Category Archives: Techniques

February 25th, 2023

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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

February 18th, 2023

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Bonjour from Paris, France !

In today’s digest you will find a broad range of amazing preprints and published papers! An amazing read is a fresh preprint from Fritz and collaborator describing an exciting method of sampling in difficult to reach environments. The authors used army ants of the genus Dorylus which are foragers to survey the viral diversity of plants, vertebrate and invertebrates of the tropical forest!

Today’s non-microbiology pick is an opinion piece on the current state and limitation of viral taxonomy. In this piece, Simmonds and collaborators, provide concrete recommendations to guide the development of a coherent and comprehensive virus taxonomy.

Have a great Saturday!

Pregnancy and early life

The investigation of the association of pregnancy weight gain on maternal and neonatal gut microbiota composition and abundance using 16sRNA sequencing – Song and Liu – BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Human gut microbiome

The diet rapidly and differentially affects the gut microbiota and host lipid mediators in a healthy population – Bourdeau-Julien et al. – Microbiome

Review: Conversations in the Gut: The Role of Quorum Sensing in Normobiosis – Markus et al. – International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Review: Gut Microbiome and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Link Yet to Be Disclosed – Illiodromiti et al. – Microorganisms

Natural Green Spaces, Sensitization to Allergens, and the Role of Gut Microbiota during Infancy – Buchholz et al. – mSystems

Animal experiments

Mimicking seasonal changes in light-dark cycle and ambient temperature modulates gut microbiome in mice under the same dietary regimen – Matsumoto et al – Plos One

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Taurine as a key intermediate for host-symbiont interaction in the tropical sponge Ianthella basta – Moeller et al. – BioRxiV

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Transmission of synthetic seed bacterial communities to radish seedlings: impact on microbiota assembly and plant phenotype – Simonin et al. – BioRxiV

Preprint: Viral but not bacterial community succession is characterized by extreme turnover shortly after rewetting dry soils – Santos-Medellin et al. – BioRxiV

Ecological drivers and potential functions of viral communities in flooded arsenic-contaminated paddy soils – Gao et al. – Science of the total environment

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: Redefinition of archetypal phytoplankton-associated bacteria taxa based on globally distributed dinoflagellates and diatoms – Yang et al. – BioRxiV

Preprint: Plastic Leachate Exposure Drives Antibiotic Resistance and Virulence in Marine Bacterial Communities – Vlaanderen et al. – BioRxiV

Phages and viruses

Preprint: African army ants at the forefront of virome surveillance in a remote tropical forest – Fritz et al. – BioRxiV

Techniques

Preprint: Dancing the Nanopore limbo – Nanopore metagenomics from small DNA quantities for bacterial genome reconstruction – Simon et al. – BioRxiV

Preprint: The long and short of it: Benchmarking viromics using Illumina, Nanopore and PacBio sequencing technologies – Cook et al. – BioRxiV

Non microbiology pick

Opinion: Four principles to establish a universal virus taxonomy – Simmonds et al. – PLoS Biology

February 13, 2023

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Today’s reading recommendation is a microbiota review collection edited by Lindsay Hall and Melanie Schirmer.

Happy Monday and see you at #MVIF!

Vaginal microbiome

Gardnerella Diversity and Ecology in Pregnancy and Preterm Birth – Hanna L. Berman – bioRxiv

Heterogeneity of the group B streptococcal type VII secretion system and influence on colonization of the female genital tract – Brady L. Spencer – bioRxiv

Urinary microbiome

Comparative Genomic Study of Streptococcus anginosus Reveals Distinct Group of Urinary Strains – Ananya Prasad – mSphere

Human gut

Gut microbes predominantly act as symbiotic partners rather than raw nutrients – Nuno Felipe da Silva Soares – bioRxiv

Antibiotic resistance in the commensal human gut microbiota – Lisa E Lamberte, Willem van Schaik – Current Opinion in Microbiology

Identifying glycan consumers in human gut microbiota samples using metabolic labeling coupled with fluorescence-activated cell sorting – Lharbi Dridi – Nature Communications

Animal experiments

Over supplementation with vitamin B12 alters microbe-host interactions in the gut leading to accelerated Citrobacter rodentium colonization and pathogenesis in mice – Andrew J. Forgie – Microbiome

Disturbance of lipid metabolism in germ-free mice transplanted with gut microbiota of DSS-induced colitis mice – Chungho Lee – Plos One

Bioinformatics

Accurate and fast graph-based pangenome annotation and clustering with ggCaller – Samuel T. Horsfield – bioRxiv

Brief report: uBin – a manual refining tool for genomes from metagenomes – Till L V Bornemann – Environmental Microbiology

In-situ metagenomics: A platform for rapid sequencing and analysis of metagenomes in less than one day – Javier Tamames – bioRxiv

The virtual microbiome: A computational framework to evaluate microbiome analyses – Belén Serrano-Antón – Plos One

February 4th, 2023

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Bonjour from Paris, France !

