Category Archives: Phages and viruses

May 28, 2020

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

COVID-19

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

General microbiome

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

Human respiratory microbiome

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

Human gut microbiome

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

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

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

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

Animal experiments

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

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

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

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

Water and extremophile microbiome

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

Built environment

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

Phages and viruses

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

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

Bioinformatics

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

Techniques

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

Science, publishing, and career

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

Judith’s non-microbiology picks

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

May 22, 2020

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We’ve got a decently sized digest today with a lot of environmental microbe papers, including descriptions of novel species. There is also the Cell paper (highlighted) from Peter Turnbaugh’s group on ketogenic diets and the gut microbiome, which has been getting a lot of press. For new bioinformatic and other techniques, we have a new R package to predict functional profiles in Tax4Fun2, an assessment of phylogenetic rooting methods for bacteria, and a description of fiber intervention used in undergraduate classes for active learning.

 Have a great weekend!

Events

Today is the last day of the Virtual Microbiome Summit.

Pregnancy and early life

Women’s multisite microbial modulation during pregnancy – Luiz G. Sparvoli – Microbial Pathogenesis

Multi-site human microbiome

Review: Bi-Directional Interactions Between Microbiota and Ionizing Radiation in Head and Neck and Pelvic Radiotherapy-Clinical Relevance – Nidhya Teresa Joseph – International Journal of Radiation Biology

Human oral microbiome

Defining the oral microbiome by whole-genome sequencing and resistome analysis: the complexity of the healthy picture – Elisabetta Caselli – BMC Microbiology

Human gut microbiome

Ketogenic diets alter the gut microbiome resulting in decreased intestinal Th17 cells – Qi Yan Ang – Cell

Preprint: Host genetic and environmental factors shape the human gut resistome – Caroline I. Le Roy – bioRxiv

MinION Sequencing of colorectal cancer tumour microbiomes—A comparison with amplicon-based and RNA-Sequencing – William S. Taylor – PLOS One (Originally posted to the Digest as a pre-print, now published)

Animal experiments

Broilers divergently selected for digestibility differ for their digestive microbial ecosystems – Marion Borey – PLOS One

Dietary Isomalto/Malto‐Polysaccharides Increase Fecal Bulk and Microbial Fermentation in Mice – Rima H. Mistry – Molecular Nutrition and Food Research

Longitudinal Effects of Dietary Oxidized Lipids on the Gut Microbiome and Mycobiome in Pigs – Folagbayi Arowolo – FASEB Journal

Animal microbiome

Single-cell amplicon sequencing reveals community structures and transmission trends of protist-associated bacteria in a termite host – Michael E. Stephens – PLOS One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Xylella fastidiosa subsp. pauca and olive produced lipids moderate the switch adhesive versus non-adhesive state and viceversa – Valeria Scala – PLOS One

Mitochondrial genome sequence of Phytophthora sansomeana and comparative analysis of Phytophthora mitochondrial genomes – Guohong Cai – PLOS One

nirS-type denitrifying bacterial communities in relation to soil physicochemical conditions and soil depths of two montane riparian meadows in North China. – Xiaoli Han – Environmental Science and Pollution Research

Tissue-Specific Dynamics in the Endophytic Bacterial Communities in Arctic Pioneer Plant Oxyria digyna – Cindy Given – Frontiers in Plant Science

Effects of Cultured Root and Soil Microbial Communities on the Disease of Nicotiana tabacum Caused by Phytophthora nicotianae – Tianbo Liu – Frontiers in Microbiology

Novel putative rhizobial species with different symbiovars nodulate Lotus creticus and their differential preference to distinctive soil properties – M Rejili – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Water, air, and extremophile microbiome

The microbiome of alpine snow algae shows a specific inter-kingdom connectivity and algae-bacteria interactions with supportive capacities – Lisa Krug – ISME Journal

Variation of near surface atmosphere microbial communities at an urban and a suburban site in Philadelphia, PA, USA – JD Stewart – Science of the Total Environment

Pilot-scale petroleum refinery wastewaters treatment systems: performance and microbial communities’ analysis – Fatma Karray – Process Safety and Environmental Protection

Adverse effects of levofloxacin and oxytetracycline on aquatic microbial communities – Zhigao Zhou – Science of the Total Environment

