Category Archives: Microbial Ecology

August 10th, 2020

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God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. Today’s digest is a light one but carries a preprint with some very important findings. The study has suggested that the nCoV can potentially hijack the immune system completely by infecting the lymphocytes. This might lead to impaired antibody and T-cell response, something that could have a serious implication on the success of the much-awaited vaccine. (Unfortunately, for some unknown reasons, the PDF of the preprint is inaccessible to me! Let me know down in the comments if you are able to download it.)

A new paper in BMC microbiome shows a correlation between the indoor dust microbiota and the microbiota of infant airways. A classic example of how our environment impacts our health.  There is another interesting preprint where the authors show that a fungus alters its virulence when it is challenged by predatory amoebae. Perhaps the amoeba challenge selects for the warrior mutants which then carry on their warring ways!

Elsewhere in the digest is a preprint where Plasmodium knowlesi was used as a model to successfully determine new vaccine targets against more dangerous Plasmodium vivax, a paper detailing the effect of polar light cycles on the Antarctic lake microbiome, and identification of haloarchael species in Korean gut microbiota.

COVID-19

Preprint: Infection of human lymphomononuclear cells by SARS-CoV-2 – Marjorie C Pontelli, et al.

General Microbiology

Preprint: Amoeba predation of Cryptococcus neoformans results in pleiotropic changes to traits associated with virulence – Man Shun Fu, et al.

Preprint: Using Plasmodium knowlesi as a model for screening Plasmodium vivax blood-stage malaria vaccine targets reveals new candidates – Duncan N Ndegwa, et al.

General microbiome

Influence of the polar light cycle on seasonal dynamics of an Antarctic lake microbial community – Pratibha Panwar, et al. – Microbiome

Environmental shaping of the bacterial and fungal community in infant bed dust and correlations with the airway microbiota – Shashank Gupta, et al. – Microbiome

Archaea/Gut microbiota

The human gut archaeome: identification of diverse haloarchaea in Korean subjects – Joon Yong Kim, et al. – Microbiome

Techniques

Preprint: Successful introduction of the Colour Test into inexperienced settings – Kadri Klaos

Zoom Seminar

How a healthy gut microbe affects your whole body? – Karen Ranzi, Holistic Health Coach, Award-Winning Author, Motivational Speaker, Natural Foods Chef, Speech and Feeding Therapist (phew!)

August 4, 2020

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Greetings Everyone. Today’s Microbiome Digest comprises of a wide variety of topics covering soil microbiota, tumor to water to extremophile microbiome. The digest has some reviews, books, as well as interesting articles on how synthetic microbial communities facilitate sustainable growth and the role of microbial communities in balancing the environment. A terrific news article covering the isolation of microbes buried beneath the sea floor for more than 100 million years. Today’s digest can be summarized by a quote by Julie Morley.

“Every being devotes and dedicates itself to some innate purpose. Single cells, microbes, plants, insects, animals – every being makes it own unique contribution” – Julie J. Morley

General microbiome

*Shifts in the microbiota associated with male mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) exposed to an obligate gut fungal symbiont (Zancudomyces culisetae) – Jonas Frankel-Bricker – Scientific Reports

Microbiome-derived metabolites reproduce the mitochondrial dysfunction and decreased insulin sensitivity observed in type 2 diabetes – Ormsby et al – bioRxiv

*Synthetic microbial communities of heterotrophs and phototrophs facilitate sustainable growth – Zuñiga et al – Nature Communications

Multi-site human microbiome

Microbiome harbored within tumors: a new chance to revisit our understanding of cancer pathogenesis and treatment – Zhao et al – Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy

Human skin microbiome
Paradigms and Perspectives: The skin microbiome as a clinical biomarker in atopic eczema: Promises, navigation, and pitfalls – Reiger et al – The journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Human gut microbiome
Review: Gut microbiota and atherosclerosis: role of B cell for atherosclerosis focusing on the gut-immune-B2 cell axis – Chen et al – Journal of Molecular Medicine

