Category Archives: Science and Art

August 19, 2022

Posted on by

Today’s digest is short and sweet! We have articles on the gut microbiota in rats, the influence of host genetics on the leaf fungal microbiome, and biofilm fouling in drinking water. There are also two manuscripts which provide tips for pathway enrichment analysis and biomarker discovery.

Happy reading! Also, if you’re in Scotland, consider checking out the enormous E. coli in Edinburgh this weekend!

Animal experiments

Effects of sea salt intake on metabolites, steroid hormones, and gut microbiota in rats – Chanmuang et al. – PLOS One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

The changing influence of host genetics on the leaf fungal microbiome throughout plant development – Karasov & Lundberg – PLOS Biology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Impacts of temperature and hydraulic regime on discolouration and biofilm fouling in drinking water distribution systems – Fish et al. – PLOS Water

Bioinformatics

Nine quick tips for pathway enrichment analysis – Chicco & Agapito – PLOS Computational Biology

Ten quick tips for biomarker discovery and validation analyses using machine learning – Diaz-Uriarte et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

July 1, 2022

Posted on by

We made it to the end of the week, we made it through the end of June. To celebrate, check out the two (!) articles about the pig gut microbiome, try out a new tool for network analysis (MicNet Toolbox), or enjoy an NPR Short Waves podcast episode about Agar Art. Or maybe you’re spending the afternoon preparing a research talk or fieldwork event? If that’s the case, check out the article presenting 10 rules for improving communication among scientists or the one on the hidden labor of managing threats to safety by women in fieldwork.

General microbiome

Assessment of disinfectant efficacy in reducing microbial growth – Alajlan et al. – PLOS One

Animal experiments

Metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiota in piglets either challenged or not with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli reveals beneficial effects of probiotics on microbiome composition, resistome, digestive function and oxidative stress responses – Apiwatsiri et al. – PLOS One

Phylogenetic diversity analysis of shotgun metagenomic reads describes gut microbiome development and treatment effects in the post-weaned pig – Gaio et al. – PLOS One

Preprint: Using axenic and gnotobiotic insects to examine the role of different microbes on the development and reproduction of the kissing bug Rhodnius prolixus (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) – Gilliland et al. – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

MicNet toolbox: Visualizing and unraveling a microbial network – Favila et al. – PLOS One
Techniques

Evaluating the impact of sample storage, handling, and technical ability on the decay and recovery of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater – Beattie et al. – PLOS One

Microbes in the news

NPR’s Short Wave Podcast: Let’s Get Crafty With Agar Art (11 minute episode)!

Science, publishing, and career

Ten simple rules for improving communication among scientists – Bautista et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

You can’t report your feelings: The hidden labor of managing threats to safety by women in global public health fieldwork – McAuliffe et al. – PLOS Global Public Health

October 22, 2021

Posted on by

Happy Friday!

Today’s digest includes an article on the role of age in the human intestinal microbiome, research on the role of a novel Acidobacteriota in seafloor sulfur cycling, work demonstrating the use of machine learning to predict camplyobacter source data, and much more! I also included the link to a page on “The Secret World Inside You”, a science exhibit focused on the human microbiome that is at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas from now until April 10, 2022. If anyone ends up checking it out, I’d love to hear about it!

Events

A microbiome science exhibit, “The Secret World Inside You,” is at The Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas from October 16, 2021 to April 10, 2022 .

