Category Archives: Phages and viruses

October 29, 2021

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Sorry for the delayed post, WordPress was playing some mean tricks on me today and there were no treats! Good morning all and happy spooky season! It’s been a moment since I’ve written a post and I write to you now as a freshly (pepper)minted PhD! I’m feeling gourd and can’t wait to pumpkin spice things up with some fangtastic papers.

Some of the highlights include a paper by McAlpine et al. examining interkingdom relationships between bacteria and fungi. Specifically, they found that the gut commensal species Lactobacillus can produce a small molecule that blocks filamentous growth of the opportunistic pathogen Candida albicans. Another interesting paper comes from Michael Adams lab at the University of Georgia, Athens which showed that members of the gut microbiota have the capacity to assimilate the metal tungsten which, in turn, allows these microbes to oxidize a broad range of aldehydes in the gut. Additionally, a paper by Plummer et al. looked at the vaginal microbiota of women who have recurrent bacterial vaginosis as well as the penile microbiota of their partners, and found that when males also underwent antibiotic treatment it led to a decrease in bacterial vaginosis in their female partners.

Hope you enjoy reading these fa-boo-lous papers and may you eat, drink, and be scary this Halloween!

General Microbiome
A small molecule produced by Lactobacillus species blocks Candida albicans filamentation by inhibiting a DYRK1-family kinase. – MacAlpine, J. et al., Nature Communications.

Pregnancy and Early-Life
Bifidobacterium species associated with breastfeeding produce aromatic lactic acids in the infant gut. – Laursen, M.F. et al., Nature Microbiology.

Bifidobacterium catabolism of human milk oligosaccharides overrides endogenous competitive exclusion driving colonization and protection. – Heiss, B.E. et al., Gut Microbes.

Mother’s Milk Microbiome Shaping Fecal and Skin Microbiota in Infants with Food Allergy and Atopic Dermatitis: A Pilot Analysis. – Gołębiewski. M. et al., Nutrients.

Early-life formula feeding is associated with infant gut microbiota alterations and an increased antibiotic resistance load. – Pärnänen, K.M.M. et al., The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Human Vaginal Microbiome
A Prospective, Open-Label Pilot Study of Concurrent Male Partner Treatment for Bacterial Vaginosis. – Plummer, E.L. et al., mBio.

Human Gut Microbiome
Tungsten enzymes play a role in detoxifying food and antimicrobial aldehydes in the human gut microbiome. – Schut, G.J. et al., PNAS.

Commensal bacteria promote endocrine resistance in prostate cancer through androgen biosynthesis. – Pernigoni, N. et al., Science.

Vertebrate host phylogeny influences gut archaeal diversity. – Youngblut, N.D. et al., Nature Microbiology.

Gut microbiota dysbiosis contributes to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. – Li, N. et al., Respiratory Research.

Oral Administration of Latilactobacillus sakei ADM14 Improves Lipid Metabolism and Fecal Microbiota Profile Associated With Metabolic Dysfunction in a High-Fat Diet Mouse Model. – Won, S.-M. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology.

Human Oral Microbiome
Discrimination of Bacterial Community Structures among Healthy, Gingivitis, and Periodontitis Statuses through Integrated Metatranscriptomic and Network Analyses. – Nemoto, T. et al., mSystems.

Animal Experiments
Commensal segmented filamentous bacteria-derived retinoic acid primes host defense to intestinal infection. – Woo, V. et al., Cell Host & Microbe.

Intestinal microbiota shapes gut physiology and regulates enteric neurons and glia. – Vicentini, F.A. et al., Microbiome.

Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Derived Extracellular Vesicles Modulate Gut Microbiota and Attenuate Inflammatory in DSS-Induced Colitis Mice. – Tong, L. et al., Nutrients.

Animal Microbiome
Phage Treatment Trial to Eradicate LA-MRSA from Healthy Carrier Pigs. – Tuomala, H. et al., Viruses.

Characterization of the Eukaryotic Virome of Mice from Different Sources. – Zhang, C. et al., Microorganisms.

Supplemental L-Arginine Improves the Embryonic Intestine Development and Microbial Succession in a Chick Embryo Model. – Dai, D. et al., Frontiers in Nutrition.