Gut microbiome a promising target for management of respiratory diseases – Trivedi et al – Biochemical Journal

*A carbohydrate-active enzyme (CAZy) profile links successful metabolic specialization of Prevotella to its abundance in gut microbiota – Aakko et al – Scientific Reports

Effects of antibiotic treatment on gut microbiota and how to overcome its negative impacts on human health – Ribeiro et al – ACS Infect. Dis

Animal experiments
Dynamics of uterine microbiota in postpartum dairy cows with clinical or subclinical endometritis – Pascottini et al – Scientific Reports

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Book chapter: The Extended Microbiota: How Microbes Shape Plant-Insect Interactions – Mayoral-Peña et al – Evolutionary Ecology of Plant-Herbivore Interaction

Response of Soil Microbial Community to C:N:P Stoichiometry along a Caragana korshinskii Restoration Gradient on the Loess Plateau, China – Zhang et al – forests

Review: The endosphere microbial communities, a great promise in agriculture – Adeleke et al – International Microbiology

Water and extremophile microbiome
Influence of microorganisms on initial soil formation along a glacier forefield on King George Island, maritime Antarctica – Krauze et al – Biogeosciences

Review: Microbial communities of soda lakes and pans in the Carpathian Basin: a review – Tamás Felföldi – Biologia Futura

Fungal Community in Antarctic Soil Along the Retreating Collins Glacier (Fildes Peninsula, King George Island) – dos Santos et al – microorganims

Culture Independent Diversity of Bacterial Communities Indigenous to Lower Altitude at Laohugou Glacial Environment – Ali et al – Geomicrobiology Journal

Review: Methanosarcina acetivorans: A Model for Mechanistic Understanding of Aceticlastic and Reverse Methanogenesis – James G. Ferry – Front.Microbiol

The Composition of Microbial Communities in Six Streams, and Its Association With Environmental Conditions, and Foodborne Pathogen Isolation – Chung et al – Front.Microbiol

Food microbiology
FoodOmics as a new frontier to reveal microbial community and metabolic processes occurring on table olives fermentation – Vaccalluzzo et al – Food Microbiology


Bioinformatics
Book: A Bioinformatics Primer for the Analysis of Illumina MiSeq Data of Litter-Associated Fungi and Bacteria – Seena et al – Methods to Study Litter Decomposition

Techniques
Review: Method development for cross-study microbiome data mining: challenges and opportunities – Su et al – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Microbes in the news
*Scientists pull living microbes, possibly 100 million years old, from beneath the sea – Elizabeth Pennnisi – Science

July 23, 2020

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In today’s digest – duodenal microbiota linked to stunting in children, differential effects of germfree and antibiotic treated mouse models on social behavior, microbial metabolite receptor GPBAR and its interaction with bile acids, review article on engineering microbes to treat diseases and many more…happy reading!

General microbiome

The Microbiota-Gut-Immune-Glia (MGIG) Axis in Major Depression – Leszek Rudzki – Molecular Neurobiology

Engineering the gut microbiota to treat chronic diseases – Noura S. Dosoky – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Human microbiome

Acute and chronic improvement in postprandial glucose metabolism by a diet resembling the traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern: Can SCFAs play a role? – Marilena Vitale – Clinical Nutrition

Linking the duodenal microbiota to stunting in a cohort of undernourished Bangladeshi children with enteropathy – Robert Y. Chen – New England Journal of Medicine

Enterobacterales Infection after Intestinal Dominance in Hospitalized Patients – Krishna Rao – mSphere

Differences in the gut Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio across age groups in healthy Ukrainian population – Alexander Vaiserman – BMC Microbiology

Preprint- Association of gut microbiota with cerebral cortex and cerebrovascular abnormality in human mild traumatic brain injury – Lijun Bai – BioRxiv

Real-world study in infants fed an infant formula with two human milk oligosaccharides – Enriqueta Román – Nutricion Hospitalaria