Human gut microbiome

Bile acid-independent protection against Clostridioides difficile infection – Aguirre et al. – PLOS PATHOGENS

The importance of age in compositional and functional profiling of the human intestinal microbiome – Herzog et al. – PLOS ONE

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

The chosen few—variations in common and rare soil bacteria across biomes – Bickel & Or – The ISME Journal

The fungus Kalmusia longispora is able to cause vascular necrosis on Vitis vinifera – Karácsony et al. – PLOS ONE

Water and extremophile microbiome

Novel taxa of Acidobacteriota implicated in seafloor sulfur cycling – Flieder et al. – The ISME Journal

Beach sand oil spills select for generalist microbial populations – Heritier-Robbins et al. – The ISME Journal

Preprint: Influence of DNA extraction kits on the fungal DNA metabarcoding for freshwater environmental DNA – Matsuoka et al. – bioRxiv

Marine signature taxa and core microbial community stability along latitudinal and vertical gradients in sediments of the deepest freshwater lake – Reboul et al. – The ISME Journal

Phages and viruses

Review: Community context matters for bacteria-phage ecology and evolution – Blazanin & Turner – The ISME Journal

Bioinformatics

Machine learning to predict the source of campylobacteriosis using whole genome data – Arning et al. – PLOS GENETICS

October 8, 2021

Posted on by

Today’s digest features a metagenomic meta-study on faecal microbiota transplantation, RibDif for count and compare 16S rRNA genes within a genus, and more. Also, there is a new FEMS Microbiology Letters collection of articles highlighting the evolution of education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is still time to join in the second 🌎 Microbiome Virtual International Forum 🌏. Recordings from previous MVIF can be found here.

And, the #Microber2021 just started! Check out this microbe edition of #Inktober drawing challenge – during October, every day a new scientific art on microbiology topic.

Global microbiome

Cultivating Healthy Connections: Exploring and Engineering the Microbial Flow That Shapes Microbiomes – Travis J. Wiles – mSystems

Neonatal microbiome

Presence of distinctive microbiome in the first-pass meconium of newborn infants – Jenni Turunen – Scientific Reports

Respiratory microbiome

Divergence of bacterial communities in the lower airways of CF patients in early childhood – John B. O’Connor – PlosOne

Gut microbiome

Drivers and Determinants of Strain Dynamics Following Faecal Microbiota Transplantation – Thomas Schmidt – bioRxiv

Western and non-western gut microbiomes reveal new roles of Prevotella in carbohydrate metabolism and mouth–gut axis – Vishnu Prasoodanan P. K. – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Animal microbiome

Phylogenetic systematics of Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio genomes illustrate vast taxonomic diversity, open genomes and an abundance of carbohydrate-active enzyme family isoforms – Sara E. Pidcock – Microbial Genomics

Animal experiment

Metabolic modulation of tumours with engineered bacteria for immunotherapy – Fernando P. Canale – Nature

Citrobacter amalonaticus Inhibits the Growth of Citrobacter rodentium in the Gut Lumen – Caroline Mullineaux-Sanders – mBio

Regulation of blood–brain barrier integrity by microbiome-associated methylamines and cognition by trimethylamine N-oxide – Lesley Hoyles – bioRxiv

Effects of prebiotic oligofructose-enriched inulin on gut-derived uremic toxins and disease progression in rats with adenine-induced chronic kidney disease – Ebru Melekoglu – PlosOne

Plant microbiome

Prevalence and Specificity of Chemoreceptor Profiles in Plant-Associated Bacteria – Claudia Sanchis-López – mSystems

Food

Bacteriocinogenic lactic acid bacteria in the traditional cereal-based beverage Boza: a genomic and functional approach – Luciano Lopes Queiroz – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

metaGEM: reconstruction of genome scale metabolic models directly from metagenomes – Francisco Zorrilla – Nucleic Acids Research

RibDif: can individual species be differentiated by 16S sequencing? – Mikael Lenz Strube – Bioinformatics Advances

eggNOG-mapper v2: Functional Annotation, Orthology Assignments, and Domain Prediction at the Metagenomic Scale – Carlos P Cantalapiedra – Molecular Biology and Evolution

Sequencing DNA with nanopores: Troubles and biases – Clara Delahaye and Jacques Nicolas – PlosOne

Webinars &c

Conference: Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – October 14 (Pacific Live)/15 (Atlantic Reply)

Webinar: EMBARK Fall Webinars – a webinar series focused on AMR research

Microscopy Live! – Geology – an hour of live electron microscopy, guided by the audience – Plymouth Electron Microscopy Centre (October 29)

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

Happy #Microber2021, sci-art October!