In today’s digest you will find a wide variety of interesting preprints and published research papers encompassing very interesting microbiome such as Yak calves rumen, compost, wineyard soil and lichen symbionth microbiota!

If you are interested in virome, I recommend looking at the fascinating preprint from Ha and collaborators investigating the biogeography of giant viruses from the phylum Nucleocytoviricota. They leveraged the bioGEOTRACES metagenomic dataset collected across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to recovered novel genomes from these viruses and identified geographical patterns of distribution.

If you are working on human microbiomes, I recommend checking out a really interesting preprint, comparing the biases and strengths of four commercially available DNA extraction kits frequently used for whole genome shotgun analysis of the human microbiome.

Have a great Saturday!

Events and jobs

Event: Cell Symposia: Infection biology in the age of the microbiome. Paris, France June 7-9

Event: 55th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. Vienna, Austria 17-20 May

Pregnancy and early life

Insufficient Evidence of a Breastmilk Microbiota at Six-Weeks Postpartum: A Pilot Study – Leech et al. – Nutrients

Effects of Perinatal Antibiotic Exposure and Neonatal Gut Microbiota – Morreale et al. – Antibiotics

Necrotizing Enterocolitis: The Role of Hypoxia, Gut Microbiome, and Microbial Metabolites – Kaplina et al. – International Journal of Molecular sciences

Human gut microbiome

Preprint: Functional assignment of gut-specific archaeal proteins in the human gut microbiome – Novikova et al. – BioRxiv

Animal microbiome

Combining vertebrate mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene sequencing and shotgun metagenomic sequencing to investigate the diet of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) in Korea – Woo et al. – PLOS ONE

The association between gingivitis and oral spirochetes in young cats and dogs – Yamaki et al. – PLOS ONE

Maternal rumen and milk microbiota shapes the establishment of early-life rumen microbiota in grazing yak calves – Guo et al. – Journal of Dairy Science

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Fundamentals of biofilm formation in soil: From functionalized self-assembled monolayers to rewilding – Hendiani et al. – BioRxiv

Local conditions matter: Minimal and variable effects of soil disturbance on microbial communities and functions in European vineyards – Steiner et al. – PLOS ONE

Preprint: Evidence for a core set of microbial lichen symbionts from a global survey of metagenomes – Tagirdzhanova et al. – BioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: Assessing the biogeography of marine giant viruses in four oceanic transects – Ha et al. – BioRxiv

Preprint: Cross-domain interactions induce community stability to benthic biofilms in proglacial streams – Busi et al. – BioRxiv

Opinion: Viral infection in the ocean—A journey across scales – Vincent and Vardi – PLOS biology

Bioinformatics

Preprint: Identifying and tracking mobile elements in evolving compost communities yields insights into the nanobiome – Van Dijk et al – BioRxiv

Techniques

Preprint: Comparison of commercial DNA extraction kits for whole metagenome sequencing of human oral, vaginal, and rectal microbiome samples – Wright et al – BioRxiv

November 8, 2022

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Greetings from Pittsburgh, PA!

It’s election day here, which means I have low grade nausea and am looking for a distraction. If you’re in the same boat, check out today’s awesome articles on a holobiont deep sea shrimp, plant-microbiome assemblies of poplar trees, and viral community-wide auxiliary metabolic genes. I also included a few interesting preprints, my favorite of which is noted below and uses a microbiome public dataset to compare different normalization and transformation methods.

Animal microbiome

A novel and dual digestive symbiosis scales up the nutrition and immune system of the holobiont Rimicaris exoculata – Aubé et al. – Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Plant sex affects plant-microbiome assemblies of dioecious Populus cathayana trees under different soil nitrogen conditions – Guo et al. – Microbiome

Phages and viruses

Viral community-wide auxiliary metabolic genes differ by lifestyles, habitats, and hosts – Luo et al. – Microbiome

Techniques

*Preprint: Alpha and beta-diversities performance comparison between different normalization methods and centered log-ratio transformation in a microbiome public dataset – Bars-Cortina – bioRxiv

Preprint: Noise reduction strategies in metagenomic chromosome confirmation capture to link antibiotic resistance genes to microbial hosts – McCallum et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Targeted metagenomics using probe capture detects a larger diversity of nitrogen and methane cycling genes in complex microbial communities than traditional metagenomics – Siljanen et al. – bioRxiv

November 02, 2022

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General microbiome

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

Pregnancy and early life

A distinct clade of Bifidobacterium longum in the gut of Bangladeshi children thrives during weaning – Vatanen et al. – Clee