Water and Extremophile Microbiome
Plastic-Degrading Potential across the Global Microbiome Correlates with Recent Pollution Trends. – Zrimec, J. et al., mBio.

Acrylate protects a marine bacterium from grazing by a ciliate predator. – Teng, Z.-J. et al., Nature Microbiology.

Plant, Root, and Soil Microbiome
The fungal root endophyte Serendipita vermifera displays inter-kingdom synergistic beneficial effects with the microbiota in Arabidopsis thaliana and barley. – Mahdi, L.K. et al., ISME Journal.

Spatial Characterization of Microbial Communities on Multi-Species Leafy Greens Grown Simultaneously in the Vegetable Production Systems on the International Space Station. – Hummerick, M.E. et al., Life (Basel).

Relationships between community composition, productivity and invasion resistance in semi-natural bacterial microcosms. – Jones, M.L. et al., Elife.

Probiotics
High-efficiency delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 by engineered probiotics enables precise microbiome editing. – Neil, K. et al., Molecular Systems Biology.

Techniques
Visualizing transfer of microbial biomolecules by outer membrane vesicles in microbe-host-communication in vivo. – Bittel, M. et al., Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.

October 27, 2021

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COVID19

Severe dysbiosis and specific Haemophilus and Neisseria signatures as hallmarks of the oropharyngeal microbiome in critically ill COVID-19 patients – de Castilhos et al – Clinical Infectious Diseases

General microbiome

The Role of Microbiota in Infant Health: From Early Life to Adulthood – Yao et al. – Front. Immunol.

The microbiome impacts host hybridization and speciation – Miller et al. – PLOS Biology

Pregnancy and early life

Gut Dysbiosis, Bacterial Colonization and Translocation, and Neonatal Sepsis in Very-Low-Birth-Weight Preterm Infants – Lee et al. – Front. Microbiol.

Multi-site human microbiome

Oral, nasal, and gut microbiota in Parkinson’s disease – Li et al. – Neuroscience

Human respiratory microbiome

[REVIEW]Emerging cellular and molecular interactions between the lung microbiota and lung diseases – Xiang & Meng – Critical Reviews in Microbiology

Human gut microbiome/mycobiome

[REVIEW]Drugs and Bugs: The Gut-Brain Axis and Substance Use Disorders – Simpson et al. – Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology

Metagenomic analysis reveals the signature of gut microbiota associated with human chronotypes – Carasso et al. – The FASEB Journal

Intestinal mycobiota composition and changes in children with thalassemia who underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation – Yalcin et al. – Pediatric Blodd & Cancer

Gut microbiota analyses of Saudi populations for type 2 diabetes-related phenotypes reveals significant association – AlAli et al. – bioRxiv

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

Consistent gut bacterial and short-chain fatty acid signatures in hypoabsorptive bariatric surgeries correlate with metabolic benefits in rats – Mukorako et al. – International Journal of Obesity

Microbiota instruct IL-17A-producing innate lymphoid cells to promote skin inflammation in cutaneous leishmaniasis – Singh et al – PLOS Pathogens

Anti-inflammatory effects of purple sweet potato anthocyanin extract in DSS-induced colitis: modulation of commensal bacteria and attenuated bacterial intestinal infection – Mu et al. – Food & Function

Plant, root, and soil microbiome/virome

Active virus-host interactions at sub-freezing temperatures in Arctic peat soil – Trubl et al. – Microbiome

Arabidopsis assemble distinct root-associated microbiomes through the synthesis of an array of defense metabolites – Kudjordjie, Sapkota & Nicolaisen – PLOS One

Microbiome of Pukzing Cave in India shows high antimicrobial activity against plant and animal pathogens – Iquebal et al. – Genomics

[REVIEW]Phyllosphere microbiome: Diversity and functions – Bashir et al. – Microbiological Research

[REVIEW]Rhizospheric microbiome: Bio-based emerging strategies for sustainable agriculture development and future perspectives – Kumawat, Razdan & Saharan – Microbiological Research

Phages and viruses

[REVIEW]The intestinal virome: lessons from animal models – Chaffringeon et al. – Current Opinion in Virology

Bioinformatics

[REVIEW]Application of Deep Learning in Plant–Microbiota Association Analysis – Deng et al. – Frontiers in Genetics