July 16, 2021

Posted on by

Today’s digest features studies on environmental contamination of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae in China (spoiler: extensive contamination, but has negligible impact on patient colonisation), the dynamic change and correlation of microbiome from different body sites to the treatment response as well as immune-related adverse events of immunotherapy in lung cancer patients, and more.

Also, check out a regularly-updated collection of FREE, ONLINE microbiome events. Happy Friday!

Human microbiome

*Prospective correlation between the patient microbiome with response to and development of immune-mediated adverse effects to immunotherapy in lung cancer – Justin Chau – BMC Cancer

Gut microbiome

Probiotics impact the antibiotic resistance gene reservoir along the human GI tract in a person-specific and antibiotic-dependent manner – Emmanuel Montassier – Nature Microbiology

Identification and engraftment of new bacterial strains by shotgun metagenomic sequence analysis in patients with recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection before and after fecal microbiota transplantation and in healthy human subjects – Sandeep Verma – PlosOne

Differences in the individual curative effect of acupuncture for obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome based on metagenomic analysis: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial – Huaying Fan – Trials

Comparative Analysis of 16S rRNA Gene and Metagenome Sequencing in Pediatric Gut Microbiomes – Danielle Peterson – Frontiers in Microbiology

Resistome

*Spread of Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae in an Intensive Care Unit: A Whole-Genome Sequence-Based Prospective Observational Study – Li Wei – Microbiology Spectrum

*Linezolid- and multidrug-resistant enterococci in raw commercial dog food, Europe, 2019–2020 – Ana R. Freitas – Emerging Infectious Diseases

Identification of pathogen(s) in infectious diseases using shotgun metagenomic sequencing and conventional culture: a comparative study – Huan Chen – PeerJ

Predicting antibiotic resistance gene abundance in activated sludge using shotgun metagenomics and machine learning – Yuepeng Sun – Water Research

Animal microbiome

Assessing the relationship between the rumen microbiota and feed efficiency in Nellore steers – Déborah Romaskevis Gomes Lopes – Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology

Animal experiment

An osmotic laxative renders mice susceptible to prolonged Clostridioides difficile colonization and hinders clearance – Sarah Tomkovich – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

Critical Assessment of Metagenome Interpretation – the second round of challenges – F. Meyer – bioRxiv

Disentangling environmental effects in microbial association networks – Maria Deutschmann – bioRxiv

Webinars &c

Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – September 14

June 25, 2021

Posted on by

This week, the microbial sciences community worldwide (virtually) united at the World Microbe Forum – meeting highlights you can find here #WorldMicrobeForum.

Today’s digest features studies on group B Streptococcus pathogenesis, dental microbiota and aGVHD Risk, a book about writing and publishing papers, and more. Also, check out a collection of FREE, ONLINE microbiome events. Happy Friday!

Read about the experiences of 338 early career researchers from 36 countries with their mentors in Mentorship in life sciences: voices of mentees by A. Murat Eren (Meren)!

General microbiome

Behind the paper: Describing and naming bacteria in the 21st century – Thomas Hitch – Nature blog

Hierarchical control of microbial community assembly – Sammy Pontrelli – bioRxiv

Resistome

*L-form switching confers antibiotic, phage and stress tolerance in pathogenic Escherichia coli – Aleksandra Petrovic Fabijan – bioRxiv

Gut microbiome

A newly identified protein from Akkermansia muciniphila stimulates GLP-1 secretion – Patrice D. Cani and Claude Knauf – Cell Metabolism

Enrichment of gut microbiome strains for cultivation-free genome sequencing using droplet microfluidics – Anna Pryszlak – arXiv

Dispersal strategies shape persistence and evolution of human gut bacteria – Falk Hildebrand – Cell Host & Microbe

Urinary microbiome

Review: Urinary Microbiome: Yin and Yang of the Urinary Tract – Virginia Perez-Carrasco – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

