Category Archives: Plant Root Soil microbiome

November 1, 2020

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Hello from the Sonoran Desert! In today’s digest, you’ll find several interesting works, in particular on recent advances in understanding the gut microbiome! Iandaza and collaborators review the rise of machine learning and deep learning methods in exploring the gut microbiota and the potential of these methods in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Additionally, this digest links to a freely-accessible webinar series from the university of Illinois on gut-brain connections.

If you are interested in microbial ecology, I also recommend taking a look at a very interesting preprint from Ettinger and collaborators. The authors investigate the distribution of fungi associated with a widely distributed seagrass, Zostera marina. This work is particularly relevant since the role and diversity of fungi in marine ecosystems are often overlooked in microbiome studies, while terrestrial fungi have been shown to have critical roles as decomposers, pathogens and endophytes.

Finally, you’ll find in this digest a non-microbiology pick: an amazing preprint where authors assessed 2.75 million open access articles on their transparency (data sharing, code sharing, conflicts of interest disclosures, funding disclosures and protocol registration)!

Have a great Sunday!

Events and webinars

Webinar: Scientific Webinars on the Gut-Brain Connection Spotlight Spike in Research

Pregnancy and early life

Review: The dark matter of microbiome: the mother-infant pair virome – Comitini et al. – Minerva Pediatrica

Human vaginal microbiome

Intrauterine Growth Restriction Is Associated with Unique Features of the Reproductive Microbiome – Hu et al. – Reproductive sciences

Human gut microbiome

Review: Gut microbiota and artificial intelligence approaches: A scoping review – Iadanza et al. – Health and Technology

Review: Circadian rhythms and the gut microbiota: from the metabolic syndrome to cancer – Bishehsari et al. – Nature Reviews Endocrinology

Ecological Structuring of Temperate Bacteriophages in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease-Affected Gut – Nishiyama et al. – Microorganisms

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Genomic and microscopic evidence of stable high density and maternally inherited Wolbachia infections in Anopheles mosquitoes – Walker et al. – BioRxiV

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Testosterone amendment alters metabolite profiles of the soil microbial community – Ding et al. – Environmental Pollution

Host population size is linked to orchid mycorrhizal fungal communities in roots and soil, which are shaped by microenvironment – Kaur et al. – Mycorrhiza

Root exudates drive soil‐microbe‐nutrient feedbacks in response to plant growth – Zhao et al. – Plant, Cell & Environment

Microbial activity and metamitron degrading microbial communities differ between soil and water-sediment systems – Wang et al. – Journal of hazardous materials

Water and extremophile microbiome

Review: Insights into ‘Symbiodiniaceae phycosphere’ in a coral holobiont – Guedes Garrido et al. – Symbiosis

Diversity and Dynamics of Seaweed Associated Microbial Communities Inhabiting the Lagoon of Venice – Juhmani et al. – Microorganisms

Preprint: Global diversity and biogeography of the Zostera marina mycobiome – Ettinger et al. – BioRxiV

Built environment

Analysis of Microbial Community Structure and Diversity in Surrounding Rock Soil of Different Waste Dump Sites in Fushun Western Opencast Mine – Jiang et al. – Chemosphere

My non-microbiology picks

Preprint: Assessment of transparency indicators across the biomedical literature: how open is open? – Serghiou et al. – BioRxiV

October 30, 2020

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COVID19
Cancer inpatients with COVID-19: A report from the Brazilian National Cancer Institute – de Melo et al. – PLOS One

Few bacterial co-infections but frequent empiric antibiotic use in the early phase of hospitalized patients with COVID-19: results from a multicentre retrospective cohort study in The Netherlands – Karami – et al. – Infectious Diseases

Infection of dogs with SARS-CoV-2 – Sit et al. – Nature

General microbiome/metabolome

Metabolomics of primary cutaneous melanoma and matched adjacent extratumoral microenvironment – Taylor et al. PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

Microbial signature in IgE-mediated food allergies – Goldberg et al. – Genome Medicine

Gut microbiota profiles of treatment-naïve adult acute myeloid leukemia patients with neutropenic fever during intensive chemotherapy – Rattanathammethee et al. – PLOS One

[Book Chapter]Understanding Polyphenols’ Health Effects Through the Gut Microbiota – Selma et al. – Dietary Polyphenols : Their Metabolism and Health Effects