Application of microbial network analysis to discriminate environmental heterogeneity in Fildes Peninsula, Antarctica – Qian Liu – Marine Pollution Bulletin

Tools for successful proliferation: diverse strategies of nutrient acquisition by a benthic cyanobacterium – HS Tee – ISME Journal

Metabolic diversity and co-occurrence of multiple Ferrovum species at an acid mine drainage site – Christen L. Grettenberger – BMC Microbiology

Halocatena pleomorpha gen. nov. sp. nov., an extremely halophilic archaeon of family Halobacteriaceae isolated from saltpan soil – Ashish Verma – IJSEM

Unveiling Cultivable and Uncultivable Halophilic Bacteria Inhabiting Marakkanam Saltpan, India and Their Potential for Biotechnological Applications – Jojy John – Geomicrobiology Journal

Flavobacterium profundi sp. nov., isolated from a deep-sea seamount – Qian Wang – IJSEM

Food microbiology

Molecular epidemiology, genetic diversity and antimicrobial resistance of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from chicken and pig carcasses, and carcass handlers – Onyinye J. Okorie-Kanu – PLOS One

Traditional milk transformation schemes in Côte d’Ivoire and their impact on the prevalence of Streptococcus bovis complex bacteria in dairy products – Aimé R Sanhoun – PLOS One

Comparison of Microbial Communities and Amino Acid Metabolites in Different Traditional Fermentation Starters Used during the Fermentation of Hong Qu Glutinous Rice Wine – Zhang-Cheng Liang – Food Research International

Preprint: Monitoring the microbiome for food safety and quality using deep shotgun sequencing – Kristen L. Beck – bioRxiv

Viruses

Are pangolins the intermediate host of the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)? – Ping Liu – PLOS Pathogens

Vector competence of Aedes aegypti from New Caledonia for the four recent circulating dengue virus serotypes – Olivia O’Connor – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Bioinformatics

Tax4Fun2: prediction of habitat-specific functional profiles and functional redundancy based on 16S rRNA gene sequences – Franziska Wemheuer – Environmental Microbiome

Techniques

Assessing the accuracy of phylogenetic rooting methods on prokaryotic gene families – Taylor Wade – PLOS One

Science education techniques: Fiber Force: A Fiber Diet Intervention in an Advanced Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Course – Julia Massimelli Sewall – Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education

Science and art

This photographer creates prints with algae.

Non-microbiology picks:

Herd of fuzzy green “glacier mice” baffles scientists.

May 18, 2020

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God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. It’s Monday and the beginning of another week. I am quite excited to write today’s digest because there is a super impressive paper that concerns my area of research. Research efforts in Shigella infections have always suffered from the lack of a mouse model of infection. This notorious bacterium causes enteric infections only in humans and all the infection models, that have been in use so far,  are not physiologically that relevant. It was extremely thrilling to read the development of a mouse model that replicates the typical features of human infections. Talking about infection models, there is another interesting development. A group of researchers has reported an African green monkey model for CoViD-19. This is an important development for clinical assessment of potential vaccine and drug candidates against nCoV-19.

Speaking of vaccines, another group has reported a Neisseria meningitidis outer membrane vesicle (OMV) based vaccine that provides cross-species protection against Neisseria gonorrhoeae. This report assumes great importance when you consider the fact that no Neisseria gonorrhoeae vaccine has entered clinical testing for the past 30 years! In addition to this, there is a structural study of budding in Cryptococcus neoformans that has some really beautiful pictures like this one:

Screenshot 2020-05-18 at 14.57.43

Elsewhere in the digest are some interesting reports on the virulence of a root pathogen, Fusarium; metagenomic identification of diverse viruses; a potent mycobacteriophage; and commentary on Coronaviruses as pathogens responsible for pandemics.

Hope you enjoy today’s selection and have a great week!

COVID-19

Preprint: Establishment of an African green monkey model for COVID-19 – Courtney B. Woolsey, et al.

Preprint: Coronavirus, as a source of pandemic pathogens – Tomokazu Konishi

Bacteria Hysteria

Preprint: NAIP-NLRC4-deficient mice are susceptible to shigellosis – Patrick S Mitchell, et al.

Preprint: The serogroup B meningococcal outer membrane vesicle-based vaccine 4CMenB induces cross-species protection against Neisseria gonorrhoeae – Isabelle Leduc, et al.