Cysteine dependence in Lactobacillus iners constitutes a novel therapeutic target to modify the vaginal microbiota – Seth M. Bloom – bioRxiv

*A type VII secretion system in Group B Streptococcus mediates cytotoxicity and virulence – Brady L Spencer – bioRxiv

Life History Recorded in the Vagino-cervical Microbiome Along with Multi-omics – Zhuye Jie – Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics

Predictive functional analysis reveals inferred features unique to cervicovaginal microbiota of African women with bacterial vaginosis and high-risk human papillomavirus infection – Harris Onywera – PlosOne

Effect of metronidazole on vaginal microbiota associated with asymptomatic bacterial vaginosis – Daniel Ruiz-Perez – Access Microbiology

Oral microbiome

*Dental Biofilm Microbiota Dysbiosis Is Associated With the Risk of Acute Graft-Versus-Host Disease After Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation – Vitor Heidrich – Frontiers in Immunology

Fusobacterium nucleatum metabolically integrates commensals and pathogens in oral biofilms – Akito Sakanaka – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome

*Microbiomes attached to fresh perennial ryegrass are temporally resilient and adapt to changing ecological niches – Sharon A. Huws – Microbiome

Animal experiments

A standardized gnotobiotic mouse model harboring a minimal 15-member mouse gut microbiota recapitulates SOPF/SPF phenotypes – Marion Darnaud – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

GUNC: detection of chimerism and contamination in prokaryotic genomes – Askarbek Orakov – BMC Genome Biology

metaMIC: reference-free Misassembly Identification and Correction of de novo metagenomic assemblies – Senying Lai – bioRxiv

Open challenges for microbial network construction and analysis – Karoline Faust – The ISME Journal 2021

STRipy: a graphical application for enhanced genotyping of pathogenic short tandem repeats in sequencing data – Andreas Halman – bioRxiv

Adapting macroecology to microbiology: using occupancy modelling to assess functional profiles across metagenomes – Angus S Hilts – bioRxiv

Webinars &c

Microbiome Virtual International Conference #MVIF – September 14

The International Conference on Group B Strep (ICGBS) – July 20-22

World Enterococcus Day – July 15 – Registration here

BiATA2021 Bioinformatics: from Algorithms to Applications – July 12–15 


LSfM Lecture Series & Workshops : “The Dark Side of Science: Misconduct in Biomedical Research” Dr. Elisabeth Bik – more info here – June 30

EMBARK Webinars – Kimberly Kline “Pathogenesis and persistence during Enterococcus faecalis biofilm-associated infection” and Sofia Forslund “High-throughput measurement of host and microbiota” – EMBARK project – June 30

Writing

Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers: A Primer for the Non-English Speaker – Gábor Lövei – OpenBook Publishers

Art

From Scientist to SciArtist – Eliza Wolfson


June 4, 2021

Posted on by

Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Today’s digest includes a review about the digestibility of adult dog diets, several articles about the human gut microbiome, an article about the spinach phyllosphere, and research about the effect of fertilizer and continuous garlic cultivation on the soil microbiome. It also includes topics such as microorganisms in ancient Siberian permafrost, the use of a probiotic consortium as an alternative to chemical remediation of oil spills, and much more!

If you want a lighter read, I’ve also included a fun Smithsonian Magazine article about the use of bacteria in art restoration.

Happy Friday!

