February 25th, 2023

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Alise Ponsero

Bonjour from Paris, France !

In today’s digest you will find a broad range of amazing preprints and published papers! Fontana and collaborator performed a fascinating meta-analysis of publicly datasets obtained from fecal samples of healthy athletes and healthy sedentary adults and revealed the microbiota changes associated with competitive athletes lifestyle.

Today’s non-microbiology pick is an preprint exploring postdoctoral and PhD student’s career self-efficacy in US biological sciences and showed how women and non US citizen have a significant lower level of career self-efficacy compared to their male and US citizen peers. The authors discuss potential causes for these differences and offer recommendations for increasing trainee career self-efficacy.

Have a great Saturday!

Pregnancy and early life

Preprint: Co-localization of antibiotic resistance genes is widespread in the infant gut microbiome and associates with an immature gut microbial composition – Li et al. – BioRXiv

Human gut microbiome

The human gut microbiome of athletes: metagenomic and metabolic insights – Fontana et al. – Microbiome

Review: Gut microbiome-based strategies for host health and disease – Wang et al. – Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition

The role of diet in shaping human gut microbiota – Rinninella et al. – Best practive & Research clinical Gastroenterology

Preprint: Community composition and the environment modulate the population dynamics of type VI secretion in human gut bacteria – Robitaille et al. – BioRXiv

Genetic-Phenotype Analysis of Bifidobacterium bifidum and Its Glycoside Hydrolase Gene Distribution at Different Age Groups – Wei et al. – Foods

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Life stage and vaccination shape the gut microbiome of hatchery-reared Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) – Andres et al. – BioRXiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Short- and long-term effects of continuous compost amendment on soil microbiome community – Kraut-Cohen et al. – BioRXiv

Awaking the Dormant Virome in the Rhizosphere – Braga and Schumacher – Molecular ecology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: A novel order-level lineage of ammonia-oxidizing Thaumarchaeota is widespread in marine and terrestrial environments – Zheng et al. – BioRXiv

Diverse Marine T4-like Cyanophage Communities Are Primarily Comprised of Low-Abundance Species Including Species with Distinct Seasonal, Persistent, Occasional, or Sporadic Dynamics – Dart et al. – Viruses

Food microbiology

Analysis of the core bacterial community associated with consumer-ready Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) – Hines et al. – Plos One

Phages and viruses

Review: The Role of Temperate Phages in Bacterial Pathogenicity – Gummalla et al. – Microorganisms

Bioinformatics

Review: Bioinformatic Tools for NGS-Based Metagenomics to Improve the Clinical Diagnosis of Emerging, Re-Emerging and New Viruses – Ibanez-Lligona et al – Viruses

Non microbiology pick

Preprint: Citizenship status and career self-efficacy: An intersectional study of biomedical trainees in the United States – Chatterjee et al. – BioRXiv

April 8, 2022

Posted on April 8, 2022 by Kara

Good morning! Today’s microbiome digest is brought to you by mild insomnia induced by a mid-afternoon coffee. It includes two food related studies, one on pathogenic E. coli found in ready-to-eat foods and the other focused on a antifungal lipopeptide produced by B. velezensis isolated from honey, and an an article focused on a new approach for processing frozen lung and lavage samples for use in microbiome studies. Also included are several articles focused on the gut microbiome, and several preprints focused on soil microbiome studies. Finally, I want to highlight a piece that details the positive outcomes associated with the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP). Registration for this year’s program is still open until April 15th, and the organizers are looking for both mentors, mentees, and donors!

Pregnancy and early life

Group B Streptococcus colonization at delivery is associated with maternal peripartum infection – Brigtsen et al. – PLOS ONE

Human gut microbiome

Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis and microbiome profile of patients in a referral gastrointestinal diseases centre in the Sudan – Elmagzoub et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal experiments

Vertical transmission of attaching and invasive E. coli from the dam to neonatal mice predisposes to more severe colitis following exposure to a colitic insult later in life – Brand et al. – PLOS ONE

Sex differences in the fecal microbiome and hippocampal glial morphology following diet and antibiotic treatment – Saxena et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Anthropogenic disturbance impacts gut microbiome homeostasis in a Malagasy primate – Wasimuddin et al. – bioRxiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Microclimate is a strong predictor of the native and invasive plant-associated soil microbiota on San Cristóbal Island, Galápagos archipelago – Schoenborn et al. bioRxiv

