early-Onset Sepsis – Ping Zhou et al. – mSphere

Combined analysis of microbial metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sequencing data to assess in situ physiological conditions in the premature infant gut – Yonatan Sher et al. – PLoS One

Human skin microbiome

A microbiome and metabolomic signature of phases of cutaneous healing identified by profiling sequential acute wounds of human skin: An exploratory study – Mohammed Ashrafi et al. – PLoS One

Human oral microbiome

Review: Single-Cell Genomics and the Oral Microbiome – M. Balachandran et al. – Journal of Dental Research

Insights Obtained by Culturing Saccharibacteria With Their Bacterial Hosts – B. Bor et al. – Journal of Dental Research

Electronic Cigarette Aerosol Modulates the Oral Microbiome and Increases Risk of Infection – Smruti Pushalkar et al. – iScience

Press: Oral Microbiome Changes Implicated in Gum Inflammation in E-Cigarette Users – GenomeWeb

In vitro: A salivary metabolite signature that reflects gingival host-microbe interactions: instability predicts gingivitis susceptibility – Marcela M. Fernandez-Gutierrez et al. – Scientific Reports

Human respiratory microbiome

Review: The Role of Lung and Gut Microbiota in the Pathology of Asthma – Weronika Barcik et al. – Immunity

Cancer and microbiome

Endogenous murine microbiota member Faecalibaculum rodentium and its human homologue protect from intestinal tumour growth – Elena Zagato et al. – Nature Microbiology

Escherichia coli adhesion portion FimH functions as an adjuvant for cancer immunotherapy – Wei Zhang et al. – Nature Communications

Temporal changes in gut microbiota profile in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia prior to commencement-, during-, and post-cessation of chemotherapy – Ling Ling Chua et al. – BMC Cancer

Review: Interplay between Dietary Polyphenols and Oral and Gut Microbiota in the Development of Colorectal Cancer – Carolina Cueva & Mariana Silva – Nutrients

Human gut microbiome

In vitro: Short-term supplementation of celecoxib-shifted butyrate production on a simulated model of the gut microbial ecosystem and ameliorated in vitro inflammation – Emma Hernandez-Sanabria et al. – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Review: Crosstalk Between Gut Microbiota and Innate Immunity and Its Implication in Autoimmune Diseases – Yuhao Jiao et al. – Frontiers in Immunology

An empirically derived method for measuring human gut microbiome alpha diversity: Demonstrated utility in predicting health-related outcomes among a human clinical sample – Sarah L. Hagerty et al. – PLoS One

Proof-of-concept study of the efficacy of a microbiota-directed complementary food formulation (MDCF) for treating moderate acute malnutrition – Ishita Mostafa et al. – BMC Public Health

Microbiota as Predictor of Mortality in Allogeneic Hematopoietic-Cell Transplantation – Jonathan U. Peled et al. – New England Journal of Medicine

Human multi-site microbiome

Age-Related Variation of Bacterial and Fungal Communities in Different Body Habitats across the Young, Elderly, and Centenarians in Sardinia – Lu Wu et al. – mSphere

Response of the human gut and saliva microbiome to urbanization in Cameroon – Ana Lokmer et al. – Scientific Reports

The gut-microbiota-brain axis

Therapeutic Effects of the In Vitro Cultured Human Gut Microbiota as Transplants on Altering Gut Microbiota and Improving Symptoms Associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder – Kainan Chen et al. – Microbial Ecology

Built environment microbiome

A preliminary study on the potential of Nanopore MinION and Illumina MiSeq 16S rRNA gene sequencing to characterize building-dust microbiomes – Anders B. Nygaard et al. – Scientific Reports

Metabolomics

Spatial metabolomics of in situ host–microbe interactions at the micrometre scale – Benedikt Geier et al. – Nature Microbiology

Global chemical effects of the microbiome include new bile-acid conjugations – Robert A. Quinn et al. – Nature

Animal experiments

PM2.5 exposure perturbs lung microbiome and its metabolic profile in mice – Jingli Li et al. – Science of the Total Environment

Growth hormone deficiency and excess alter the gut microbiome in adult male mice – Elizabeth A Jensen et al. – Endocrinology

