Category Archives: Microbial Ecology

April 10, 2024

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Good morning microbiome enthusiasts! Today’s MD is on the shorter side but we still have some really interesting articles picked out for you to peruse – including a microbiome-sparing targeted P. aeruginosa compound, effective probiotics for restoring a healthy coral microbiome, and a study characterizing the microbiome of metastatic cancers in over 4,000 biopsies. Plus, don’t forget that April’s Microbiome Virtual International Forum is happening next week!

Human Microbiome

Longitudinal multi-omics analysis uncovers the altered landscape of gut microbiota and plasma metabolome in response to high altitude – Yang Han et al – BMC Microbiome

Illuminating microflora: shedding light on the potential of blue light to modulate the cutaneous microbiome – Hannah J Serrage et al – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Evolutionary investigations of the biosynthetic diversity in the skin microbiome using lsaBGC – Rauf Salamzade et al – Microbial Genomics

A pan-cancer analysis of the microbiome in metastatic cancer – Thomas Battaglia et al – Cell

A Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus secretome induces immunoregulatory transcriptional, functional and immunometabolic signatures in human THP-1 monocytes – Michael P. Jeffrey et al – Nature Scientific Reports

The oral cavity and intestinal microbiome in children with functional constipation – Monika Kwiatkowska et al – Nature Scientific Reports

Characterization of the gut bacterial and viral microbiota in latent autoimmune diabetes in adults – Casper S. Poulsen et al – Nature Scientific Reports

Colonization during a key developmental window reveals microbiota-dependent shifts in growth and immunity during undernutrition – Yadeliz A. Serrano Matos et al – BMC Microbiome

Animal models

Dermal injury drives a skin to gut axis that disrupts the intestinal microbiome and intestinal immune homeostasis in mice – Tatsuya Dokoshi et al – Nature Communications

A folate inhibitor exploits metabolic differences in Pseudomonas aeruginosa for narrow-spectrum targeting – Connor Chain et al – Nature Microbiology

Animal microbiome

A genome-centric view of the role of the Acropora kenti microbiome in coral health and resilience – Lauren F. Messer et al – Nature Communications

Probiotics reshape the coral microbiome in situ without detectable off-target effects in the surrounding environment – Nathalia Delgadillo-Ordoñez et al – Nature Communications Biology

Substantial viral diversity in bats and rodents from East Africa: insights into evolution, recombination, and cocirculation – Daxi Wang et al – BMC Microbiome

Plant, root & soil microbiome

Root volatiles manipulate bacterial biofilms – Waseem Raza & Gaofei Jiang – Nature Ecology & Evolution

Analysis of endophytic bacterial diversity in seeds of different genotypes of cotton and the suppression of Verticillium wilt pathogen infection by a synthetic microbial community – Chong-Die Wu et al – BMC Plant Biology

Bioinformatics & tools

Holomics – a user-friendly R shiny application for multi-omics data integration and analysis – Katharina Munk et al – BMC Bioinformatics

March 27, 2024

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Built environment microbiome

Genomic, functional, and metabolic enhancements in multidrug-resistant Enterobacter bugandensis facilitating its persistence and succession in the International Space Station – Pratyay Sengupta et al – BMC Microbiome

An overview of the bacterial microbiome of public transportation systems-risks, detection, and countermeasures – Yen-Tran Ly et al – Frontiers in Public Health

Bioinformatics and computational methods

Contigs directed gene annotation (ConDiGA) for accurate protein sequence database construction in metaproteomics – Enhui Wu et al – BMC Microbiome

Amplidiff: an optimized amplicon sequencing approach to estimating lineage abundances in viral metagenomes – Jasper van Bemmelen et al – BMC Bioinformatics

Multi-omic integration of microbiome data for identifying disease-associated modules – Efrat Muller – Nature Communications

Animal experiments

Gender affirming hormone therapy preserves skeletal maturation in young mice via the gut microbiome – Subhashis Pal et al – Journal of Clinical Investigation

Microbiota-derived indoles alleviate intestinal inflammation and modulate microbiome by microbial cross-feeding – Gang Wang et al – BMC Microbiome

[PREPRINT] Akkermansia muciniphila identified as key strain to alleviate gut barrier injury through Wnt signaling pathway – Xin Ma et al – bioRxiv

Microbiota from human infants consuming secretors or non-secretors mothers’ milk impacts the gut and immune system in mice – Manoj Gurung et al – mSystems