Animal experiments

Gut microbiome composition differences among breeds impact feed efficiency in swine – Matteo Bergamaschi – Microbiome

Opposing effects of antibiotics and germ-free status on neuropeptide systems involved in social behaviour and pain regulation – Katerina V. A. Johnson – BMC Neuroscience

Local Necrotic Cells Trigger Systemic Immune Activation via Gut Microbiome Dysbiosis in Drosophila – Hina Kosakamoto – Cell Reports

Peanut skin extract ameliorates the symptoms of type 2 diabetes mellitus in mice by alleviating inflammation and maintaining gut microbiota homeostasis – Lan Xiang – Aging

Preprint- Community composition and development of the post-weaning piglet gut microbiome – D. Gaio – BioRxiv

Gut microbiota regulate tumor metastasis via circRNA/miRNA networks – Zhuxian Zhua – Gut Microbes

Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) and Campylobacter infection induce diarrhea in piglets: Microbial dysbiosis and intestinal disorder – Gang Yang – Animal Nutrition

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Populations of the Parasitic Plant Phelipanche ramosa Influence Their Seed Microbiota – Sarah Huet – Frontiers in Plant Science

Domestication-driven changes in plant traits associated with changes in the assembly of the rhizosphere microbiota in tetraploid wheat – Aymé Spor – Scientific Reports

Water microbiome

Preprint- Time series metagenomic sampling of the Thermopyles, Greece, geothermal springs reveals stable microbial communities dominated by novel sulfur-oxidizing chemoautotrophs – A. Meziti – BioRxiv

Preprint- Evaluation of the microbial community structure of potable water samples from occupied and unoccupied buildings using16S rRNA amplicon sequencing – Kimothy L. Smith – BioRxiv

Phages and Viruses

Preprint- Targeting of Mammalian Glycans Enhances Phage Predation in the Gastrointestinal Tract – Sabrina I. Green – BioRxiv

Techniques
Structural basis of GPBAR activation and bile acid recognition – Fan Yang – Nature

Microbes in News

Machine learning analysis reveals less diverse microbiome in children with type 1 diabetes – Healio

July 19, 2020

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Hello from the Sonoran Desert! In today’s digest, you’ll find find a lot of very interesting papers! For those interested in host-phages interactions, there is an amazing work from Ping and collaborators looking at phage infections dynamics in migrating bacterial populations. Interestingly, the authors suggests that phages may be able to “hitchhike” with moving bacteria.

To continue with our viral readings, you’ll also find an interesting perspective paper from Kuprovic and collaborators. In this piece, the authors attempt to reconstruct the virome associated to LUCA (Last Universal Cellular Ancestor). Amazingly, their reconstruction shows that a remarkably complex virome would have been associated to LUCA, suggesting an extensive viral evolution antedating LUCA!

Finally, today’s non-microbiology pick is a book, looking at the fascinating Cuatro Ciénegas Basin, located in México, a site that is often described as a real outdoor laboratory for astrobiology. Indeed, the Basin site contains gypsum-rich soil analogous to the Gale Crater in Mars, and the ponds contains extremely oligotrophic waters, which can be used to model ancient oceans chemistry. You’ll explore along the chapters the history, ecology, microbiology and evolution of this amazing site, to unravel the mysteries of this site absolutely unique on the planet.

Have a great Sunday!

Human respiratory microbiome

Review: Insights gained into respiratory infection pathogenesis using lung tissue metabolomics –  Bernatchez and McCall –  PLOS Pathogens

Human gut microbiome

Description and determinants of the faecal resistome and microbiome of farmers and slaughterhouse workers: A metagenome-wide cross-sectional study –  Van Gompel et al. –  Environment International

Review: The influence of the gut microbiome on obesity –  Blanco – Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Comparative analysis of the gut microbiota of Apis cerana in Yunnan using high-throughput sequencing. –  Luo et al. –  Archives of Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Higher tree diversity increases soil microbial resistance to drought. –  Gillespie et al. –  Communications Biology