Preprint: The activity and functions of soil microbial communities in the Finnish sub-Arctic vary across vegetation types – Vitamaki et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Tracing carbon metabolism with stable isotope metabolomics reveals the legacy of diverse carbon sources in soil – Wilhelm et al. – bioRxiv

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

Preprint: Culexarchaeia, a novel archaeal class of anaerobic generalists inhabiting geothermal environments – Kohtz et al. – bioRxiv

Food microbiology

Processed ready-to-eat (RTE) foods sold in Yenagoa Nigeria were colonized by diarrheagenic Escherichia coli which constitute a probable hazard to human health – Beshiru et al. – PLOS ONE

Purification and characterization of antifungal lipopeptide produced by Bacillus velezensis isolated from raw honey – Ziong et al. – PLOS ONE

Techniques

An optimized approach for processing of frozen lung and lavage samples for microbiome studies – Wiscovitch-Russo et al. – PLOS ONE

Science, publishing, and career

***National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP): A Virtual Research Experience to Deliver REAL (Retention, Equity, Access, and Life-Changing) Outcomes for Underrepresented Minorities in STEM – Johnson & Knox – JMBE

February 9, 2022

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Kara

Today’s digest includes a Nature Medicine news feature on the role of preprints in the COVID-19 pandemic. Also included are an article about unsupervised clustering methods for microbiome data, the response of anammox consortia to nutrient starvation, and a handful of interesting preprints.

Animal experiments

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

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Ecological insights into soil health according to the life-history traits and environment-wide associations of bacteria in agricultural soils – Wilhelm et al. – bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Response and resilience of anammox consortia to nutrient starvation – Wang et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

Preprint: Model-free prediction of microbiome compositions – Asher & Bashan – bioRxiv

Preprint: Predicting the re-distribution of antibiotic molecules caused by inter-species interactions in microbial communities – Reding – bioRxiv

Performance determinants of unsupervised clustering methods for microbiome data – Shi et al. – Microbiome

Science, publishing, and career

Rise of the preprint: how rapid data sharing during COVID-19 has changed science forever – Watson – Nature Medicine

October 27, 2020

Posted on October 27, 2020 by Kara

Greetings from Pittsburgh, PA!

Today’s digest a contains articles focused on the oral microbiome, koala symbionts, soil microbial communities, and more. For those of you who are a bit too tired to digest cutting-edge research, I suggest using the 10 simple steps outlined in the highlighted editorial to colorize your own data visualizations. Finally, if you just need a break, I suggest bookmarking the article on the whale skin microbiome and revisiting the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Happy reading (or movie watching)!

General microbiome

Taxonomic profiling and functional characterization of the healthy human oral bacterial microbiome from the north Indian urban sub-population – Verma et al. – Archives of Microbiology

Pregnancy and early life

Maternal and cord blood vitamin D level and the infant gut microbiota in a birth cohort study – Kassem et al. – Maternal Health, Neonatology and Perinatology

Human gut microbiome

Review: A review on preventive role of ketogenic diet (KD) in CNS disorders from the gut microbiota perspective – Rawat et al. – Reviews in Neurosciences

Animal experiments

Challenges in microbiological identification of aerobic bacteria isolated from the skin of reptiles – Brockmann et al. – PLOS ONE

Isolation and sequence-based characterization of a koala symbiont: Lonepinella koalarum – Dahlhausen et al. – Peer J

Vertical transmission of zika virus in Aedes albopictus – Lai et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Cultured-dependent and cultured-independent study of bacteria associated with Thai commercial stingless bee Lepidotrigona terminata – Suphaphimol et al. – Journal of Apicultural Research

Animal microbiome

**Skin microbiome of beluga whales: spatial, temporal, and health-related dynamics – Van Cise et al. – Animal Microbiome

Diversity of bacterial symbionts associated with Myzus persicae (Sulzer) (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Aphidinae) revealed by 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing – Xu et al. – Microbial Ecology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Protists and collembolans alter microbial community composition, C dynamics and soil aggregation in simplified consumer–prey systems – Erktan et al. – Biogeosciences

Responses of soil bacteria and fungi after 36 years fertilizer, straw cover, and irrigation management practices in northwest China – Zhang et al. – Soil Use and Management