General microbiome

Review: An evolving view on biogeochemical cycling of iron – Kappler et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Review: Beyond horizontal gene transfer: the role of plasmids in bacterial evolution – Rodríguez-Beltrán et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Review: Cells within cells: Rickettsiales and the obligate intracellular bacterial lifestyle – Salje – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Reviews: Microbial volatile organic compounds in intra-kingdom and inter-kingdom interactions – Weisskopf et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Human skin microbiome

Apple cider vinegar soaks do not alter the skin bacterial microbiome in atopic dermatitis – Luu et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

Metabolomic profiling identifies complex lipid species and amino acid analogues associated with response to weight loss interventions – Bihlmeyer et al. – PLOS One

Gut microbiome differences among Mexican Americans with and without type 2 diabetes mellitus – Kitten et al. – PLOS One

Enlightening the taxonomy darkness of human gut microbiomes with a cultured biobank – Liu et al. – Microbiome

Gut microbiota profiles of young South Indian children: Child sex-specific relations with growth – Shivakumar et al. – PLOS One

Animal experiments

Review: Soybean meal and poultry offal meal effects on digestibility of adult dogs diets – Vanelli et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

A survey of mosquito-borne and insect-specific viruses in hospitals and livestock markets in western Kenya – Chiuya et al. – PLOS One

Microbiomes of clownfish and their symbiotic host anemone converge before their first physical contact – Émie et al. – Microbiome

Characterization of oral and cloacal microbial communities in cold-stunned Kemp’s ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) during the time course of rehabilitation – McNally et al. – PLOS One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Influence of seasonal changes and salinity on spinach phyllosphere bacterial functional assemblage – Ibekwe et al. – PLOS One

Comparison of bacterial and archaeal communities in two fertilizer doses and soil compartments under continuous cultivation system of garlic – Zhou et al. – PLOS One

Water and extremophile microbiome

Meanders as a scaling motif for understanding of floodplain soil microbiome and biogeochemical potential at the watershed scale – Carnevali et al. – Microbiome

Urban wastewater bacterial communities assemble into seasonal steady states – LaMartina et al. – Microbiome

Genomic reconstruction of fossil and living microorganisms in ancient Siberian permafrost – Liang et al. – Microbiome

Genomic and immunogenic changes of Piscine novirhabdovirus (Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus) over its evolutionary history in the Laurentian Great Lakes – Niner et al. – PLOS One

Built environment

Multi-domain probiotic consortium as an alternative to chemical remediation of oil spills at coral reefs and adjacent sites – Silva et al. – Microbiome

Microbes in the news

Italian Art Restorers Used Bacteria to Clean Michelangelo Masterpieces – Davis-Marks – Smithsonian Magazine

April 1, 2021

Posted on by

General microbiome

Viral genomic, metagenomic and human transcriptomic characterization and prediction of the clinical forms of COVID-19 – Rodrigez et al. – PLOS Pathogens

A multiomics approach to identify host-microbe alterations associated with infection severity in diabetic foot infections: a pilot study – Radzieta – et al. – NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes

Pregnancy and early life

Interactions between gut microbiota and metabolites modulate cytokine network imbalances in women with unexplained miscarriage – Liu et al. – NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes

Developmental trajectory of the healthy human gut microbiota during the first 5 years of life – Roswall et al. – Cell Host & Microbiome

Human gut microbiome

Compositional change of gut microbiome and osteocalcin expressing endothelial progenitor cells in patients with coronary artery disease – Toya et al. – PLOS One

Stool metabolome-microbiota evaluation among children and adolescents with obesity, overweight, and normal-weight using 1H NMR and 16S rRNA gene profiling – Jaimes et al. – PLOS One

Gut dysbiosis and mortality in hemodialysis patients – Lin et al. – NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes

[REVIEW]The Interplay between Diet, Gut Microbes, and Host Epigenetics in Health and Disease – Shock et al. – The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry

[REVIEW]Circadian rhythms and the gut microbiome synchronize the host’s metabolic response to diet – Lopez et al. – Cell Metabolism

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

Meta-analysis identifies the effect of dietary multi-enzyme supplementation on gut health of pigs – Ramani et al. – Scientific Reports

Silicon-containing water intake confers antioxidant effect, gastrointestinal protection, and gut microbiota modulation in the rodents – Wu et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

[PREPRINT]16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing of Bagworm Metisa plana Walker (Lepidoptera: Psychidae) – Ting et al. – bioRxiv