[REVIEW]Gut Microbiota: Its Potential Roles in Pancreatic Cancer – Li et al. – Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Biological invasions alter environmental microbiomes: A meta-analysis – Malacrino et al. – PLOS One

Phages and viruses

[PREPRINT]VirION2: a short- and long-read sequencing and informatics workflow to study the genomic diversity of viruses in nature – Zablocki et al. – bioRxiv

Mycobiome
[REVIEW]T cell immunity to commensal fungi – Scheffold, Bacher & LeibundGut-Landmann – Current Opinion in Microbiology

Bioinformatics

Prometheus, an omics portal for interkingdom comparative genomic analyses – Ko et al. – PLOS One

Microbes in the news (popular press, EurekAlert, ScienceDaily, Youtube, NPR, etc)

News in Brie! Scientists discover cheese is so smelly because it helps microbes ‘talk’ to the bacteria that makes it ripe – S. Howes – Daily Mail

October 27, 2020

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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 14, 2020

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Good morning from sunny San Francisco, California! Today’s digest shares some fascinating in vivo studies including a paper from Ou et al. examining the role of host antimicrobial proteins α-definsins in bacterial colonization and epithelial cell adherence in the gut and a proof-of-concept paper from Hsu et al. in which the authors orally delivered an engineered phage to the gut of mice that was capable of specifically repressing gene expression in bacteria. Additionally, there are some great plant, root, and soil microbiome papers (Kusstatscher et al. show that treating maize seeds with a plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria improves plant health) and water microbiome papers (León-Zayas et al. published a super collaborative paper looking at microbiome sharing between sediments, seagrasses, and reef fish at multiple sites). Finally, I wanted to highlight a paper by Zelaya et al. outlining a course-based undergraduate research experience for teaching microbiology that focuses on the bean beetle microbiome. Happy reading!

Pregnancy and Early Life
Review: The early life education of the immune system: Moms, microbes and (missed) opportunities. – Nitya, J. et al., Gut Microbes

Delayed Establishment of Gut Microbiota in Infants Delivered by Cesarean Section. – Kim, G. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology

Human Respiratory Microbiome
Proteins produced by Streptococcus species in the lower respiratory tract can modify antiviral responses against influenza virus in respiratory epithelial cells. – Nishioka, K. et al., Microbes and Infection

Human Vaginal Microbiome
Vaginal host immune-microbiome interactions in a cohort of primarily African-American women who ultimately underwent spontaneous preterm birth or delivered at term. – Florova, V. et al., Cytokine

Human Oral Microbiome
Isolation and Characterization of Nitrate-Reducing Bacteria as Potential Probiotics for Oral and Systemic Health. – Rosier, B.T. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology

Human Gut Microbiome
Translocation of Viable Gut Microbiota to Mesenteric Adipose Drives Formation of Creeping Fat in Humans. – Ha, C.W.Y. et al., Cell

Gastrointestinal Surgery for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Persistently Lowers Microbiome and Metabolome Diversity. – Fang, X. et al., Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Animal Experiments
α-Defensins Promote Bacteroides Colonization on Mucosal Reservoir to Prevent Antibiotic-Induced Dysbiosis. – Ou, J. et al., Frontiers in Immunology

In situ reprogramming of gut bacteria by oral delivery. – Hsu, B.B. et al., Nature Communications

The intestinal microbial metabolite desaminotyrosine is an anti‐inflammatory molecule that modulates local and systemic immune homeostasis. – Wei, Y. et al., The FASEB Journal

Modulation of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis through colonisation of the gut with Escherichia coli. – Libbey, J.E. et al., Beneficial Microbes

Molecular patterns from a human gut-derived Lactobacillus strain suppress pathogenic infiltration of leukocytes into the central nervous system. -Sanchez, J.M.S. et al., Journal of Neuroinflammation

Plant, Root, and Soil Microbiome
Soil-microorganism-mediated invasional meltdown in plants. – Zhang, Z. et al., Nature Ecology and Evolution

Microbiome Management by Biological and Chemical Treatments in Maize Is Linked to Plant Health. – Kusstatscher, P. et al., Microorganisms

Disruption of Firmicutes and Actinobacteria abundance in tomato rhizosphere causes the incidence of bacterial wilt disease. – Lee, S-M. et al., The ISME Journal