Water and extremophile microbiome

Integration of time-series meta-omics data reveals how microbial ecosystems respond to disturbance – Herold et al. – Nature Communications

Islands in the sand: Are all hypolithic microbial communities the same? – Lebre et al. – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Shifts of sediment bacterial community and respiration along a successional gradient in a typical karst plateau lake wetland (China) – Xia et al. – Journal of Oceanology and Limnology

Salinity controls soil microbial community structure and function in coastal estuarine wetlands – Zhang et al. – Environmental Microbiology

Phages and viruses

Association of host proteins with the broad host range filamentous phage NgoΦ6 of Neisseria gonorrhoeae – Piekarowicz et al. – PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

**Editorial: Ten simple rules to colorize biological data visualization – Hattab et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

NanoGalaxy: Nanopore long-read sequencing data analysis in Galaxy – de Koning et al. – GigaScience

Predicting antimicrobial resistance using conserved genes – Nguyen et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques

Review: Innovations to culturing the uncultured microbial majority – Lewis et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Comparison of the diversity of cultured and total bacterial communities in marine sediment using culture-dependent and sequencing methods – Wang et al. – PeerJ

Science, publishing, and career

Comment: Crowdsourcing virtual summer research opportunities to support minorities in microbiology – Johnson et al. – Nature Microbiology

October 11, 2020

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Alise Ponsero

Hello from the Sonoran Desert! In today’s digest, you’ll find quite a few exciting reads about ancient microbes!

Duchêne and collaborators review recents efforts in paleopathology leading to the genome sequencing of ancient pathogens of historical interest such as the pre-modern bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis), smallpox (Variola virus) and cholera (Vibrio cholerae). In their review, the authors explore this amazing topic that aims to broaden our understanding of the past infectious disease.

On the other hand, Eisenhofer and collaborators examine ancient microbial DNA preserved within dental calculus samples from two major cultural periods in Japan: the Jomon period circa 3000 years ago and the Edo period circa 400–150 ago. In this piece, they explore how human oral microbiomes have changed through time in ancient Japanese populations.

Finally, you’ll find in this digest a non-microbiology pick: a “10 simple rules” paper outlining best practices for annotating and submitting sequencing data! Indeed, metadata accompanying sequence datasets is critical to ensure data longevity and reusability by both human and machine agents, and poor metadata can drastically reduce the value of sequencing experiments by limiting its reuse in integrative analyses!

Have a great Sunday!

General Microbiology

Review: The Recovery, Interpretation and Use of Ancient Pathogen Genomes – Duchêne et al. – Current Biology

Multi-site human microbiome

Functional diversity of microbial ecologies estimated from ancient human coprolites and dental calculus – Jacobson et al. – Philosphical transactions of the royal society of Biological sciences.

Human respiratory and oral microbiome

Investigating the demographic history of Japan using ancient oral microbiota – Eisenhofer et al. – Philosphical transactions of the royal society of Biological sciences.

Human gut microbiome

Preprint: Distinct human gut microbial taxonomic signatures uncovered with different sample processing and microbial cell disruption methods for metaproteomic analysis – Garcia-Duran et al. – BioRxiv.

Review: Deciphering diet-gut microbiota-host interplay: Investigations of pectin. – Tan and Nie – Trends in Food Science & Technology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Book Chapter: Microbes and Environment: Global Warming Reverting the Frozen Zombies. In: Fahad et al. (eds) Environment, Climate, Plant and Vegetation Growth. Springer, Cham.

Taxonomic Diversity of Bacteria and Their Filterable Forms in the Soils of Eastern Antarctica (Larsemann Hills and Bunger Hills) – Kudinova et al. – Microbiology.

Preprint: Long-term warming effects on the microbiome and nitrogen fixation associated with the moss Racomitrium lanuginosum in Icelandic tundra – Klarenberg et al. – bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Diversity of Eukaryotic Microorganisms in the Drainage Waters of a Coal Open-Cast Mine – Gruzdev et al. – Microbiology

Comparative diversity analysis of halophiles at two polar saltern systems in Indramayu, West Java, Indonesia – Chasanah et al. – Letters in Applied Microbiology.

Mechanistic model of nutrient uptake explains dichotomy between marine oligotrophic and copiotrophic bacteria – Norris et al. – BioRxiv.