Effect of land uses on soil microbial community structures among different soil depths in northeastern China. –  Ji et al. –  European Journal of soil Biology

Structural variability and niche differentiation of the rhizosphere and endosphere fungal microbiome of Casuarina equisetifolia at different ages. –  Huang et al. –  Environmental Microbiology

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

Substrate regulation leads to differential responses of microbial ammonia-oxidizing communities to ocean warming. –  Zheng et al. –  Nature communications

Diversity and dynamics of relevant nanoplanktonic diatoms in the Western English Channel. –  Arsenieff et al.  –  The ISME Journal

Lake characteristics influence how methanogens in littoral sediments respond to terrestrial litter inputs. –  Yakimovich et al. –  The ISME Journal

Built environment (subways, indoor surfaces)

Heavy metal concentrations in Brazilian port areas and their relationships with microorganisms: can pollution in these areas change the microbial community? –  Del Busso Zampieri et al. –  Environmental Monitoring and Assessment

Food microbiology

Material conversion, microbial community composition and metabolic functional succession during green soybean hull composting. –  Zhang et al. –  Bioresource Technology

Phages and viruses

Hitchhiking, collapse, and contingency in phage infections of migrating bacterial populations. –  Ping et al. – The ISME Journal

Review: The LUCA and its complex virome. –  Krupovic et al. –  Nature Review Microbiology

Insights into the dynamics between viruses and their hosts in a hot spring microbial mat. –  Jarett et al. –  ISME Journal

Bioinformatics

IDMIL: an alignment-free Interpretable Deep Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) for predicting disease from whole-metagenomic data. –  Rahman and Rangwala –  Bioinformatics

My non-microbiology pick

Book: Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth. –  Medina-Chávez et al. –  Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis. Springer

July 13, 2020

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Greetings from Pittsburgh, PA!

Included is a wide range of microbial ecology articles focused on everything from the human microbiome to soil microbial fuel cells. I want to give a special highlight to the article about how the indoor microbial community changes in response to bed bug infestations. This study incorporates a few of my favorite disciplines including entomology, public health, the built environment, as well as microbiology. If you’re interested in learning more about bed bugs, I’ll also recommend one my favorite reads from a few years ago: Infested: How the bed bug infiltrated our bedrooms and took over the world by Brooke Borel.

Events and jobs

In my last microbiome digest, I gave a special plug for the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP). NSURP is a community-driven initiative to create rewarding remote summer research opportunities for BIPOC undergraduate students in the microbial sciences. They have already paired over 140 students with summer research opportunities, but they still need mentors for remaining student applicants. Please apply and share widely!

General microbiome

The beta-diversity of Siganus fuscescens-associated microbial communities from different habitats increases with body weight – Wu et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Human gut microbiome

Metagenome-wide association analysis identifies microbial determinants of post-antibiotic ecological recovery in the gut – Chng et al. – Nature Ecology & Evolution

The gut microbiome during acute lifestyle transition – Devkota – Nature Medicine

Review: Challenges and emerging systems biology approaches to discover how the human gut microbiome impact host physiology – Wian and Ho – Biophysical Reviews

Animal experiments

The gut and feed residue microbiota changing during the rearing of Hermetia illucens larvae – Cifuentes et al. – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Animal microbiome

Effect of introduced parasites on the survival and microbiota of nestling cactus finches (Geospiza scandens) in the Galápagos Islands – Addesso et al. – Journal of Ornithology

Direct comparison of fecal and gut microbiota in the Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis) discourages fecal sampling as a proxy for resident gut community – Griffin et al. – Microbial Ecology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Variable microbial communities in the non-hydrothermal sediments of the Mid-Okinawa trough – Cao et al. – Geomicrobiology Journal

Review: Microbial communities from arid environments on a global scale. A systematic review – Vásquez-Dean et al. – Biological Research