Preprint: Antimycobacterial potential of Mycobacteriophage under pathophysiological conditions – Yeswanth C Kalapala, et al.

Preprint: A Division of Labor in the Recruitment and Topological Organization of a Bacterial Morphogenic Complex – Paul D Caccamo, et al.

Preprint: Comparative genomics of ocular Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains from keratitis patients with different clinical outcomes – Kathirvel Kandasamy, et al.

Human gut

Preprint: Higher prevalence of Bacteroides fragilis in Crohn’s disease exacerbations and strain-dependent increase of epithelial resistance – Heike E.F. Becker, et al.

Fungi

Preprint: Let it bud: an ultrastructural study of Cryptococcus neoformans surface during budding events – Glauber R. de S. Araujo, et al.

Methods

Construction of habitat-specific training sets to achieve species-level assignment in 16S rRNA gene datasets – Isabel F. Escapa, et al. – Microbiome

A powerful microbial group association test based on the higher criticism analysis for sparse microbial association signals – Hyunwook Koh and Ni Zhao – Microbiome

Metagenomics

Preprint: Metagenomic identification of diverse animal hepaciviruses and pegiviruses– Ashleigh F. Porter, et al.

Transcriptomics

Preprint: Transcriptome analysis reveals infection strategies employed by Fusarium graminearum as a root pathogen – Yi Ding, et al.

Microbes in the News

Living on The Space Station Leaves a Microbial ‘Fingerprint’ on Astronauts – Science Alert

What are the best foods to increase happiness? – Eastern Daily Press

May 8, 2020.

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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 7, 2020

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Good morning! There’s a particularly broad collection of microbiome papers to share with you today, from the bacteria that hang onto wounds after debridement to the biofilms that form in the ancient ruins of a town buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. A few unusual highlights include the sexually transmitted microbiome of bedbugs and the gut microbes that colonize a sea cucumber after it grows up, remove its own digestive tract and grows a new one. Some interesting new software tools are hiding in the “Bioinformatics” section at the bottom as well.

General microbiome

Intracellular Staphylococcus aureus persisters upon antibiotic exposure, Frédéric Peyrusson et al., Nature Communications

Human respiratory microbiome

Investigation of the human nasal microbiome in persons with long- and short-term exposure to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and other bacteria from the pig farm environment, Md Zohorul Islam et al., PLOS ONE

Human skin microbiome

Microbial predictors of healing and short-term effect of debridement on the microbiome of chronic wounds, Samuel Verbanic et al., npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Human gut microbiome

Systemic short chain fatty acids limit antitumor effect of CTLA-4 blockade in hosts with cancer, Clélia Coutzac et al., Nature Communications

Functional and phylogenetic alterations in gut microbiome are linked to graft-versus-host disease severity, Mathilde Payen et al., Blood Advances

Animal experiments

Preprint: Metagenomic alterations in gut microbiota precede and predict onset of colitis in the IL10 gene-deficient murine model, Miyoshi and Lee et al., bioRxiv

Dietary Fiber Protects against Diabetic Nephropathy through Short-Chain Fatty Acid–Mediated Activation of G Protein–Coupled Receptors GPR43 and GPR109A, Yan Jun Li et al., Journal of the American Society of Nephrology

Probiotic strain Lactobacillus plantarum YYC-3 prevents colon cancer in mice by regulating the tumour microenvironment, Yuanchun Yue et al., Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy

Effect of stevia on the gut microbiota and glucose tolerance in a murine model of diet-induced obesity, Sarah L. Becker et al., FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Animal microbiome

Sea cucumber intestinal regeneration reveals deterministic assembly of the gut microbiome, Brooke L. Weigel, Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Mating changes the genital microbiome in both sexes of the common bedbug Cimex lectularius across populations, Sara Bellinvia et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Mutualist and pathogen traits interact to affect plant community structure in a spatially explicit model, John W. Schroeder et al., Nature Communications

Preprint: Seasonal dynamics of methane cycling microbial communities in Amazonian floodplain sediments, Julia B. Gontijo et al., bioRxiv

Preprint: Community succession of the grapevine fungal microbiome in the annual growth cycle, Liu and Howell, bioRxiv

Characterizing changes in soil microbiome abundance and diversity due to different cover crop techniques, Wang and Wu et al., PLOS ONE