Plant and soil microbiome

Lose-lose consequences of bacterial community-driven invasions in soil – Xipeng Liu & Joana Falcão Salles – BMC Microbiome

Manipulating the physical distance between cells during soil colonization reveals the importance of biotic interactions in microbial community assembly – Sana Romdhane et al – BMC Environmental Microbiome

Soil fungal communities varied across aspects of restored grassland in former mining areas of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau – Xioaqing Li et al – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

Exploring the potential effects of forest urbanization on the interplay between small mammal communities and their gut microbiota – Marie Bouilloud et al – BMC Animal Microbiome

Bats, Bacteria, and Bat Smell V.2.0: Repeatable Sex-Specific Differences in Scent Organ Microbiota – Öncü Maraci et al – Microbial Ecology

Characterization of the skin microbiome in normal and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma affected cats and dogs – Jacoba I. Bromfield et al – mSphere

Phylosymbiosis and metabolomics resolve phenotypically plastic and cryptic sponge species in the genus Agelas across the Caribbean basin – M.S. Pankey et al – Molecular Ecology

Naturally occurring fire coral clones demonstrate a genetic and environmental basis of microbiome composition – C. E. Dubé et al – Nature Communications

March 13, 2024

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Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiota–tryptophan metabolism–GLP-1 axis participates in β-cell regeneration induced by dapagliflozin – Yafei Jiang et al – Diabetes

Inhibition of inosine metabolism of the gut microbiota decreases testosterone secretion in the testis – Lei Tang et al – mSystems

[REVIEW] Exploring the gut microbiota and its potential as a biomarker in gliomas – Dana Aljarrah et al – Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy

Comparative prebiotic potential of galacto- and fructo-oligosaccharides, native inulin and acacia gum in Kenyan infant gut microbiota during iron supplementation – Paula Momo Cabera et al – ISME Communications

A bacterial sialidase mediates early-life colonization by a pioneering gut commensal – Ekaterina Buzun et al – Cell Host and Microbe

Animal Microbiome

Dietary carbohydrate sources differently prime the microbial ecosystem but not the epithelial gene expression profile along the complete gut of young calves – Thomas Hartinger et al – BMC Animal Microbiome

Multi-omics reveals that alkaline mineral water improves the respiratory health and growth performance of transported calves – Jiancheng Qi et al – BMC Microbiome

Efficacy of a novel multi-enzyme feed additive on growth performance, nutrient digestibility and gut microbiome of weanling pigs fed corn-wheat or wheat-barley based diet – Ayodeji S Aderibigbe et al – Journal of Animal Science

Plant and soil microbiome

Formation of a constructed microbial community in a nutrient-rich environment indicates bacterial interspecific competition – Jia Wang et al – mSystems

Plasma Treatment Modifies Element Distribution in Seed Coating and Affects Further Germination and Plant Growth through Interaction with Soil Microbiome – Tetiana Kalachova et al – Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Soil Microbiomes and their Arsenic Functional Genes in Chronically High-Arsenic Contaminated Soils – Prinpida Sonthiphand et al – Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology

Taxonomic resolution of different 16S rRNA variable regions varies strongly across plant-associated bacteria – Katarina Hrovat et al – ISME Communications

Root microbiota analysis of Oryza rufipogon and Oryza sativa reveals an orientation selection during the domestication process – Liqun Jiang et al – Microbiology Spectrum

Diversity and distribution of biosynthetic gene clusters in agricultural soil microbiomes – Ziguo Zhang et al – mSystems

Sugar transporters spatially organize microbiota colonization along the longitudinal root axis of Arabidopsis – Eliza P.-I. Loo et al – Cell Host and Microbe

Built environment microbiome

Microbiome analysis of the restricted bacteria in radioactive element-containing water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station – Tomoro Warashina et al – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Bioinformatics and Techniques

The astounding exhaustiveness and speed of the Astral mass analyzer for highly complex samples is a quantum leap in the functional analysis of microbiomes – Thibaut Dumas et al – BMC Microbiome

Proportion-based normalizations outperform compositional data transformations in machine learning applications – Aaron Yerke et al – BMC Microbiome

A method to correct for local alterations in DNA copy number that bias functional genomics assays applied to antibiotic-treated bacteria – Geraldine J. Sullivan et al – mSystems

[PREPRINT] Bacterial strain nomenclature in the genomic era: Life Identification Numbers using a gene-by-gene approach – Federica Palma et al – bioRXiv