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

Metagenomic analysis exploring taxonomic and functional diversity of bacterial communities of a Himalayan urban fresh water lake – Ahmad et al. – PLOS One

Geochemical and metagenomics study of a metal-rich, green-turquoise-coloured stream in the southern Swiss Alps – Buetti-Dinh – PLOS One

Phages and viruses

[REVIEW]The human virome: assembly, composition and host interactions – Liang & Bushman – Nature Reviews Microbiology

[PREPRINT]Diverse viruses carrying genes for microbial extremotolerance in the Atacama Desert hyperarid soil – Hwang et al. – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

MCPdb: The bacterial microcompartment database – Ochoa et al. – PLOS One
[Twitter]97% identity cutoff applied on humans and related species – Matthew Hahn

Techniques

Single strain control of microbial consortia – Fedorec et al. – Nature Communications

Microbes and Art

A Cultural Triumph: Microbiology Student Makes A Petri Dish Masterpiece – McCammon – npr

March 12, 2021

Posted on by

Today’s digest is HUGE.

Read about the healthy urogenital microbiome profiling by culturomics, gutSMASH (Specialized Primary Metabolite Analysis From Anaerobic Bacteria), (sub)strains evolution in mice, and AMPSphere (a comprehensive catalog of antimicrobial peptides).

There are interesting results of a new metaanalysis of the neonatal microbiome, maternal strain inheritance, and persistence into adolescence, evaluation of the effect of long-term freezing storage temperature on fecal samples, and estimation of the bioinformatic carbon footprint using the freely available Green Algorithms calculator. Find out more about statistics & challenges in molecular microbiology (with a reproducible research appendix!).

NEWS: The Transbiome project is a community driven research program using crowdfunding and co-creation to discover the diversity of the neo-vaginal microbiome. You can support the project here.

Check out a list of awesome webinars, courses and podcasts. Happy Friday!

Gut microbiome

*A systematic analysis of metabolic pathways in the human gut microbiota – Victòria Pascal Andreu – bioRxiv

*Strain inheritance and neonatal gut microbiota development: A meta-analysis – Daniel Podlesny and W. Florian Fricke – International Journal of Medical Microbiology

Adaptive ecological processes and metabolic independence drive microbial colonization and resilience in the human gut – Andrea R. Watson – bioRixv

Effect of fecal microbiota transplantation on neurological restoration in a spinal cord injury mouse model: involvement of brain-gut axis – Yingli Jing – Microbiome

Review: Association between antibiotics and gut microbiome dysbiosis in children: systematic review and meta-analysis – Lucy McDonnell – Gut Microbes

Review: Salmonella versus the Microbiome – Andrew W. L. Rogers – Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews

Respiratory microbiome

Strain-Resolved Dynamics of the Lung Microbiome in Patients with Cystic Fibrosis – Marija Dmitrijeva – mBio

Oral microbiome

Review: Resilience of the oral microbiome – William G. Wade – Periodontology 2000

Skin microbiome

Skin microbiota and clinical associations in Netherton sindrome – Veera Sillanpää – JID Innovations

Urogenital microbiome

*Long-term stability of the urogenital microbiota of asymptomatic European women – Magdalena Ksiezarek – BMC Microbiology

Limosilactobacillus urinaemulieris sp. nov. and Limosilactobacillus portuensis sp. nov. isolated from urine of healthy women – Magdalena Ksiezarek – International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

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

Obesity is associated with lower bacterial vaginosis prevalence in menopausal but not pre-menopausal women in a retrospective analysis of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study – Elizabeth Daubert – PlosOne

Bacterial biofilm formation on vaginal ring pessaries used for pelvic organ prolapse – Felicity G. Gould – International Urogynecology Journal

Animal microbiome

*Long-term storage of feces at −80 °C versus −20 °C is negligible for 16S rRNA amplicon profiling of the equine bacterial microbiome – Stefan Gavriliuc – PeerJ

Differences in the gut microbiomes of dogs and wolves: roles of antibiotics and starch – Yuting Liu – BMC Veterinary Research