Keystone Microbiomes Revealed by 14 Years of Field Restoration of the Degraded Agricultural Soil Under Distinct Vegetation Scenarios. – Zhang, Z. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology

Dynamic Changes in the Microbiome of Rice During Shoot and Root Growth Derived From Seeds. – Wang, M. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology

Root-Secreted Coumarins and the Microbiota Interact to Improve Iron Nutrition in Arabidopsis. – Harbort, C.J. et al., Cell Host & Microbe

Review: Pinpointing secondary metabolites that shape the composition and function of the plant microbiome. – Jacoby, R.P. et al., Journal of Experimental Botany

Water and Extremophile Microbiome
Microbiomes of fish, sediment and seagrass suggest connectivity of coral reef microbial populations. – León-Zayas, R. et al., PeerJ

Size Shapes the Active Microbiome of Methanogenic Granules, Corroborating a Biofilm Life Cycle. – Trego, A.C. et al., mSystems

Self-regulating microbiome networks ensure functional resilience of biofilms in sand biofilters during manganese load fluctuations. – Zhao, X. et al., Water Research

Review: Groundwater Microbial Communities in Times of Climate Change. -Retter, A. et al., Current Issues in Molecular Biology

Probiotics/Prebiotics
Combining IL-2-based immunotherapy with commensal probiotics produces enhanced antitumor immune response and tumor clearance. – Shi, L. et al., Journal for the ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

Mom’s diet matters: Maternal prebiotic intake in mice reduces anxiety and alters brain gene expression and the fecal microbiome in offspring. – Hebert, J.C. et al., Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Prophylactic effects of oral administration of Lactobacillus casei on house dust mite-induced asthma in mice. – Lingzhi, L. et al., Food & Function

Bioinformatics
INTEDE: interactome of drug-metabolizing enzymes. – Yin, J. et al., Nucleic Acid Research.

GIMICA: host genetic and immune factors shaping human microbiota. – Tang, J. et al., Nucleic Acid Research

metaFlye: scalable long-read metagenome assembly using repeat graphs. – Kolmogorov, M. et al., Nature Methods

Diagnosing and Predicting Mixed-Culture Fermentations with Unicellular and Guild-Based Metabolic Models. – Scarborough, M.J. et al., mSystems

Education
The Bean Beetle Microbiome Project: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience in Microbiology. – Zelaya, A.J. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology

October 13, 2020

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Today’s mid-week digest is about – meta analysis of metabolic benefits of probiotics, probiotics and synbiotics, microbiome association with narcolepsy type 1, design of microbial consortium for reduced C. difficle colonization, new sequencing technique for pathogen identification in cerebrospinal fluid and many more… Happy reading!

Human microbiome

The effect of probiotics, prebiotics or synbiotics on metabolic outcomes in individuals with diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis – Patricia M. Bock – Diabetologia

Effect of a Nonoptimal Cervicovaginal Microbiota and Psychosocial Stress on Recurrent Spontaneous Preterm Birth – Kristin D. Gerson – American Journal of Perinatology

Targeting the microbiome-gut-brain axis for improving cognition in schizophrenia and major mood disorders: A narrative review – Miquel Bioque – Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry

Inflammatory Bowel Disease Environmental Risk Factors: Diet and Gut Microbiota – Sarah Altajar – Current Gastroenterology Reports

Co‐ and polymicrobial infections in the gut mucosa: the host‐microbiota‐pathogen perspective – Teresa Frisan – Cellular Microbiology

Gut microbiota composition is associated with narcolepsy type 1 – Alexandre Lecomte – Neurology

A parental transcriptional response to microsporidia infection induces inherited immunity in offspring – Alexandra R. Willis – BioRxiv

Melamine contamination and associated health risks: Gut microbiota does make a difference – Meenakshi Rajpoot – Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry

Animal microbiome

Rational design of a microbial consortium of mucosal sugar utilizers reduces Clostridiodes difficile colonization – Fátima C. Pereira – Nature Communications

Effects of seasonality and previous logging on faecal helminth-microbiota associations in wild lemurs – I. I. de Winter – Scientific Reports

Bacterial community analysis on the different mucosal immune inductive sites of gastrointestinal tract in Bactrian camels – Wang-Dong Zhang – PlosOne