Techniques

Simple solution to preserve plant samples for microbiome analyses – Carvalhais et al. – Molecular Ecology Resources

[REVIEW]Novel methods of microbiome analysis in the food industry – Sabater et al. – nternational Microbiology

October 12th, 2021

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Bonjour from Paris, France ! Today’s digest contains a selection of really interesting preprints and published studies. In their review, Heilbronner and collaborators explore the role of bacteriocins, small antibacterial molecules produced by many commensal bacteria in human-associated microbiomes. The role of the bacteriocins in the human microbiome is of particular importance since they could be leveraged to specifically target colonizing pathogens while sparing mutualistic patners.

If you are interested in exploring new bioinformatic methods, I recommend taking a look at the study from Cheng and collaborators, who applied a novel iterative random forest approach to explore marine microbiome during algal blooms. They show how this model allow to identify conditions that are important causal factors of algal bloom dynamics.

Today’s non-microbiology pick is an opinion piece reflecting on the possible methods to develop the field of computational biology, ensure proper training and career development in this discipline and allow a greater collaboration between domain biologist and data scientists in multidisciplinary teams.

Have a great Tuesday!

Events and jobs

Virtual conference: Harnessing the plant microbiome – October 22-24, 2021
University of California, Davis, USA

Virtual conference: Reshaping the Microbiome through nutrition – November 17-19, 2021

General microbiome

Review: The microbiome-shaping roles of bacteriocins – Heilbronner et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Human gut microbiome

Preprint: Gut Bacterial Dysbiosis and Instability is Associated with the Onset of Complications and Mortality in COVID-19 – Schult et al. – BioRXiv

Review: Nurturing the Early Life Gut Microbiome and Immune Maturation for Long Term Health – Dogra et al. – microorganisms

Animal experiments

Preprint: Mice with a humanized immune system are resilient to transplantation of human microbiota – Zhou et al. – BioRXiv

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Inter-species microbiota transplantation recapitulates microbial acquisition and persistence in mosquitoes – Coon et al. – BioRXiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

A novel random forest approach to revealing interactions and controls on chlorophyll concentration and bacterial communities during coastal phytoplankton blooms – Cheng et al. – Scientific reports

Built environment

Successional dynamics and alternative stable states in a saline activated sludge microbial community over 9 years – Wang et al. – Microbiome

Phages and viruses

Preprint: A Snapshot of the Global Drinking Water Virome: Diversity and Metabolic Potential Vary with Residual Disinfectant Use – Hegarty et al. – BioRXiv

Bioinformatics

Preprint: SynTracker: a synteny based tool for tracking microbial strains – Enav and Ley – BioRXiv

My non-microbiology pick

A field guide to cultivating computational biology – Way et al – PLOS biology

September 30, 2021

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Today’s digest includes a quantification of bacterial strains after fecal microbiota transplantation, a network analysis of the strawberry greenhouse soil microbiome after soil amendments, and an article about enhanced copper-resistance genes in Alteromonas macleodii. Also included are multiple preprints on topics such as denitrification pathways present in tunda soil metagenomes as well as the response of Endozoicomonas, a core coral bacterial group, to heat stress and host lysates.

General microbiome

Genomic population structure associated with repeated escape of Salmonella enterica ATCC14028s from the laboratory into nature – Achtman et al. – PLOS Genetics

Preprint: Role of the mobilome in the global dissemination of the carbapenem resistance gene blaNDM – Acman et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Existence of log-phase Escherichia coli persisters and lasting memory of a starvation pulse – Svenningsen et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Precise quantification of bacterial strains after fecal microbiota transplantation delineates long-term engraftment and explains outcomes – Aggarwala et al. – Nature Microbiology

Animal microbiome

A role for arthropods as vectors of multidrug-resistant Enterobacterales in surgical site infections from South Asia – Hassan et al. – Nature Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Response of soil microbiome structure and its network profiles to four soil amendments in monocropping strawberry greenhouse – Liu et al. – PLOS One

Preprint: Truncated denitrifiers dominate the denitrification pathway in tundra soil metagenomes – Pessi et al. – bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: Response of Endozoicomonas montiporae to heat stress and coral host lysates – Chan et al. – bioRxiv