Food microbiology

Review: Microbial diversity of seafood. Parlapani. Current Opinion in Food Science.

Phages and viruses

The first head‐tailed virus, MFTV1, produced by a hyperthermophilic methanogenic deep‐sea archaea – Thiroux et al. – Environmental microbiology.

Review: Single-virus genomics and beyond – Martinez et al. – Nature reviews Microbiology

Bioinformatics

A Rapid Automated Process for Organizing Bacterial Cluster Segments Using Deep Neural Networks – Elroy Martis et al. – IEEE conference

Techniques

FACS-iChip: a high-efficiency iChip system for microbial ‘dark matter’ mining – Liu et al. – Marine Life Science and Technology

Comparison of Nucleic Acid Extraction Methods for a Viral Metagenomics Analysis of Respiratory Viruses – Sabatier et al. – Microorganisms

Science, publishing, and career

Preprint: Advancing science or advancing careers? Researchers’ opinions on success indicators – Aubert Bonn and Pinxten – BioRxiv.

My non-microbiology picks

Ten simple rules for annotating sequencing experiments – Stevens et al. – Plos Computational Biology

October 1, 2020

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Kara

Greetings, friends!

Today’s digest contains a wealth of microbiology articles focused on everything from the dog ear canal microbiome to estuarine methanogen communities. Rather than highlight a specific research article, today I’d like to encourage you to check out this week’s New York Times article profiling the organizers of Black in Micro Week and this commentary published by one of the organizers in mSphere. Black in Micro week began this Monday and programming is scheduled to continue through October 4th. If you missed earlier events, you’re in luck! The organizers have already uploaded videos of all completed events at the Black in Micro youtube channel.

Enjoy!

Events

Black in Micro Week is this week (September 28 – October 4th, 2020) on your favorite social media platforms! Check out the Black in Microbiology website for additional information, including a full programming schedule, and follow @BlackinMicro and #BlackinMicro on Twitter and Instagram.

Human respiratory microbiome

Airway microbiota is associated with the severity of non‐CF bronchiectasis – Li et al. – The Clinical Respiratory Journal

Human gut microbiome

Systematic analysis of gut microbiota in pregnant women and its correlations with individual heterogeneity – Yang et al. – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Review: Implication of gut microbiota in cardiovascular diseases – Zhou et al. – Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity

Animal experiments

Changes in the ear canal microbiota of dogs with otitis externa – Kasai et al. – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Soil borne Fusarium solani exhibited pathogenic effect on tomato cultivars in Nigeria – Abiala et al. – Archives of Phytopatholgy and Plant Protection

A symbiotic nutrient exchange within the cyanosphere microbiome of the biocrust cyanobacterium, Microcoleus vaginatus – Nelson et al. – The ISME Journal

Successional change of the fungal microbiome pine seedling roots inoculated with Tricholoma matsutake – Park et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Review: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: an ecological accelerator of phytoremediation of metal contaminated soils – Tiwari et al. – Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science

Co‐occurrence history increases ecosystem stability and resilience in experimental plant communities – van Moorsel et al. – Ecology

Quantitative estimation of stochastic and deterministic processes for soil prokaryotic community assembly in the Yellow River floodplain – Yu et al. – European Journal of Soil Science

Water and extremophile microbiome

Homogeneous environmental selection dominates microbial community assembly in the oligotrophic South Pacific Gyre – Allen et al. – Molecular Ecology

An unexpectedly broad thermal and salinity-tolerant estuarine methanogen community – Blake et al. – Microorganisms

Microbial communities responded to tetracyclines and Cu(II) in constructed wetlands microcosms with Myriophyllum aquaticum – Guo et al. – Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Built environment

Microbial community and function in nitrogen transformation of ectopic fermentation bed system for pig manure composting – Chen et al. – Bioresource Technology

Effect of hydrothermal hot-compression method on the antimicrobial performance of green building materials from heterogeneous cellulose wastes – Echeverria et al. – Journal of Cleaner Production

Nitrous oxide emission and microbial community of full-scale anoxic/aerobic membrane bioreactors at low dissolved oxygen setpoints – Wen et al. – Journal of Water Process Engineering

Response of Cyperus involucratus to sulfamethoxazole and ofloxacin-contaminated environments: Growth physiology, transportation, and microbial community – Xu et al. – Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Microbes in the news

Black microbiologists push for visibility amid a pandemic – Wu – New York Times

Science, publishing, and career

Commentary: mSphere of influence: That’s racist—COVID-19, biological determinism, and the limits of hypotheses – Taylor – mSphere

September 4, 2020

Posted on September 4, 2020 by judithsweber

Good morning and get ready to enjoy a small, but diverse microbiome digest. Enjoy!