Preprint: Specific and conserved patterns of microbiota-structuring by maize benzoxazinoids in the field, Selma Cadot et al., bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

The role of changing temperature in microbial metabolic processes during permafrost thaw, Komi S. Messan et al., PLOS ONE

Built environment

Microbial biofilm community structure and composition on the lithic substrates of Herculaneum Suburban Baths, De Natale and Mele et al., PLOS ONE

Probiotics/prebiotics

Comparative effectiveness of probiotic-based formulations on cecal microbiota modulation in broilers, Denise R. Rodrigues et al., PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

Weirdo19ES is a novel singleton mycobacteriophage that selects for glycolipid deficient phage-resistant M. smegmatis mutants, Cristian Alejandro Suarez et al., PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

Decoding the language of microbiomes using word-embedding techniques, and applications in inflammatory bowel disease, Tataru and David, PLOS Computational Biology

Sequence count data are poorly fit by the negative binomial distribution, Stijn Hawinkel et al., PLOS ONE

Preprint: sPepFinder expedites genome-wide identification of small proteins in bacteria, Li and Chao, bioRxiv

Logicome Profiler: Exhaustive detection of statistically significant logic relationships from comparative omics data, Fukunaga and Iwasaki, PLOS ONE

May 6, 2020

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General microbiome

Multi-proxy analyses of a mid-15th century Middle Iron Age Bantu-speaker palaeo-faecal specimen elucidates the configuration of the ‘ancestral’ sub-Saharan African intestinal microbiome – Rifkin et al – Microbiome

The neovaginal microbiome of transgender women post-gender reassignment surgery  – Birse et al – Microbiome

Pregnancy and early life

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

Human gut microbiome

Impact of smoking cessation, coffee and bread consumption on the intestinal microbial composition among Saudis: A cross-sectional study – Harakeh et al – PLOS One

Animal experiments

Altered Immunity of Laboratory Mice in the Natural Environment Is Associated with Fungal Colonization – Yeung et al – Cell Host & Microbe

Infection with the sheep gastrointestinal nematode Teladorsagia circumcincta increases luminal pathobionts – Cortés et al – Microbiome

Vitamin D receptor promotes healthy microbial metabolites and microbiome – Chatterjee et al – Nature Scientific Reports

Phages and viruses

Phages Actively Challenge Niche Communities in Antarctic Soils – Bezuidt et al – mSystems

Evolution

The Syntrophy hypothesis for the origin of eukaryotes revisited – López-García & Moreira – Nature Microbiology

Microbes in the news

State-of-the-art imaging method provides new insights into how bacteria move and exchange genetic information

April 23, 2020

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The wave of new microbe enthausiasts keeps coming and with it a light digest for today.  I am writing to you from Bremen, Germany, with a selection including a wheat fungi that changes the wheat leaf microbiome and antimicrobial resistance genes identified by whole metagenome shotgun study of nasopharyngal colonization in South Africa.

There is also an interesting article about species identification errors occurring in context of large sequence collection platforms.
And to mix things up a little bit, at the end of a list you find a paper with amazing microscopy featuring the beautiful parasite Trypanosoma brucei and answering the endless question to how this parasite colonizes its insect host, the tsetse fly.

Human respiratory microbiome

Longitudinal changes in the nasopharyngeal resistome of South African infants using shotgun metagenomic sequencing – Rendani I. Manenzhe – PLOS ONE

Human gut microbiome

Resident microbial communities inhibit growth and antibiotic-resistance evolution of Escherichia coli in human gut microbiome samples – Michael Baumgartner – PLOS BIOLOGY

Animal experiments

Preprint: Comparative analysis of beneficial effects of Vancomycin treatment on Th1- and Th2-biased mice and role of gut microbiota – Pratikshya Ray – bioRxiv

Assessment of dietary supplementation with galactomannan oligosaccharides and phytogenics on gut microbiota of European sea bass (Dicentrarchus Labrax) fed low fishmeal and fish oil based diet – Simona Rimoldi – PLOS ONE

Lactobacillus reuteri attenuated allergic inflammation induced by HDM in the mouse and modulated gut microbes – Lingzhi Li – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Occurrence of Mycoplasma gallisepticum in wild birds: A systematic review and meta-analysis – Anna Sawicka – PLOS ONE

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

A fungal pathogen induces systemic susceptibility and systemic shifts in wheat metabolome and microbiome composition – Heike Seybold – Nature Communications