February 28, 2024

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Human gut microbiome

Distinct intestinal microbial signatures linked to accelerated systemic and intestinal biological aging – Shalini Singh – BMC Microbiome

Safety, feasibility, and impact on the gut microbiome of kefir administration in critically ill adults – Vinod K. Gupta – BMC Medicine

Dissecting Gut-Microbial Community Interactions using a Gut Microbiome-on-a-Chip – Jeeyon Lee – Advanced Science

Animal experiments

CRB1-associated retinal degeneration is dependent on bacterial translocation from the gut – Shanzhen Peng – Cell

Amino acid formula induces microbiota dysbiosis and depressive-like behavior in mice – Ji Hu – Cell Reports

Bacteroides fragilis aggravates high-fat diet-induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by regulating lipid metabolism and remodeling gut microbiota – Yumei Huang – Microbiology Spectrum

Animal microbiome

Gut microbiota modulation enhances the immune capacity of lizards under climate warming – Jing Yang – BMC Microbiome

Gut microbiota contribute to variations in honey bee foraging intensity – Cassondra L Vernier – ISME Journal

Virome diversity shaped by genetic evolution and ecological landscape of Haemaphysalis longicornis – Run-Ze Ye – BMC Microbiome

Multi-omics reveal mechanisms of high enteral starch diet mediated colonic dysbiosis via microbiome-host interactions in young ruminant – Chunjia Jin – BMC Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

[PREPRINT] Cover Crop Root Exudates Impact Soil Microbiome Functional Trajectories in Agricultural Soils – Valerie A Seitz – Research Square

Stronger compensatory thermal adaptation of soil microbial respiration with higher substrate availability – Lingrui Qu – ISME Journal

Built environment

Effects of operational parameters on bacterial communities in Hong Kong and global wastewater treatment plants – Yulin Zhang – mSystems

Water and extremophile microbiome

Novel functional insights into the microbiome inhabiting marine plastic debris: critical considerations to counteract the challenges of thin biofilms using multi-omics and comparative metaproteomics – Lauren F. Messer – BMC Microbiome

Particle-attached bacteria act as gatekeepers in the decomposition of complex phytoplankton polysaccharides – Feng-Qing Wang – BMC Microbiome

Dynamics of Gut Bacteria Across Different Zooplankton Genera in the Baltic Sea – Tianshuo Zu – Microbial Ecology

Beneficial microbes

[PREPRINT] Enhancing Recovery from Gut Microbiome Dysbiosis and Alleviating DSS-Induced Colitis in Mice with a Consortium of Rare Short-Chain Fatty Acid-Producing Bacteria – Achuthan Ambat – bioRxiv

Neuroprotective Effects of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis NJ241 in a Mouse Model of Parkinson’s Disease: Implications for Gut Microbiota and PGC-1α – Yuxuan Dong – Molecular Neurobiology

October 4, 2023

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General microbiome

[OPINION]Toward an integrative framework for microbial community coalescence – Custer, Bresciani & Dini-Andreote – Trends in Microbiology

Statistically learning the functional landscape of microbial communities – Skwara et al. – Nature Ecology & Evolution

Human skin microbiome

Skin microbiota secretomes modulate cutaneous innate immunity against Borrelia burgdorferi s.s – Baquer et al. – Scientific Reports

Human gut microbiome

Temporal changes in fecal microbiota of patients infected with COVID-19: a longitudinal cohort – Galperine et al. – BMC Infectious Diseases

Association Between Bowel-Movement Pattern and Cognitive Function: Prospective Cohort Study and a Metagenomic Analysis of the Gut Microbiome – Ma et al. – Neurology

[REVIEW]The gut microbiome tango in the progression of chronic kidney disease and potential therapeutic strategies – Tang, Yu & Pan – Journal of Translational Medicine

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

Microbiota-gut-brain axis drives overeating disorder – Fan et al. – Cell Metabolism

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Exploring gut microbiota in adult Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.): Associations with gut health and dietary prebiotics – Wang et al. – Animal Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Using wasps as a tool to restore a functioning vine grape mycobiota and preserve the mycobial “terroir” – Di Paola et al. – Scientific Reports

Soil microbes mediate the effects of resource variability on plant invasion – Zhang et al. – Ecology

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT]Deepurify: a multi-modal deep language model to remove contamination from metagenome-assembled genomes – Zou et al. – bioRxiv