Unravelling metabolism and microbial community of a phytobed co-planted with Typha angustifolia and Ipomoea aquatica for biodegradation of doxylamine from wastewater – Xiong et al. – Journal of Hazardous Materials

Built environment

Bed bugs shape the indoor microbial community composition of infested homes – Kakumanu et al. – Science of the Total Environment

Effect of sono-thermal pre-treatment over methane production, specific activities and the microbial community of sludge anaerobic digesters – Neumann et al. – Waste and Biomass Valorization

Effects of anode materials on the performance and anode microbial community of soil microbial fuel cell – Yu et al. – Journal of Hazardous Material

Techniques

Review: Targeted microbiome depletion – Du Toit – Nature Reviews Microbiology

July 10, 2020

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Today’s digest contains many exciting articles – gut microbiome in precision medicine for cancer, important review on patent protection in microbiome therapeutics, role of the gut microbiota in sympathetic neurons, interaction of pacemaker neurons with the gut microbiota, gut dysbiosis in lupus and many more….Enjoy reading and happy weekend!

General microbiome

Gut microbiome, big data and machine learning to promote precision medicine for cancer – Giovanni Cammarota – Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Co-evolution and Co-speciation of Host-Gut Bacteria Systems – Mathieu Groussin – Cell Host and Microbe

Microbiome therapeutics and patent protection – Mark J. FitzGerald – Nature Biotechnology

Human microbiome

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation is Safe and Effective in Patients with Clostridioides difficile Infection and Cirrhosis – Yao-WenCheng – CLinial Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Association of Gut Microbiota-Dependent Metabolite Trimethylamine N-Oxide with First Ischemic Stroke – Taoping Sun – Journal of Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis

Dietary Strategies for Maintenance of Clinical Remission in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Are We There Yet? – Konstantinos Gkikas – Nutrients

The duodenal microbiome is altered in small intestinal bacterial overgrowth – Gabriela Leite – PlosOne

Faecal microbiota transplantation: A life-saving therapy challenged by commercial claims for exclusivity – Christian LodbergHvas – EClinical Medicine

Animal experiments

Microbiota modulate sympathetic neurons via a gut–brain circuit – Paul A. Muller – Nature

Prototypical pacemaker neurons interact with the resident microbiota – Alexander Klimovich – PNAS

Gut microbiota dysbiosis and altered tryptophan catabolism contribute to autoimmunity in lupus-susceptible mice – Seung-Chul Choi – Science Translational Medicine

The relationship between gut microbiota and short chain fatty acids in the renal calcium oxalate stones disease – Yu Liu – Faseb Journal

Sodium Butyrate Alleviates Mouse Colitis by Regulating Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis – Xiujing Dou – Animals

Dietary sphinganine is selectively assimilated by members of the mammalian gut microbiome – Min-Ting Lee – Journal of Lipid Research

Commentary: Modulating microbiome metabolites in vivo – Chun-Jun Guo – Science

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Quantitative comparison between the rhizosphere effect of Arabidopsis thaliana and co-occurring plant species with a longer life history – Martinus Schneijderberg – ISME Journal

Water microbiome

Anthropogenic dissolved organic carbon and marine microbiomes – Maria Vila-Costa – ISME Journal

Functional foods

Effect of a functional fibre supplement on glycemic control when added to a year-long medically supervised weight management program in adults with type 2 diabetes – Raylene A. Reimer – European Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Prenatal exposure to the probiotic Lactococcus lactis decreases anxiety-like behavior and modulates cortical cytoarchitecture in a sex specific manner – Natalia Surzenko – PlosOne

Non microbiology picks

SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted via contact and via the air between ferrets – Mathilde Richard – Nature Communications

July 7, 2020

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Today’s digest features the mighty sourdough microbiome, AGNOSTOS (a computational workflow for genes annotation using clustering and remote homology detection, contextualizing them with genomic and environmental information), and a new episode of the Bioinformatics Chat podcast about reproducible pipelines and NGLess (a user-friendly domain-specific programming language for NGS data processing), and more. Happy reading/listening!