COVID-19
Commentary: Misconceptions about weather and seasonality must not misguide COVID-19 response – Colin J Carlson et al. – Nature Communications

Multi-site human microbiome
Relationship between the composition of the intestinal microbiota and the tracheal and intestinal colonization by opportunistic pathogens in intensive care patients – Candice Fontaine et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome
Widespread transfer of mobile antibiotic resistance genes within individual gut microbiomes revealed through bacterial Hi-C – Alyssa G. Kent et al. – Nature Communications

Animal experiments
Review: Modulation of gut microbiota in healthy rats after exposure to nutritional supplements – Mirna Cool et al. – Gut Microbes

Animal microbiome
Anthrax toxin component, Protective Antigen, protects insects from bacterial infection – Saleem Alarme – PLOS Pathogens

Environmental gut bacteria in European honey bees (Apis mellifera) from Australia and their relationship to the chalkbrood disease – Sheba Khan et al. – PLOS One

Gut Microbiome Composition is Associated with Age and Memory Performance in Pet Dogs – Eniko Kubinyi et al. – Animals

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Characterizing the nectar microbiome of the non-native tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, in an urban environment – Magdalena L. Warren et al. – PLOS One

Water and extremophile microbiome
Book chapter: Analyzing the Diversity of Microbial Communities Residing in Marine Ecosystems – Piyush Chandna et al. – In: Marine Biotechnology

Bioinformatics
Ten simple rules to power drug discovery with data science – Enrico Ferrero et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques
Review: Sample pre-treatment procedures for the omics analysis of human gut microbiota: turning points, tips and tricks for gene sequencing and metabolomics – Elisa Zubeldia-Varela et al. – Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis

Publishing
Research Topic: Beyond Conventional Models: Expanding Experimental Systems for Animal-Microbiome Interaction Research

August 14, 2020

Posted on August 14, 2020 by crallenblevins

Good morning from Massachusetts! Dr. Elisabeth Bik will be giving a Zoom talk today on research misconduct in biomedical research. You can register at the link under events. Fittingly, today’s digest includes a preprint on the effects of retraction after misconduct on citations. Other highlights today include an entire theme issue on the microbiome and host evolution and a paper on phylogenomic analyses of archaea attempting to elucidate the DPANN lineage. In early life, the placental microbiome debate rages on with a paper demonstrating evidence for contamination rather than an actual placental microbiome. Finally, I have highlighted a paper studying whether soil archives can give us a glimpse into soil microbial communities of the past.

Have a great weekend!

Events

Dr. Bik is discussing “The Dark Side of Science: Misconduct in Biomedical Research” today at 12PM EDT! Register here.

General microbiome

Theme Issue: The role of the microbiome in host evolution – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

Pregnancy and early life

Evidence for contamination as the origin for bacteria found in human placenta rather than a microbiota – Rémi Gschwind – PloS One

Human milk microbiome

SARS-CoV-2 in human milk is inactivated by Holder pasteurization but not cold storage – Gregory J. Walker – Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health

Human oral microbiome

Review: Oral microbiome geography: Micron-scale habitat and niche – Jessica L. Mark Welch – Cell Host & Microbe

Human gut microbiome

Epidemiology and associated microbiota changes in deployed military personnel at high risk of traveler’s diarrhea – William A. Walters – PloS One

Animal experiments

Differential alteration in gut microbiome profiles during acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement of morphine-induced CPP – Jianbo Zhang – Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry

Modulation of the intestinal microbiota of broilers supplemented with monensin or functional oils in response to challenge by Eimeria spp . – Alexandre Maciel Vieira – PloS One

Herpes simplex virus infection, Acyclovir and IVIG treatment all independently cause gut dysbiosis – Chandran Ramakrishna – PloS One

Animal microbiome

Raw milk and fecal microbiota of commercial Alpine dairy cows varies with herd, fat content and diet – Francesca Albonico – PloS One