[PREPRINT]BATTER: Accurate Prediction of Rho-dependent and Rho-independent Transcription Terminators in Metagenomes – Jin et al. – bioRxiv

[PREPRINT]Gut Microbiome Wellness Index 2 for Enhanced Health Status Prediction from Gut Microbiome Taxonomic Profiles – Chang et al. – bioRxiv

Techniques

INVADEseq to identify cell-adherent or invasive bacteria and the associated host transcriptome at single-cell-level resolution – Nino et al. – Nature Protocols

September 15, 2023

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Today’s digest features the BugSigDB, AMPSphere and more. Also, you can check out my tips for online conferencing and how to do it better. See you at #MVIF next week!

Respiratory microbiome

The landscape of antibiotic resistance genes in the nasopharynx of preterm infants: Prolonged signature of hospitalization and effects by antibiotics – Achal Dhariwal – bioRxiv

Breast cancer microbiome

Integrating current analyses of the breast cancer microbiome – Sidra Sohail and Michael B. Burns – Plos One

Vaginal microbiome

Diet influences community dynamics following vaginal group B Streptococcus colonization – Christina J. Megli – bioRxiv

Gut microbiome

Gut microbes exacerbate systemic inflammation and behavior disorders in neurologic disease CADASIL – Sheng Liu – Microbiome

Water microbiome

Exploring novel alkane-degradation pathways in uncultured bacteria from the North Atlantic Ocean – Mirna Vázquez Rosas Landa – mSystems

Insect microbiome

Plastics shape the black soldier fly larvae gut microbiome and select for biodegrading functions – Francesca De Filippis – Microbiome

Animal experiment

Enhancing Recovery from Gut Microbiome Dysbiosis and Alleviating DSS-Induced Colitis in Mice with a Consortium of Rare Short-Chain Fatty Acid-Producing Bacteria – Achuthan Ambat – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures – Ludwig Geistlinger – Nature Biotechnology

Computational exploration of the global microbiome for antibiotic discovery – Célio Dias Santos-Júnior – bioRxiv

June 13, 2023

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Today’s microbiome digest includes quite a few host-microbe studies, including one published by my colleague and highlighted below which focuses on the hindgut microbiome of the American cockroach.

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiota interspecies interactions shape the response of Clostridioides difficile to clinically relevant antibiotics – Hromada – and Venturelli – PLOS Biology

Construction of model animals to explore intestinal microbiome for detection of breast cancer – Ji et al. – PLOS One

Animal experiments

**Disentangling hindgut metabolism in the American cockroach through single-cell genomics and metatranscriptomics – Dukes et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Evaluation of microbial and vancomycin treatments in ulcerative colitis in murine models – Hasan and Yang – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

Geography, not lifestyle, explains the population structure of free-living and host-associated deep-sea hydrothermal vent snail symbionts – Hauer et al. – Microbiome

Insect phylogeny structures the bacterial communities in the microbiome of psyllids (Hemiptera: Psylloidea) in Aotearoa New Zealand – Martoni et al. – PLOS One

Water and extremophile microbiome

In the right place, at the right time: the integration of bacteria into the Plankton Ecology Group model – Park et al. – Microbiome

Phages and viruses

Beyond pathogenesis: Detecting the full spectrum of ecological interactions in the virosphere – Jurburg et al. – PLOS Biology

Phage therapy and the public: Increasing awareness essential to widespread use – McCammon et al. – PLOS One

May 16, 2023

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Happy Tuesday! Today’s microbiome digest is microbial ecology heavy, with articles focused on the gut microbiome, Antarctic endoliths’, water microbiomes, and more.

Human gut microbiome

Pathobionts in the tumour microbiota predict survival following resection for colorectal cancer – Alexander et al. – Microbiome

Gut microbiome transitions across generations in different ethnicities in an urban setting—the HELIUS study – van der Vossen et al. – Microbiome

Water and extremophile microbiome

Highly diverse and unknown viruses may enhance Antarctic endoliths’ adaptability – Ettinger et al. – Microbiome

Genomic insights into cryptic cycles of microbial hydrocarbon production and degradation in contiguous freshwater and marine microbiomes – Vigneron et al. – Microbiome

preprint: Allochthonous groundwater microorganisms affect coastal seawater microbial abundance, activity and diversity – Yanuka-Golub et al. – bioRxiv

Built environment

preprint: Microbial Diversity on Ancestral Halls with Different Visitor Flow Rates Using Amplicon Sequencing – Liu et al. – bioRxiv

Techniques

Comparing genomes recovered from time-series metagenomes using long- and short-read sequencing technologies – Orellana et al. – Microbiome

May 12, 2023

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Today’s digest features studies on human respiratory tract, mouse models, bovine milk microbiome, and more. See you at #MVIF next week!