General microbiome

Microbiome definition re-visited: old concepts and new challenges – Gabriele Berg – Microbiome

Positive interactions are common among culturable bacteria – Jared Kehe – bioRxiv

Gut microbiome

An emerging role of Prevotella histicola on estrogen-deficiency induced bone loss through the gut microbiota-bone axis – Zhongxiang Wang – bioRxiv

Identifying novel high-impact rare disease-causing mutations, genes and pathways in exomes of Ashkenazi Jewish inflammatory bowel disease patients – Yiming Wu – medRxiv

Early prediction of liver disease using conventional risk factors and gut microbiome-augmented gradient boosting – Yang Liu – medRxiv

GWAS of stool frequency reveals genes, pathways, and cell types relevant to human gastrointestinal motility and irritable bowel syndrome – Ferdinando Bonfiglio – medRxiv

Relationships of gut microbiota, short-chain fatty acids, inflammation, and the gut barrier in Parkinson’s disease – Velma Aho – medRxiv

Lung microbiome

Genetically diverse Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations display similar transcriptomic profiles in a cystic fibrosis explanted lung – Adrian Kordes – Nature Communications

Genitourinary microbiome

Architecture and function of human uromodulin filaments in urinary tract infections – Gregor L. Weiss – Science

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

Synchronous genitourinary lichen sclerosus signals a distinct urinary microbiome profile in men with urethral stricture disease – Andrew J. Cohen – World Journal of Urology

Human urine 1H NMR metabolomics reveals alterations of the protein and carbohydrate metabolism when comparing habitual Average Danish diet vs. healthy New Nordic diet – Alessia Trimigno – Nutrition

Animal experiments

Lactobacillus rhamnosus probiotic prevents airway function deterioration and promotes gut microbiome resilience in a murine asthma model – Irina Spacova – Gut Microbes

Food microbiome

*The Sourdough Microbiome – Justine Dees – ASM

Strain-Level Diversity Impacts Cheese Rind Microbiome Assembly and Function – Brittany A. Niccum – mSystems

Bioinformatics

*Light into the darkness: Unifying the known and unknown coding sequence space in microbiome analyses – Chiara Vanni – bioRxiv

Welcome to the dark side of genomes and metagenomes – a blog post about the above mentioned study – Antonio Fernandez-Guerra

GraphBin: refined binning of metagenomic contigs using assembly graphs – Vijini Mallawaarachchi – Bioinformatics

Podcast

*Reproducible pipelines and NGLess with Luis Pedro Coelho – Roman Cheplyaka – The Bioinformatics Chat

June 21, 2020

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Hello from the Sonoran Desert! In today’s digest, you’ll find two very interesting reviews! Stagaman and collaborators come back on years of Zebra-fish gut microbiome research and explore the insights gleaned from this awesome model animal. On the other hand, François and Pybus review our understanding of avian viromes in both wild and domesticated bird populations, highlighting the current limitations and pitfalls in this research area.

But today’s digest also contains very interesting research papers! Gulino and collaborators are exploring viromes in New York city wastewater systems. This paper is particularly interesting as bacteriophages are typically left out from urban environments microbiomes studies, despite their abundance and importance in ecosystems.

Finally, today’s non-microbiology pick is a review that comes back on how information theory, developped by Claude Shannon in the late 40s, have been used in computational biology. This paper is particularly interesting for readers wanting to learn more about the basics of information theory and how it is applied today in bioinformatics.

Have a great Sunday!