Sows affect their piglets’ faecal microbiota until fattening but not their Salmonella enterica shedding status – Guillaume Larivière‐Gauthier – Letters in Applied Microbiology

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Comparison of soil microbial community between reseeding grassland and natural grassland in Songnen Meadow – Ruifen Zhu – Scientific Reports

Evidence for signatures of ancient microbial life in paleosols – Katharina Frindte – Scientific Reports

Techniques

Pathogen identification in culture-negative cerebrospinal fluid specimens of patients with purulent meningitis using next-generation sequencing technology – Xin Men – International Journal of Clinical Experimental Pathology

October 11, 2020

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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

Dissimilarity of microbial diversity of pond water, shrimp intestine and sediment in Aquamimicry system – Zeng et al. – AMB express.

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 8, 2020

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Greetings!!
Congratulations to the Nobel prize winners in Chemistry : Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the discovery of “Genetic scissors: a tool for rewriting the code of life- the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors.” Today’s brief digest covers a wide range of articles on early life microbiome to respiratory microbiome. Happy reading!!!

General microbiome
Electrochemical Investigation of Thiobacillus denitrificans in a Bacterial Composite – Abada et al – Journal of the Electrochemical Society

Pregnancy and early life
Review: Can we prevent allergic disease? Understanding the links between the early life microbiome and allergic diseases of childhood – Petersen and Turvey – Current Opinion in Pediatrics

Multi-site human microbiome
Nutritional Targeting of the Microbiome as Potential Therapy for Malnutrition and Chronic Inflammation – Schröder et al – Nutrients

Human respiratory microbiome
Airway bacterial and fungal microbiome in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – Liu et al – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome
Review: Mechanistic insight into the gut microbiome and its interaction with host immunity and inflammation – Xue et al – Animal Nutrition

Ethanol extract of Centella asiatica alleviated dextran sulfate sodium-induced colitis via restoration on mucosa barrier and gut microbiota homeostasis – Li et al – Journal of Ethnopharmacology

Development of a three-compartment in vitro simulator of the Atlantic Salmon GI tract and associated microbial communities: SalmoSim – Kazlauskaite et al – bioRxiv

Time-dependent modulation of gut microbiome in response to systemic antifungal agents – Udawatte et al – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome
North American fireflies host low bacterial diversity – Green et al – bioRxiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Anthropogenic Invasion of Micromycetes to Undisturbed Ecosystems of the Larsemann Hills Oasis (East Antarctica) – Vlasov et al – Russian Journal of Biological Invasions

Larch or Mongolian pine? Effects of tree species on soil properties and microbial biomass with the consideration of afforestation time – Teng et al – Ecological Engineering

Water and extremophile microbiome
Understanding the microbial trends in a nitritation reactor fed with primary settled municipal wastewater – Pedrouso et al – Separation and Purification Technology

Microbiome community and complexity indicate environmental gradient acclimatisation and potential microbial interaction of endemic coral holobionts in the South China Sea – Chen et al – Science of The Total Environment

Microbial community structure in the river sediments from upstream of Guanting Reservoir: potential impacts of reclaimed water recharge – Xie et al – Science of The Total Environment

Food microbiology
Next-generation sequencing to enhance the taxonomic resolution of the microbiological analysis of meat and meat-derived products – Reckem et al – Current Opinion in Food Science

Techniques
CRISPR/Cas12a mediated genome engineering in photosynthetic bacteria – Zhang et al – bioRxiv

October 07, 2020

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Grant application (US specific grant)
2020 Biocodex Microbiota Foundation US $50,000 grant, supporting cutting edge research on the relationship between gut microbiota and chronic disease.
Deadline: October 15th.
Link: https://www.biocodexmicrobiotafoundation.com/national-call-projects/usa

General microbiome

Understanding the potential of lactobacilli in recurrent UTI prevention – Vagios, Hesham & Mitchel – Microbial Pathogenesis

Throat microbial community structure and functional changes in post-surgery laryngeal carcinoma patients – Hsueh et al. – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Bacterial diversity and prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in the oral microbiome – Almeida et al. – PLOS One

Metagenomics of the modern and historical human oral microbiome with phylogenetic studies on Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus – Achtman & Zhou – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

Pregnancy and early life

In utero human intestine harbors unique metabolomic features including bacterial metabolites – Li et al. – JCI insight