Dissociation of Adaptive Thermogenesis from Glucose Homeostasis in Microbiome-Deficient Mice – Tibor L. Krisko et al. – Cell Metabolism

Fecal IgA Levels Are Determined by Strain-Level Differences in Bacteroides ovatus and Are Modifiable by Gut Microbiota Manipulation – Chao Yang et al. – Cell Host & Microbe

Animal microbiome

Can rumen bacteria communicate to each other? – Mi-Young Won et al. – Microbiome

Entomopathogenic nematode-associated microbiota: from monoxenic paradigm to pathobiome – Jean-Claude Ogier et al. – Microbiome

The canine oral microbiome: variation in bacterial populations across different niches – Avika Ruparell et al. – BMC Microbiology

Evolutionary analysis of Mycobacterium bovis genotypes across Africa suggests co-evolution with livestock and humans – Osvaldo Frederico Inlamea et al. – PLoS NTD

Nanopore sequencing of microbial communities reveals the potential role of sea lice as a reservoir for fish pathogens – Ana Teresa Gonçalves et al. – Scientific Reports

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Insights on aquatic microbiome of the Indian Sundarbans mangrove areas – Paltu Kumar Dhal et al. – PLoS One

Ganoderma lucidum cultivation affect microbial community structure of soil, wood segments and tree roots – Fei Ren et al. – Scientific Reports

Effect of long-term destocking on soil fungal functional groups and interactions with plants – Jie Wang et al. – Plant and Soil

Comparative Analysis of Root Microbiomes of Rice Cultivars with High and Low Methane Emissions Reveals Differences in Abundance of Methanogenic Archaea and Putative Upstream Fermenters – Zachary Liechty et al. – mSystems

Fungal diversity and community composition of wheat rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soils from three different agricultural production regions of South Africa – Magalane Pheladi Gqozo et al. – Applied Soil Ecology

Microbial and volatile profiling of soils suppressive to Fusarium culmorum of wheat – Adam Ossowicki & Vittorio Tracanna et al. – Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Industrial development as a key factor explaining variances in soil and grass phyllosphere microbiomes in urban green spaces – Zhen-Zhen Yan et al. – Environmental Pollution

Plant communities mediate the interactive effects of invasion and drought on soil microbial communities – Catherine Fahey et al. – The ISME Journal

Water and extremophile microbiome

Methyl t-butyl ether-degrading bacteria for bioremediation and biocontrol purposes – Giada d’Errico et al. – PLoS One

Uncovering microbial responses to sharp geochemical gradients in a terrace contaminated by acid mine drainage – Rui Xu et al. – Environmental Pollution

Snapshot: Microbial Extremophiles – Amy K. Schmid et al. – Cell

Denitrification performance and microbial communities of solid-phase denitrifying reactors using poly (butylene succinate)/bamboo powder composite – Wanhe Qi et al. – Bioresource Technology

Meta-omics Provides Insights into the Impact of Hydrocarbon Contamination on Microbial Mat Functioning – Johanne Aubé et al. – Microbial Ecology

Role of microbial diversity for sustainable pyrite oxidation control in acid and metalliferous drainage prevention – Omy T. Ogbughalu et al. – Journal of Hazardous Materials

Phages and viruses

** Coronavirus research highlights – BMC

Fecal Viral Community Responses to High-Fat Diet in Mice – Anjelique Schulfer et al. – mSphere

Technology

Rapid MinION profiling of preterm microbiota and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens – Richard M. Leggett et al. – Nature Microbiology

Assembly-free single-molecule sequencing recovers complete virus genomes from natural microbial communities – John Beaulaurier et al. – Genome Research

Bioinformatics

Rapid inference of antibiotic resistance and susceptibility by genomic neighbour typing – Karel Břinda et al. – Nature Microbiology

Microbes in the news

Tough microbe’s DNA could be a lasting archive – Steve Nadis – Science

How Bacteria Can ‘Sculpt The Gut’ – Maya Trabulsi – KPBS

The bee microbiome can fight back against fungi that cause Colony Collapse Disorder – Lauren Sara McKee – Massive Science