Pregnancy and early life

Review: The microbiome in pediatric oncology – Rotz et al. – Cancer

Human respiratory microbiome

Metagenomic analysis of the lung microbiome in pulmonary tuberculosis – a pilot study – Hu et al. – Emerging Microbes & infections

Human vaginal microbiome

Taxonomic and Functional Differences in Cervical Microbiome Associated with Cervical Cancer Development –Nkufi Tange et al. – Scientific reports

Human gut microbiome

Preprint: The gut microbiome regulates memory function – Noble et al. – BioRxiV

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

review: Zebrafish microbiome studies make waves – Stagaman et al. – Lab Animal

Built environment (subways, indoor surfaces)

Revealing antimicrobial resistance in stormwater with MinION – Bialasek et al. – Chemosphere

Phages and viruses

Review: Towards an understanding of the avian virome –François et al. – Journal of general Virology

Initial Mapping of the New York City Wastewater Virome –Gulino et al. – mSystems

Bioinformatics

Higher order Markov models for metagenomic sequence classification – Burks et al. –Bioinformatics

Preprint: Combinatorial Algorithms for Strain Level Metagenomic Microbial Detection and Quantification –Zhu et al. –BioRxiV

Preprint: Ultra-rapid metagenotyping of the human gut microbiome – Shi et al. – BioRxiV

My non-microbiology pick

Review: Information Theory in Computational Biology: Where We Stand Today – Chanda et al. – Entropy

June 18, 2020

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Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Today’s digest is unintentionally themed around change. Included is an article on the metabolic versatility of Salmonella enterica and another on the genetic diversification of Escherichia coli. If you’re more interested in the big picture, there is also an article about the evolution of ecological niches in plant-associated microbes as well as an article about the impacts of global change on soil microbial diversity and functionality.

Here’s to hoping that we are just as resilient as the microbes we study!

Events and jobs

A special plug for the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP). NSURP is a community-driven initiative to create rewarding remote summer research opportunities for BIPOC undergraduate students in the microbial sciences. They are actively recruiting mentors and students for this summer, with the hope to match pairs by June 22nd.

General microbiome

Salmonella finds a way: Metabolic versatility of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in diverse host environments – Taylor and Winter – PLOS Pathogens

Phylogenetic background and habitat drive the genetic diversification of Escherichia coli – Touchon et al. – PLOS Genetics

Human skin microbiome

The microbiome of diabetic foot ulcers: a comparison of swab and tissue biopsy wound sampling techniques using 16S rRNA gene sequencing – Travis et al. – BMC Microbiology

Animal experiments

MAPK-dependent hormonal signaling plasticity contributes to overcoming Bacillus thuringiensis toxin action in an insect host – Guo et al. – Nature Communications

Investigation of the effects of probiotic, Bacillus subtilis on stress reactions in laying hens using infrared thermography – Soroko and Zaborski – PLOS ONE

Gut carriage of antimicrobial resistance genes in women exposed to small-scale poultry farms in rural Uganda: A feasibility study – Weil et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Anti-microbial activity of whole blood and plasma collected from Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) against three different microbes – DeRogatis et al. – PLOS ONE

Bacteriophages specific to Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli exist in goat feces and associated environments on an organic produce farm in Northern California, USA – Lennon et al. – PLOS ONE

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Survival of Escherichia coli O157 in autoclaved and natural sandy soil mesocosms – Baker et al. – PLOS ONE

Geometry and evolution of the ecological niche in plant-associated microbes – Chaloner et al. – Nature Communications

Meta-analysis of the impacts of global change factors on soil microbial diversity and functionality – Zhou et al. – Nature Communications

Food microbiology

Neighboring plants divergently modulate effects of loss-of-function in maize mycorrhizal phosphate uptake on host physiology and root fungal microbiota – Fabiańska et al. – PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

Comparative analysis of viruses in four bee species collected from agricultural, urban, and natural landscapes – Olgun et al. – PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

bigPint: A Bioconductor visualization package that makes big data pint-sized – Rutter and Cook – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques

Subduing the influence of PCR inhibitors on amplifying aged, degraded, and low copy number DNA: PCR enhancer cocktail-p and rescue PCR – Kemp et al. – PLOS ONE

Click-to-Capture: A method for enriching viable Staphylococcus aureus using bio-orthogonal labeling of surface proteins – Shalizi et al. – PLOS ONE

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