Interactions between Environmental Exposures and the Microbiome: Implications for Fetal Programming – Banerjee, Suter & Aagaard – Current Opinion in Endocrine and Metabolic Research

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

Alterations in blood microbiota after colonic cancer surgery – Søby et al. – BJS Open

Human gut microbiome

Estimating molecular preservation of the intestinal microbiome via metagenomic analyses of latrine sediments from two medieval cities – Sabin et al. – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

Gut microbiota composition in obese and non-obese adult relatives from the highlands of Papua New Guinea – Jonduo et al. – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Fecal Bacteria as Biomarkers for Predicting Food Intake in Healthy Adults – Shinn et al. – The Journal of Nutrition

Animal experiments

Inulin fermentation by lactobacilli and bifidobacteria from dairy calves – Zhu et al. – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Microbial Diversity and Community Structure in Alpine Stream Soil – Rasool et al. – Geomicrobiology Journal

Food microbiology

Impact of dietary fibers in infant formula on gut microbiota and the intestinal immune barrier – Kong et al. – Food & Function

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT] A framework for comparing microbial networks reveals core associations – Rottjers et al. – bioRxiv

Microbes in the news (popular press, EurekAlert, ScienceDaily, Youtube, NPR, etc)

Gut health benefits begin in utero – Brita Belli – YaleNews

Medieval poo holds clues to health of modern-day gut microbiome – Sara Rigby – Science Focus

October 2, 2020

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Today’s exciting updates – FMT method to restore normal microbial development in caesarean-born infants, mechanism unveiled how dietary tryptophan improves alcohol induced liver injury, advance in droplet based microfluidics to study host-microbiome interactions, prebiotics encapsulation of probiotic to suppress colon cancer and new hope to curb plastic waste by discovery of plastic-eating enzyme cocktail. Happy weekend, stay safe!

General microbiome

Eligible blood donors’ decisions about donating stool for fecal microbiota transplantation: Does ambivalence play a role? – Melissa K. Hyde – Transfusion

Microbiota-Dependent Effects of IL-22 – Morsal Sabihi – Cells

Human microbiome

Maternal Fecal Microbiota Transplantation in Cesarean-Born Infants Rapidly Restores Normal Gut Microbial Development: A Proof-of-Concept Study – Katri Korpela – Cell

Comparative analysis of the tonsillar microbiota in IgA nephropathy and other glomerular diseases – Ji In Park – Scientific Reports

Dysbiosis in the oral microbiomes of anti-CCP positive individuals at risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis – Zijian Cheng – Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases

Animal microbiome

Microbiota tryptophan metabolism induces aryl hydrocarbon receptor activation and improves alcohol-induced liver injury – Laura Wrzosek – Gut

Faecal microbiota transplant from aged donor mice affects spatial learning and memory via modulating hippocampal synaptic plasticity- and neurotransmission-related proteins in young recipients – Alfonsina D’Amato – Microbiome

Competitive reduction of poultry-borne enteric bacterial pathogens in chicken gut with bioactive Lactobacillus casei – Zajeba Tabashsum – Scientific Reports

Offspring susceptibility to metabolic alterations due to maternal high-fat diet and the impact of inhaled ozone used as a stressor – Samantha J. Snow – Scientific Reports

Beneficial effects of mung bean seed coat on the prevention of high-fat diet-induced obesity and the modulation of gut microbiota in mice – Dianzhi Hou – European Journal of Nutrition

Prebiotics‐Encapsulated Probiotic Spores Regulate Gut Microbiota and Suppress Colon Cancer – Di‐Wei Zheng – Advanced Materials

Multi-Omic Analysis Reveals Different Effects of Sulforaphane on the Microbiome and Metabolome in Old Compared to Young Mice – Se-Ran Jun – Microorganisms

Plant microbiome

Protists as catalyzers of microbial litter breakdown and carbon cycling at different temperature regimes – Stefan Geisen – Isme Journal

Techniques

Investigating host-microbiome interactions by droplet based microfluidics – Alexandra S. Tauzin – Microbiome

Non-specific amplification of human DNA is a major challenge for 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis – Sidney P. Walker – Scientific Reports

Non-microbiology picks

Plastic-eating enzyme ‘cocktail’ heralds new hope for plastic waste – Science Daily

October 1, 2020

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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