Multi-site human microbiome

[REVIEW]Recent advances in systemic lupus erythematosus and microbiota: from bench to bedside – Zhan et al. –

Human vaginal microbiome

Identification of shared bacterial strains in the vaginal microbiota of related and unrelated reproductive-age mothers and daughters using genome-resolved metagenomics – France et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiome dysbiosis in antibiotic-treated COVID-19 patients is associated with microbial translocation and bacteremia – Bernard-Raichon et al. – Nature Communications

Gut microbiota and myocardial fibrosis – Xu, Yang & Bao – European Journal of Pharmacology

Assessing the relationship between physical activity and the gut microbiome in a large, population-based sample of Wisconsin adults – Holzhausen et al. – PLOS One

Challenges and costs of donor screening for fecal microbiota transplantations – Bernard et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

Gut colonization by Proteobacteria alters host metabolism and modulates cocaine neurobehavioral responses – Cuesta et al. – Cell Host & Microbe

Enriching captivity conditions with natural elements does not prevent the loss of wild-like gut microbiota but shapes its compositional variation in two small mammals – Koziol et al. – Microbiology Open

Understanding the Dynamic of POMS Infection and the Role of Microbiota Composition in the Survival of Pacific Oysters, Crassostrea gigas – Delisle et al. – Microbiology Spectrum

Changes in Gut Microbiota Structure: A Potential Pathway for Silver Nanoparticles to Affect the Host Metabolism – Wang et al. – ACS Nano

Skin microbiota of oxazolone-induced contact hypersensitivity mouse model – Mäenpää et al. – PLOS One

Effects of a farm-specific fecal microbial transplant (FMT) product on clinical outcomes and fecal microbiome composition in preweaned dairy calves – Slanzon et al. – PLOS One

Multiomics Characterization of the Canada Goose Fecal Microbiome Reveals Selective Efficacy of Simulated Metagenomes – Gil & Hird – Microbiology Spectrum

Uropygial gland microbiota differ between free-living and captive songbirds – Grieves et al. – Scientific Reports

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Crop management shapes the diversity and activity of DNA and RNA viruses in the rhizosphere – Muscatt et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

CRAMdb: a comprehensive database for composition and roles of microbiome in animals – Lei et al. – NAR

Techniques

DNA extraction bias is more pronounced for microbial eukaryotes than for prokaryotes – Brauer & Bengtsson – Microbiology Open

synDNA—a Synthetic DNA Spike-in Method for Absolute Quantification of Shotgun Metagenomic Sequencing – Zaramela et al. – mSystems

September 28, 2022

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General microbiome

[Personal View]Causal discovery for the microbiome – Corander, Hanage & Pensar – The Lancet Microbe

Integrative functional analysis uncovers metabolic differences between Candida species – Begum et al. – Communications Biology

Human skin microbiome

Evolution of the facial skin microbiome during puberty in normal and acne skin – Schneider et al. – JEADV

Human gut microbiome

[REVIEW]Harnessing Microbiota to Improve Immunotherapy for Gastrointestinal Cancers – Goc & Sonnenberg – Cancer Immunol Res

[REVIEW]Gut microbiome in multiple sclerosis-related cognitive impairment – Ghadiri et al. – Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders

[REVIEW]The Microbiome in Gastrointestinal Cancers – White & Wargo – Gastroenterology Clinics of North America

Human gut microbiota and its metabolites impact immune responses in COVID-19 and its complications – Nagata et al. – Gastroenterology

Gut microbial fermentation promotes the intestinal anti-inflammatory activity of Chinese yam polysaccharides – Bai et al. – Food Chemistry

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

The preventive effects of probiotic Akkermansia muciniphila on D-galactose/AlCl3 mediated Alzheimer’s disease-like rats – He et al. – Experimental Gerontology

Characterizing the chicken gut colonization ability of a diverse group of bacteria – Poudel et al. – Poultry Science

Obesity induced gut dysbiosis contributes to disease severity in an animal model of multiple sclerosis – Shahi et al. – Front. Immunol.