Enhanced copper-resistance gene repertoire in Alteromonas macleodii strains isolated from copper-treated marine coatings – Cusick et al. – PLOS One

Bacterial community structure of early-stage biofilms is dictated by temporal succession rather than substrate types in the southern coastal seawater of India – Sushmitha et al. – PLOS One

Preprint: Ecological stochasticity and phage induction diversify bacterioplankton communities at the microscale – Szabo et al. – bioRxiv

September 22, 2021

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Grant application (US specific grant)
Call for application for Biocodex Microbiota Foundation’s 2021 research grant ($50,000 US) which can be applied to new or existing research aimed at helping understand gut microbiota and its impact beyond the human digestive system.
Deadline: October 15th, 2021
Link: https://www.biocodexmicrobiotafoundation.com/national-call-projects/usa

Human skin microbiome

[Commentary]Food for thought: does host diet affect skin microbes? – Schneider & Nelson – British Journal of Dermatology

Host traits, lifestyle and environment are associated with human skin bacteria – Moitinho-Silva et al – British Journal of Dermatology

Human nearly-sterile sites (blood, organs, brain)

Deciphering the low abundance microbiota of presumed aseptic hip and knee implants – Carr et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

[REVIEW]Next Generation Microbiome Research: Identification of Keystone Species in the Metabolic Regulation of Host-Gut Microbiota Interplay – Tudela, Claus & Saleh – Front. Cell Dev. Biol.

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

Commensal microbe-derived acetate suppresses NAFLD/NASH development via hepatic FFAR2 signalling in mice – Aoki et al. – Microbiome

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

16 S rRNA gene diversity and gut microbial composition of the Indian white shrimp (Penaeus indicus) – Patil et al. – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Disease-induced changes in plant microbiome assembly and functional adaptation – Gao et al. – Microbiome

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

Diversity and distribution of viruses inhabiting the deepest ocean on Earth – Jian et al. – The ISME Journal

Deep-sea shipwrecks represent island-like ecosystems for marine microbiomes – Hamdan et al – The ISME Journal

The biogeographic differentiation of algal microbiomes in the upper ocean from pole to pole – Martin et al. – Nature Comminications

Phages and viruses

A 2021 taxonomy update for the family Smacoviridae – Krupovic & Varsani – Archives of Virology

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT]MIMOSA2: A metabolic network-based tool for inferring mechanism-supported relationships in microbiome-metabolome data – Noecker, Eng & Borenstein – bioRxiv

Identifying indicator species in ecological habitats using Deep Optimal Feature Learning – Tsai, Baldwin & Gopaluni – PLOS One

September 10, 2021

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In today’s digest read about a discovery of new Bordetella bronchiseptica-specific temperate and highly abundant siphoviruses that lead to the creation of a new genus Vojvodinavirus, biases in public human microbiome data, infant gut strain persistence, and more. Also, check out a list of upcoming microbiome events. Happy Friday!

Global microbiome

*Public human microbiome data dominated by highly developed countries – Richard J. Abdill – bioRxiv

Gut microbiome

Chinese gut microbiota and its associations with staple food type, ethnicity, and urbanization – Jing Lu – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Gut microbiota alterations in response to sleep length among African-origin adults – Na Fei – PlosOne

Bioaccumulation of therapeutic drugs by human gut bacteria – Martina Klünemann – Nature

*Infant gut strain persistence is associated with maternal origin, phylogeny, and traits including surface adhesion and iron acquisition – Yue Clare Lou – Cell Reports Medicine

Skin microbiome

Cotton and Surgical Face Masks in Community Settings: Bacterial Contamination and Face Mask Hygiene – Lize Delanghe – Frontiers in Medicine

Animal microbiome

The fall and rise of group B Streptococcus in dairy cattle: reintroduction due to human-to-cattle host jumps? – Chiara Crestani – Microbial Genomics

Viruses and phages

*Are Bordetella bronchiseptica Siphoviruses (Genus Vojvodinavirus) Appropriate for Phage Therapy—Bacterial Allies or Foes? – Aleksandra Petrovic Fabijan – Viruses

Water microbiome

Functional Redundancy in Ocean Microbiomes Controls Trait Stability – Taylor M. Royalty and Andrew D. Steen – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