Ancient gut microbiomes shed light on human evolution – Newswise

Launch of the Marine Microbiome Roadmap – NIOZ

Understanding Microbiome Resilience on a Changing Planet – Michigan State University

Adaptations in gut microbes helped our ancestors thrive in new geographical territories: Study – New Kerala

Scientists Announce VIRGO, First Comprehensive Gene Catalog To Decode the Vaginal Microbiome – PR Newswire

Metabolomics Reveals Connection Between Gut Microbiome and Blood – Metabolon

Study shows universally positive effect of cover crops on soil microbiome – Phys.org

New Center of Microbiome Science is in the works at Ohio State – Emily Caldwell – Ohio State University News

Common diseases may be communicable through microbiome, says UBC researcher – Stephanie Blain – The Ubyssey

The microbes in your mouth, and a reminder to floss and go to the dentist – Science Daily

For Your Microbiome, How You Eat Could Be As Important As What You Eat – Technology Networks

Study: Infectious gut bacteria may predict UTI risk – Sue Treiman – Cornell Chronicle

The Best Way to Avoid Getting Sick Is to Wash Your Hands — But You’re Probably Doing It Wrong – Bojana Galic – Live Strong

Microbes on the market

DuPont carries on microbiome momentum with metabolic disease collaboration – Will Chu – Nutraingredients

Non-microbiology picks

Invest 5% of research funds in ensuring data are reusable – Barend Mons – Nature

 

February 21, 2020

This Friday, read about the potential influence of microbiomes in hominin evolution, gut microbiome in patients with Sjögren’s syndrome, new antibiotics discovered through comparative genomics, and more. Happy reading!

General microbiome

*The Internal, External and Extended Microbiomes of Hominins – Robert R. Dunn – Front. Ecol. Evol.

A Deep Learning Approach to Antibiotic Discovery– Jonathan M. Stokes – Cell

Review: Next-generation physiology approaches to study microbiome function at single cell level – Roland Hatzenpichler – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Patterns of partnership: surveillance and mimicry in host-microbiota mutualisms – Travis J Wiles & Karen Guillemin – Current Opinion in Microbiology

Review: Innovative and rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing systems – Alex van Belkum – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Gut microbiome

*Gut dysbiosis is prevailing in Sjögren’s syndrome and is related to dry eye severity– Jayoon Moon – PlosOne

Review: Healthy Human Gastrointestinal Microbiome: Composition and Function After a Decade of Exploration – Wenly Ruan – Digestive Diseases and Sciences

Review: Gut microbiota-derived metabolites as key actors in inflammatory bowel disease– Aonghus Lavelle & Harry Sokol – Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Review: Microbiome in Colorectal Cancer: How to Get from Meta-omics to Mechanism?–Dominik Ternes – Trends in Microbiology

Urinary microbiome

Review: Urinary tract infections: microbial pathogenesis, host–pathogen interactions and new treatment strategies – Roger D. Klein & Scott J. Hultgren – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

The microbiome and gynaecological cancer development, prevention and therapy – Paweł Łaniewski – Nature Reviews Urology

Animal microbiome

Coordinated transformation of the gut microbiome and lipidome of bowhead whales provides novel insights into digestion – Carolyn A. Miller – The ISME Journal

Animal experiment

*Evolution-guided discovery of antibiotics that inhibit peptidoglycan remodelling – Elizabeth J. Culp – Nature

The Gene Expression Profile of Uropathogenic Escherichia coli in Women with Uncomplicated Urinary Tract Infections Is Recapitulated in the Mouse Model – Arwen E. Frick-Cheng – bioRxiv

Sustained IFN-I stimulation impairs MAIT cell responses to bacteria by inducing IL-10 during chronic HIV-1 infection – X. Tang – Science Advance

Bioinformatics

Microbial resolution of whole genome shotgun and 16S amplicon metagenomic sequencing using publicly available NEON data– Kyle D. Brumfield – PlosOne

Viruses & Phages

Respiratory viruses in mechanically ventilated patients: a pilot study – Raquel Nazareth – BMC Pulmonary Medicine