Respiratory tract microbiome

Review: Ecology of the respiratory tract microbiome – Ana Elena Pérez-Cobas – Trends in Microbiology

Cervicovaginal microbiome

The cervical microbiota of Hispanics living in Puerto Rico is highly volatile and dominated by Lactobacillus iners regardless of HPV status – Daniela Vargas-Robles – bioRxiv

Gut microbiome

Key determinants of success in fecal microbiota transplantation: From microbiome to clinic – Serena Porcari – Cell Host & Microbes

Profiling the human intestinal environment under physiological conditions – Dari Shalon – Nature

Interaction between gut microbiota and sex hormones and their relation to sexual dimorphism in metabolic diseases – Jose Antonio Santos-Marcos – Biology of Sex Differences

Persistent delay in maturation of the developing gut microbiota in infants with cystic fibrosis – Paige Salerno – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome

Metagenomic analysis of milk microbiota in the bovine subclinical mastitis – Giulia Alessandri – bioRxiv

Animal experiments

MetaPhlAn 4 profiling of unknown species-level genome bins improves the characterization of diet-associated microbiome changes in mice – Paolo Manghi – Cell Reports

Bioinformatics

ResMiCo: Increasing the quality of metagenome-assembled genomes with deep learning – Olga Mineeva – Plos Computational Biology

Technique

Catch me if you can: capturing microbial community transformation by extracellular DNA using Hi-C sequencing – David Calderón-Franco – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Built environment

The microbiome of an outpatient rehabilitation clinic and predictors of contamination: A pilot study – Gabriella Brigando – PlosOne

May 5, 2023

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Today’s microbiome digest is a grab bag that includes ten simple rules for working with other people’s code, an article examining Wolbachia infections in native cockroach populations, and an article examining the role in lactic acid in shaping the human microbiome. Also highlighted is an article focused on human viruses residing within our cells and tissues, which demonstrated a unique virome in nine different human organs through targeted-enrichment viral metagenomics and virus specific qPCRs.

Happy reading!

General microbiome

The structure of prevacuolar compartments in Neurospora crassa as observed with super-resolution microscopy – Bowman – PLOS One

Phylogenetic trees of closely related bacterial species and subspecies based on frequencies of short nucleotide sequences – Nakano et al. – PLOS One

***Unmasking the tissue-resident eukaryotic DNA virome in humans – Pyöriä et al. – Nucleic Acids Research

Predicting partner fitness based on spatial structuring in a light-driven microbial community – Sakkos et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Multi-site human microbiome

Evaluation of alcohol-free mouthwash for studies of the oral microbiome – Yano et al. – PLOS One

A systematically biosynthetic investigation of lactic acid bacteria reveals diverse antagonistic bacteriocins that potentially shape the human microbiome – Zhang et al. – Microbiome

Human gut microbiome

Positive mood-related gut microbiota in a long-term closed environment: a multiomics study based on the “Lunar Palace 365” experiment – Hao et al. – Microbiome

Animal microbiome

Wolbachia infection in native populations of Blattella germanica and Periplaneta americana – Choubdar et al. – PLOS One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Bacterial and fungal community composition and community-level physiological profiles in forest soils – Kunito et al. – PLOS One

Water and extremophile microbiome

Predicting microbial community compositions in wastewater treatment plants using artificial neural networks – Liu et al. – Microbiome

Open ocean and coastal strains of the N2-fixing cyanobacterium UCYN-A have distinct transcriptomes – Muñoz-Marín et al. – PLOS One

Meta-organism gene expression reveals that the impact of nitrate enrichment on coral larvae is mediated by their associated Symbiodiniaceae and prokaryotic assemblages – Tong et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

Ten simple rules for working with other people’s code – Pilgrim et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Predicting microbe organisms using data of living micro forms of life and hybrid microbes classifier – Raza et al. – PLOS One

iPHoP: An integrated machine learning framework to maximize host prediction for metagenome-derived viruses of archaea and bacteria – Roux et al. – PLOS Biology