An Expanded Gene Catalog of Mouse Gut Metagenomes – Jiahui Zhu – mSphere

Animal experiments

*Long-term evolution and short-term adaptation of microbiota strains and sub-strains in mice – Bahtiyar Yilmaz – Cell Host & Microbe

The gut mycobiome of healthy mice is shaped by the environment and correlates with metabolic outcomes in response to diet – Tahliyah S. Mims – Communications Biology

Functional genetics of human gut commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron reveals metabolic requirements for growth across environments – Hualan Liu – Cell Reports

Tea polyphenols regulate gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by antibiotic in mice – Jie Li – Food Research International

Plant microbiome

Designing a home for beneficial plant microbiomes – Chunxu Song – Current Opinion in Plant Biology

Food

Review: Polymicrobial interaction between Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae: coexistence-relevant mechanisms – Zhenbo Xu – Critical Reviews in Microbiology

Viruses and phages

Viromes outperform total metagenomes in revealing the spatiotemporal patterns of agricultural soil viral communities – Christian Santos-Medellin – The ISME Journal

Review: Biases in Viral Metagenomics-Based Detection, Cataloguing and Quantification of Bacteriophage Genomes in Human Faeces, a Review – Julie Callanan – Microorganisms

Techniques

High molecular weight DNA extraction strategies for long-read sequencing of complex metagenomes – Florian Trigodet – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

*AMPSphere: the worldwide survey of prokaryotic antimicrobial peptides – Célio Dias Santos-Júnior – Zenodo

*A Statistical Perspective on the Challenges in Molecular Microbial Biology – Pratheepa Jeganathan and Susan P. Holmes – arXiv

*The carbon footprint of bioinformatics – Jason Grealey – bioRxiv

*Make Interactive Complex Heatmaps in R – Zuguang Gu and Daniel Huebschmann – bioRxiv

Machine learning applications in microbial ecology, human microbiome studies, and environmental monitoring – Ryan B.Ghannam and Stephen M.Techtmann – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Tutorial: assessing metagenomics software with the CAMI benchmarking toolkit – Fernando Meyer – Nature Protocols

STATegra: Multi-Omics Data Integration – A Conceptual Scheme With a Bioinformatics Pipeline – Nuria Planell – Frontiers in Genetics

Exploring bacterial diversity via a curated and searchable snapshot of archived DNA sequences – Grace A. Blackwell – bioRxiv

clinker & clustermap.js: automatic generation of gene cluster comparison figures – Cameron L M Gilchrist & Yit-Heng Chooi – Bioinformatics

gapseq: informed prediction of bacterial metabolic pathways and reconstruction of accurate metabolic models – Johannes Zimmermann – Genome Biology

Webinars

mSystems Thinking Series: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Microbiology – ASM – March 26

The Microbiome Centers Consortium Seminar Series – weekly seminars featuring early career researchers – Thursdays

Americas Webinar: Mother’s Milk & Baby’s Bacteria: Discoveries from the CHILD Cohort Study – Meghan Azad – April 14

Courses & Workshops

Get R Done: R Tutorials video series – Chad C. Williams

Machine Learning in Genomics: Tools, Resources, Clinical Applications and Ethics – the NHGRI Genomic Data Science Working Group of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research – April 13-14

Podcast

February 2021 Pod: Global Chang‪e‬ – Bengtsson-Palme Lab – Microbiology Lab Pod

Enhancers with Molly Gasperini – Jacob Schreiber – The Bioinformatics Chat

Matthew Schechter: Metagenomics History Part 1 and 2 – Leo Elworth – The Bioinformatics and Beyond Podcast

Ep. 33 Oyster Microbiome with Dr. Rachel Diner – Julie Laurin – Planet B612

Art

UMich Microbial Masterpieces – Community for microbe enthusiasts and artists – Erica Gardner, Anna Urso, Bruna Iunes Sanches
*Check out their giant Winogradsky Panel in the Duderstadt Center gallery

February 4, 2021

Posted on by

Greetings from a very snowy Pittsburgh!