Hydrolytic bacteria associated with natural helminth infection in the midgut of Red Sea marbled spinefoot rabbit fish Siganus rivulatus – Ghada Abd-Elmonsef Mahmoud – Microbial Pathogenesis

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Book: Agriculturally Important Fungi for Sustainable Agriculture Vol 2: Functional Annotation for Crop Protection – Eds. Ajar Nath Yadav et al. – Springer

Patient propagules: Do soil archives preserve the legacy of fungal and prokaryotic communities? – Gian Maria Niccolò Benucci – PloS One

Labile carbon limits late winter microbial activity near Arctic treeline – Patrick F. Sullivan – Nature Communications

Enhanced biodegradation of crude oil by constructed bacterial consortium comprising salt-tolerant petroleum degraders and biosurfactant producers – Weiwei Chen – International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation

Plant–archaea relationships: a potential means to improve crop production in arid and semi-arid regions – Elizabeth Temitope Alori – World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology

First report of Fusarium equiseti causing crown rot and damping-off on durum wheat in Algeria – Amor Bencheikh – Archives of Phytopathology and Plant Protection

Soil microbial diversity and composition: Links to soil texture and associated properties – Qing Xia – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Water, air, and extremophile microbiome

Effects of different habitats on the bacterial community composition in the water and sediments of Lake Taihu, China – Wenjie Chang – Environmental Science and Pollution Research

Genomic and enzymatic evidence of acetogenesis by anaerobic methanotrophic archaea – Shanshan Yang – Nature Communications

Undinarchaeota illuminate DPANN phylogeny and the impact of gene transfer on archaeal evolution – Nina Dombrowski – Nature Communications

Preprint: Occurrence, identification and antibiogram signatures of selected Enterobacteriaceae from Tsomo and Tyhume rivers in the Eastern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa – Fadare Temitope Folake — BioRxiv

Built environment

The microbiome of drinking water biofilters is influenced by environmental factors and engineering decisions but has little influence on the microbiome of the filtrate – Ben Ma – Environmental Science & Technology

In-situ remediation of acid mine drainage from abandoned coal mine by filed pilot-scale passive treatment system: Performance and response of microbial communities to low pH and elevated Fe – Haiyan Chen – Bioresource Technology

Bioinformatics and other techniques

De novo sequence assembly requires bioinformatic checking of chimeric sequences – Laila Sara Arroyo – PloS One

Review on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry for the rapid screening of microbial species: A promising bioanalytical tool – Suresh Kumar Kailasa – Microchemical Journal

Microbes in the News

Using the infant stool microbiome to predict NEC: New machine learning tool predicts devastating intestinal disease in premature infants – Science Daily

Science Publishing and Career

Preprint: Does retraction after misconduct have an impact on citations? A pre-post study – Cristina Candal-Pedreira – bioRxiv

April 23, 2020

Posted on April 23, 2020 by judithsweber

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 22, 2020

Posted on April 22, 2020 by crallenblevins

Welcome to another post from a new volunteer! I’m a Ph.D student studying the infant gut microbiome and I’m excited to be volunteering with Microbiome Digest.

There are several preprints today, including another great study from the CHILD cohort. This one is on maternal consumption of artificially sweetened beverages and the infant gut microbiota. There is also a preprint calling for improvement in scientific conferences. Both are highlighted in green.

Pregnancy and early life

Preprint: Consumption of artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy impacts infant gut microbiota and body mass index – Isabelle Laforest-Lapointe — bioRxiv

Oral microbiome

Preprint: Genotypic and phenotypic characterization of Streptococcus mutans isolated from dental caries – Mohammad Shahnoor Hossain – bioRxiv

Pyruvate secretion by oral streptococci modulates hydrogen peroxide dependent antagonism – Sylvio Redanz – ISME Journal

Synergism between Corynebacterium and Streptococcus sanguinis reveals new interactions between oral commensals – Puthayalai Treerat – ISME Journal

Animal experiments

The gut microbiota response to helminth infection depends on host sex and genotype – Fei Ling – ISME Journal

Animal microbiome

Lipids and small metabolites provisioned by ambrosia fungi to symbiotic beetles are phylogeny-dependent, not convergent – Yin-Tse Huang – ISME Journal

Comparative genomics: Dominant coral-bacterium Endozoicomonas acroporae metabolizes dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) – Kshitij Tandon – ISME Journal

Plant, root, and soil microbiome