SHOOT: phylogenetic gene search and ortholog inference – David Emms and Steven Kelly – bioRxiv

Ultra-resolution Metagenomics: When Enough Is Not Enough – Falk Hildebrand – mSystems

Computational challenges and opportunities in spatially resolved transcriptomic data analysis – Lyla Atta & Jean Fan – Nature Communications

*BEEM-Static: Accurate inference of ecological interactions from cross-sectional microbiome data – Chenhao Li – Plos Computational Biology

Webinars &c

Conference: Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – September 14/16 (Atlantic/Pacific)

Course + Symposium: 2021 ISB Virtual Microbiome Series – October 13-15

Webinar: EMBARK Fall Webinars – a webinar series where invited speakers will be presenting their AMR research and be contrasted to EMBARK members presenting the work performed in the project.

For more, check out a collection of microbiome events HERE!

August 22nd, 2021

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Hyvää Päivää from Helsinki, Finland ! Today’s digest contains a selection of really interesting preprints and published studies. If you are interested in soil microbiology, take a look at the preprint by Nelson and collaborators, who characterized the soil microbiome across a wildfire burn severity gradients in coniferous forests and made their dataset available in the Fire Responding Ecogenomic database (FiRE-db).

Looking at a large variety of ecosystems, Rodriguez-Gijon and collaborators used a vast collection of Metagenomes Assembled Genomes (MAGs), to investigate the genomes size of prokaryotes in these ecosystems. They show that, while the environment of origin can be linked to genome size, it seems like evolutionary phylogenetic history is in many cases a stronger predictor.

Finally, today’s non-microbiology pick is a great “10 simples rules” paper reviewing best practices on organizing bioinformatics workshops in low and middle-income countries.

Have a great Weekend!

General microbiome

Preprint: A genomic perspective across Earth’s microbiomes reveals that genome size in Archaea and Bacteria is linked to ecosystem type and trophic strategy – Rodriguez-Gijon et al. – BioRXiV

Multi-site human microbiome

Review : Host-Microbe Metagenomics: a Lens To Refocus Our Perspective
on Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases – Kalantar and Langelier – mSystems

Human gut microbiome

Rectal bacteriome and virome signatures and clinical outcomes in community-acquired pneumonia: An exploratory study – Kullberg et al. – EClinicalMedicine

Review: The important role of fungi in inflammatory bowel diseases – Wang et al. – Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology

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

Preprint: A bacterial genome and culture collection of gut microbial in weanling piglet – Dong et al. – BioRXiV

Characterization of the fecal microbiota of sows and their offspring from German commercial pig farms – Lührmann et al. – Plos One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Does plant diversity determine the diversity of the rhizosphere microbial community? – Zverev et al. – BioRXiV

Preprint: Playing with FiRE: A genome resolved view of the soil microbiome responses to high severity forest wildfire – Nelson et al. – BioRXiV

Peatland microbial community responses to plant functional group and drought are depth-dependent – Lamit et al. – Molecular ecology

Soil pH determines bacterial distribution and assembly processes in natural mountain forests of eastern China – Ni et al. – Global ecology and Biogeography

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: The OceanDNA MAG catalog contains over 50,000 prokaryotic genomes originated from various marine environments – Nishimura et al. – BioRXiV

Food microbiology

Preprint: Mixed culture metagenomics of the microbes making sour beer – Piraine et al. – BioRXiV

Preprint: Insights into the nutritional properties and microbiome diversity in sweet and sour yogurt manufactured in Bangladesh – Tanzina et al. – BioRXiV

Preprint: Microbial communities in retail draft beers and the biofilms they produce – Bose et al. – BioRXiV

Bioinformatics

Book chapter: Bioinformatics Tools and Software – Gupta et al. – Advances in Bioinformatics, Springer, Singapore

MiDSystem: A comprehensive online system for de novo assembly and analysis of microbial genomes – Lee et al. – New biotechnology

My non-microbiology picks

Ten simple rules for organizing a bioinformatics training course in low– and middle-income countries – Moore et al. – PLOS computational biology

August 18, 2021

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Call for Papers

Cells is calling for papers for a special issue on “Interplay of Gene Expression Regulation and Microbiome”. Deadline for paper submission: 30th of November 2021