If you like getting dirty, today’s digest is for you! It includes a review on bat guano, two research articles about compost, four focused on soil research, and a preprint about fertilization with poultry manure.

Happy reading!

Events and jobs

February 1st to 14th: If you’re on twitter, check out #MicrobeValentinesDay! @AnneAMadden is posting 14 days of pink microbes in honor of Valentine’s Day under this hashtag!

Human skin microbiome

Gut microbiome profile in psoriatic patients treated and untreated with biologic therapy – Valentini et al. – The Journal of Dermatology

Human gut microbiome

Preprint – Impact of a human gut microbe on Vibrio cholerae host colonization through biofilm enhancement – Barrasso et al. – bioRxiv

Review: Gut microbiota-mediated pesticide toxicity in humans: methodological issues and challenges in risk assessment of pesticides – Utembe and Kamng’ona – Chemosphere

Animal experiments

Effects of thallium exposure on intestinal microbial community and organ functions in zebrafish (Danio rerio) – Wang et al. – Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

Is intestinal bacterial diversity enhanced by trans-species spread in the mixed-species flock of hooded crane (Grus monacha) and bean goose (Anser fabalis) wintering in the lower and middle Yangtze river floodplain? – Yang and Zhou – Animals

Animal microbiome

Review: The microbiome of bat guano: for what is this knowledge important? – Dimkić et al. – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Tick microbiomes in neotropical forest fragments are best explained by tick-associated and environmental factors rather than host blood source – Kueneman et al. – Microbial Ecology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Survival rates of microbial communities from livestock waste to soils: a comparison between compost and digestate – Akari and Uchida – Applied and Environmental Soil Science

Year, location, and variety impact on grape-, soil-, and leaf-associated fungal microbiota of Arkansas-grown table grapes – Cureau et al. – Microbial Ecology

Preprint: Agricultural fertilization with poultry manure results in persistent environmental contamination with the pathogen Clostridioides difficile – Frentrup et al. – bioRxiv

Impacts of invasive Australian Acacias on soil bacterial community composition, microbial enzymatic activities, and nutrient availability in Fynbos soils – Keet et al. – Microbial Ecology

A novel carboxylesterase derived from a compost metagenome exhibiting high stability and activity towards high salinity – Lu and Daniel – Genes

A two-year field study of nickel-agromining using Odontarrhena chalcidica co-cropped with a legume on an ultramafic soil: temporal variation in plant biomass, nickel yields and taxonomic and bacterial functional diversity – Saad et al. – Plant and Soil

Bacterial response to soil property changes caused by wood ash from wildfire in forest soils around mining areas: Relevance of bacterial community composition, carbon and nitrogen cycling – Zhang et al. – Journal of Hazardous Materials

Water and extremophile microbiome

Microcystis blooms aggravate the diurnal alternation of nitrification and nitrate reduction in the water column in Lake Taihu – Chen et al. – Science of the Total Environment

Temperature and microbial interactions drive the deterministic assembly processes in sediments of hot springs – He et al. – Science of the Total Environment

Cadmium sulfide nanoparticle biomineralization and biofilm formation mediate cadmium resistance of the deep‐sea bacterium Pseudoalteromonas sp. MT33b – Ma and Sun – Environmental Microbiology Reports

Recovery of freshwater microbial communities after extreme rain events is mediated by cyclic succession – Shabarova et al. – Nature Microbiology

Built environment

Preprint: Half-life of biodegradable plastics in the marine environment depends on material, habitat, and climate zone – Lott et al. – bioRxiv

Water flushing irremovable biofilms on support material in dynamic membrane bioreactor: formation, composition, and microbial community – Huang et al. – Chemosphere

Phages and viruses

Preprint: Rampant prophage movement among transient competitors drives rapid adaptation during infection – Marshall et al. – bioRxiv