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Impact of aluminum exposure on oxidative stress, intestinal changes and immune responses in red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) – Zhang et al. – Science of The Total Environment

Network analysis reveals significant joint effects of microplastics and tetracycline on the gut than the gill microbiome of marine medaka – Liao et al. – Journal of Hazardous Materials

Xenobiotic estradiol-17ß alters gut microbiota of hatchling American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) – Murphy et al. – Environmental Microbiology

Sustained Drought, but Not Short-Term Warming, Alters the Gut Microbiomes of Wild Anolis Lizards – Williams et al. – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

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

Microbial Composition of Freshwater Marsh Sediment Responds more Strongly to Microcosm Seawater Addition than Simulated Nitrate or Phosphate Eutrophication – Weingarten & Jackson – Microbial Ecology

Built environment (subways, indoor surfaces)

Microbial community regulation and performance enhancement in gas biofilters by interrupting bacterial communication – Wang et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

Identification of microbial features in multivariate regression under false discovery rate control – Srinivasan, Xue and Zhan – Computational Statistics & Data Analysis

Techniques

Strain-level resolution and pneumococcal carriage dynamics by single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing of the plyNCR marker: a longitudinal study in Swiss infants – Oyewole et al. – Microbiome

September 8, 2022

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Today’s microbiome digest includes ten rules for teaching yourself R, food safety profiles of ready-to-eat raw minced meat, teaching that addresses eco-anxiety, as well as both pathogenic and entomopathogenic fungi!

Human gut microbiome

Meals, Microbiota and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents (MMM-Study): A protocol for an observational longitudinal case-control study – Asbjornsdottir et al. – PLOS One

Strongyloides stercoralis infection induces gut dysbiosis in chronic kidney disease patients – Hai et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Mycoparasitism capability and growth inhibition activity of Clonostachys rosea isolates against fungal pathogens of grapevine trunk diseases suggest potential for biocontrol – Geiger et al. – PLOS One

Impact of endophytic colonization by entomopathogenic fungi on the behavior and life history of the tobacco peach aphid Myzus persicae var. nicotianae – Wilberts et al. – PLOS One

Food microbiology

Bacteriological quality and antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of isolates of ready-to-eat raw minced meat from hotels and restaurants in Arba Minch, Ethiopia – Tonjo et al. – PLOS One

Bioinformatics

Ten simple rules for teaching yourself R – Lawlor et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Techniques

Laboratory evaluation of RealStar Yellow Fever Virus RT-PCR kit 1.0 for potential use in the global yellow fever laboratory network – Basile et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Science, publishing, and career )

Insufficient yet improving involvement of the global south in top sustainability science publications – Dangles et al. – PLOS One

Adapt conservation biology teaching to address eco-anxiety in students – São Pedro et al. – PLOS Biology

August 24, 2022

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General microbiome

[REVIEW]Detecting bacterial adaptation within individual microbiomes – Liebermann – Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

[REVIEW]Soil microbiomes and one health – Banerjee & van der Heijden – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Pregnancy and early life

Microbial Analysis of Umbilical Cord Blood Reveals Novel Pathogens Associated with Stillbirth and Early Preterm Birth – Vander Haar et al. – mBio

Human respiratory microbiome

The respiratory microbiota alpha-diversity in chronic lung diseases: first systematic review and meta-analysis – Avalos-Fernandez et al. – Respiratory Research

Human saliva microbiome

Saliva microbiome, dietary, and genetic markers are associated with suicidal ideation in university students – Ahrens et al. – Scientific Reports

Human gut microbiome

The gut microbiota is associated with immune cell dynamics in humans – Schluter et al. – Nature

The systemic anti-microbiota IgG repertoire can identify gut bacteria that translocate across gut barrier surfaces – Vujkovic-Cvijin et al. – Science Translational Medicine

Higher pathogen load in children from Mozambique vs. USA revealed by comparative fecal microbiome profiling – Kim et al. – ISME Communications

Correlation of inflammatory biomarkers with the diversity of Bacteroidaceae, Bifidobacteriaceae, Prevotellaceae and Lactobacillaceae families in the intestinal microbiota of patients with end stage renal disease – Asgharian et al. – Advances in Medical Sciences

Impact of the Host Microbiome on Vaccine Responsiveness: Lessons Learned and Future Perspective – Stefanetti & Kasper – Biochemistry

Location-specific signatures of Crohn’s disease at a multi-omics scale – Gonzalez et al. – Microbiome

Association of food insecurity on gut microbiome and metabolome profiles in a diverse college-based sample – Mohr et al. – Scientific Reports

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

The Diversity and Functional Capacity of Microbes Associated with Coastal Macrophytes – Miranda et al. – mSystems

Microbes in space

Machine learning algorithm to characterize antimicrobial resistance associated with the International Space Station surface microbiome – Madrigal et al. – Microbiome

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT]Extending and improving metagenomic taxonomic profiling with uncharacterized species with MetaPhlAn 4 – Blanco-Miguez et al. – bioRxiv

Linear and nonlinear correlation estimators unveil undescribed taxa interactions in microbiome data – Lin, Eggesbø & Peddada – Nature Communications

Techniques

Primers matter: Influence of the primer selection on human fungal detection using high throughput sequencing – Wiemann et al. – Gut Microbes

Using Nanopore Sequencing to Obtain Complete Bacterial Genomes from Saliva Samples – Baker et al. – mSystems

August 19, 2022

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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