Phages and viruses

SMOOT libraries and phage-induced directed evolution of Cas9 to engineer reduced off-target activity – Derek Cerchione – PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

BOLD and GenBank revisited – Do identification errors arise in the lab or in the sequence libraries? – Mikko Pentisaari – PLOS ONE

Science, publishing, and career

A pedagogical approach to science outreach – Marni B. McClure – PLOS BIOLOGY

Judith’s non-microbiology picks

Trypanosoma brucei colonizes the tsetse gut via an immature peritrophic matrix in the proventriculus – Clair Rose – Nature Microbiology

April 21, 2020

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Hello all from another new Microbiome Digest volunteer! This post is coming to you straight from the heart of New York City – being surrounded everywhere by COVID-19 (and related research!), it’s been good to get back into the microbiome world 🙂 I love all things microbiology but am partial to bacteria, especially multidrug-resistant pathogens and communities involved in biological nutrient removal/recovery from waste.

Today’s roundup is heavy on the soil and environmental microbiomes and some interesting preprints, with some unique finds – indigenous yeasts in winemaking, gut microbiomes after dietary interventions in adult dogs, and much more!

Human gut microbiome

Characterization of Gut Microbiota in Hospitalized Patients with Clostridioides difficile Infection – Bahareh Vakili – Current Microbiology

Animal experiments
Genetic and metabolic links between the murine microbiome and memory – Jian-Hua Mao – Microbiome

A human-origin probiotic cocktail ameliorates aging-related leaky gut and inflammation via modulating microbiota-taurine-tight junction axis
Shokouh Ahmadi – JCI Insight

Animal microbiome

Preprint: CoproID predicts the source of coprolites and paleofeces using microbiome composition and host DNA content – Maxime Borry – bioRxiv

Phylogenetic analysis of intestinal microbiota reveals novel Mycoplasma phylotypes in salmonid species – Brenda Mora-Sánchez – Microbial Pathogenesis

Rapid Reconstitution of the Faecal Microbiome after Extended Diet-Induced Changes Indicate a Stable Gut Microbiome in Healthy Adult Dogs – David Allaway – Applied and Environmental Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Review: Harnessing rhizosphere microbiomes for drought-resilient crop production – Franciska T. de Vries – Science

Book Chapter: Endophytic Actinomycetes-Mediated Modulation of Defense and Systemic Resistance Confers Host Plant Fitness Under Biotic Stress Conditions – Waquar Akhter Ansari – Microbial Versatility in Varied Environments

Elevated CO2 mitigates the negative effect of CeO2 and Cr2O3 nanoparticles on soil bacterial communities by alteration of microbial carbon use – Jipeng Luo – Environmental Pollution

Periodic waterlogging consistently shapes agricultural soil microbiomes by promoting specific taxa – Florian Gschwend – Applied Soil Ecology

Food microbiology

Review:Indigenous yeasts: Emerging Trends and Challenges in winemaking – Iliada K. Lappa – Current Opinion in Food

Ecology of lactobacilli present in Italian cheeses produced from raw milk
Christian Milani – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Probiotics / prebiotics
Probiotic supplementation improves cognitive function and mood with changes in gut microbiota in community-dwelling elderly: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial – Chong-Su Kim – The Journals of Gerontology

Phages and viruses
Intestinal microbiome‐macrophage crosstalk contributes to cholestatic liver disease by promoting intestinal permeability – Anna Isaacs-Ten – Hepatology

Bioinformatics
Preprint: hogwash: Three Methods for Genome-Wide Association Studies in Bacteria – Katie Saund – bioRxiv

Mycobiome

Preprint: Mycobiome analysis in fungal Infected formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissues for identification of pathogenic fungi: A pilot study – Taebum Lee – bioRxiv

Host-Pathogen Interactions
Preprint: Human GBP1 differentially targets Salmonella and Toxoplasma to license recognition of microbial ligands and caspase-mediated death – Daniel Fisch – bioRxiv

Preprint: Mechanical competition triggered by innate immune signaling drives the collective extrusion of bacterially-infected epithelial cells – Effie E. Bastounis – bioRxiv

Microbes on the market

Genome & Company receives FDA IND clearance for GEN-001, its first anti-cancer microbiome therapeutic (Press Release, BioSpace)

April 20, 2020

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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

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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