General microbiome

[REVIEW]The Cancer Microbiome: Recent Highlights and Knowledge Gaps – Knippel, Drewes & Sears – Cancer Discoveries

[REVIEW]Healthy Patients Are Not the Best Controls for Microbiome-Based Clinical Studies: Example of Sjögren’s Syndrome in a Systematic Review – Doare et al. – Frontiers in Immunology

[REVIEW]The varying effects of antibiotics on gut microbiota – Yang et al. – AMB Express

[REVIEW]Prevotella diversity, niches and interactions with the human host – Tett et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Bacterial colonization dynamics and antibiotic resistance gene dissemination in the hospital environment after first patient occupancy: a longitudinal metagenetic study – Klassert et al. – Microbiome

Long-term biodiversity intervention shapes health-associated commensal microbiota among urban day-care children – Roslund et al. – Environment International

Multi-site human microbiome

Different responses of the oral, nasal and lung microbiomes to cigarette smoke – Pfeiffer et al. – Thorax

Human skin microbiome

[REVIEW]The power and potential of BIOMAP to elucidate host-microbiome interplay in skin inflammatory diseases – Alenius et al. – Experimental Dermatology

[PREPRINT]Bacterial DNA on the skin surface overrepresents the viable skin microbiome – Acosta et al. – bioRxiv

Human oral microbiome

[REVIEW]The role of oral bacteria in inflammatory bowel disease – Read, Curtis & Neves

Inflammation-type dysbiosis of the oral microbiome associates with the duration of COVID-19 symptoms and long-COVID – Haran et al. – JCI insight

Human gut microbiome

[REVIEW]Phage Diversity in the Human Gut Microbiome: a Taxonomist’s Perspective – Adriaenssens – mSystems

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

IL-10 Deficiency Accelerates Type 1 Diabetes Development via Modulation of Innate and Adaptive Immune Cells and Gut Microbiota in BDC2.5 NOD Mice – Huang et al. – Frontiers in Immunology

Genetically determined hypertensive phenotype affects gut microbiota composition, but not vice versa – Konopelski et al. – Journal of Hypertension

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Plant developmental stage drives the differentiation in ecological role of the maize microbiome – Xiong et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

ZWA: Viral genome assembly and characterization hindrances from virus-host chimeric reads; a refining approach – Dovrolis et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

[PREPRINT]SemiBin: Incorporating information from reference genomes with semi-supervised deep learning leads to better metagenomic assembled genomes (MAGs) – Pan et al. – bioRxiv

[PREPRINT]Network analysis of ten thousand genomes shed light on Pseudomonas diversity and classification – Passarelli-Araujo, Franco & Venancio – bioRxiv

Techniques

[PREPRINT]The clinical utility of two high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing workflows for taxonomic assignment of unidentifiable bacterial pathogens in MALDI-TOF MS – Lao et al. – bioRxiv

August 17, 2021

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Today’s digest covers a variety of topics including an interesting preprint on how the maternal immune system shapes offspring immunity in a microbiota dependent fashion and a large human study of the Rotavirus vaccine and gut microbiota. Non microbiology picks cover some recent COVID-19 advances and a very interesting article in Science investigating energy expenditure through the human life course.

COVID-19 

No evidence of human genome integration of SARS-CoV-2 found by long-read DNA sequencing – Smits et al. Cell Reports

Ultrapotent antibodies against diverse and highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants. Wang et al. Science 

Long-term perturbation of the peripheral immune system months after SARS-CoV-2 infection -Ryan et al. MedRxiv

General microbiome

Bacterial colonization dynamics and antibiotic resistance gene dissemination in the hospital environment after first patient occupancy: a longitudinal metagenetic study – Klassert et al. Microbiome

Acute SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with an increased abundance of bacterial pathogens, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the nose – Rhoades et al. Cell Reports 

Meta-analysis of Clinical Microbiome Studies in Urolithiasis Reveal Age, Stone Composition, and Study Location as the Predominant Factors in Urolithiasis-Associated Microbiome Composition – mBio. Kachroo et al. 

Human gut microbiome

The fecal microbiome and rotavirus vaccine immunogenicity in rural Zimbabwean infants – Robertson et al. Vaccine

Gut microbiome ADP-ribosyltransferases are widespread phage-encoded fitness factors – Brown et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Pregnancy and Early-Life

Maternal γδ T Cells Shape Offspring Pulmonary Type-2 Immunity In A Microbiota-Dependent Manner – Papotto et al. BioRxiv

Food Microbiology

Functional strain redundancy and persistent phage infection in Swiss hard cheese starter cultures – Somerville et al. ISME

Water Microbiome

Ecogenomics and Adaptation Strategies of Southern Ocean Viral Communities – Alarcón-Schumacher et al. mSystems

Soil microbiome

Bog ecosystems as a playground for plant–microbe coevolution: bryophytes and vascular plants harbour functionally adapted bacteria – Wicaksono et al. Microbiome

Bioinformatics

HoPhage: an ab initio tool for identifying hosts of phage fragments from metaviromes. Tan et al. Bioinformatics

Sparse least trimmed squares regression with compositional covariates for high dimensional data. Monti and Filzmoser. Bioinformatics. 

Ribovore: ribosomal RNA sequence analysis for GenBank submissions and database curation. Schaffer et al. BMC Bioinformatics.

Non-microbiome picks

Daily energy expenditure through the human life course – Pontzer et al. Science

Analysis of scientific society honors reveals disparities – Le et al. Cell Systems

August 11, 2021

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General microbiome

[REVIEW]Spot-light on microbiota in obesity and cancer – Marzullo et al. – International Journal of Obesity

Microbiome analysis, the immune response and transplantation in the era of next generation sequencing – Kanangat & Skaljic – Human Immunology

Pregnancy and early life

Type 1 diabetes in pregnancy is associated with distinct changes in the composition and function of the gut microbiome – Roth-Schulze et al. – Microbiome

Human gut microbiome

[PREPRINT]Metataxonomic review to elucidate the role of the microbiome in Celiac disease across the gastrointestinal tract – Arcila et al. – bioRxiv

Microbiota and sleep: awakening the gut feeling – Sen et al. – Trends in Molecular Medicine

Effects of Smoking on Inflammatory Markers in a Healthy Population as Analyzed via the Gut Microbiota – Yan et al. – Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

[REVIEW]The link between the gut microbiota and Parkinson’s Disease: A systematic mechanism review with focus on α-synuclein transport – Nielsen, Pearson & Seidler – Brain Research

[REVIEW]Gut brain axis: an insight into microbiota role in Parkinson’s disease – Moustafa et al. – Metabolic Brain Disease

Describing the intestinal microbiota of Holstein Fasciola-positive and -negative cattle from a hyperendemic area of fascioliasis in central Colombia – Ramirez et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

The gut microbiome of healthy Vietnamese adults and children is a major reservoir for resistance genes against critical antimicrobials – Pereira-Dias et al. – Journal of Infectious Diseases

Characteristics of gut microbiota in people with obesity – Duan et al. – PLOS One

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

Post-weaning shifts in microbiome composition and metabolism revealed by over 25 000 pig gut metagenome-assembled genomes – Gaio et al. – Microbial Genomics

Effects of dietary rosemary extract supplementation on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, antioxidant capacity, intestinal morphology and microbiota of weaning pigs – Yang et al. – Journal of Animal Science

Changes in the gut microbiota: a possible factor influencing peripheral blood immune indexes in non-obese diabetic mice – Wu et al. – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

[PREPRINT]The gut bacteria of an invasive amphibian respond to the dual challenges of range-expansion and parasite attack – Zhou et al. – bioRxiv

Fishing for the Virome of Tropical Tuna – Gadoin et al. – Viruses

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Colonization by the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta, Modifies Soil Bacterial Communities – Travanty et al. – Host Microbe Interactions

Techniques

[PREPRINT]Shotgun proteomic profiling of dormant, ‘non-culturable’ Mycobacterium tuberculosis – Nikitushkin et al. – bioRxiv

[PREPRINT]A clinically validated human saliva metatranscriptomic test for global systems biology studies – Toma et al. – bioRxiv

Sample Preparation for Detection of Different Bacterial Strains by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight (MALDI-TOF) Mass Spectrometry – Chac et al. – Current Protocols