July 7, 2015

A personal perspective on microbiome research, phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms, ruling out viruses as causes for necrotizing enterocolitis, and Robert Edgar’s USEARCH.

Job openings

Philipps-Universität Marburg and the Max-Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology are looking for 2 postdocs (one experimentalist and one bioinformatician)

General microbiome

Personal perspective: From cell biology to the microbiome: An intentional infinite loop – Wendy S. Garrett – Journal of Cell Biology

Microbiome of pregnancy and birth

Cytomegalovirus and other common enteric viruses are not commonly associated with Necrotizing Enterocolitis – Thomas Skeath – Acta Paediatrica

Viremia during pregnancy and risk of childhood leukemia and lymphomas in the offspring: Nested case-control study – Davit Bzhalava – International Journal of Cancer

Human oral microbiome

The Oral Bacterial Communities of Children with Well-Controlled HIV Infection and without HIV Infection – Brittany E. Goldberg – PLOS ONE

Human respiratory microbiome

Sputum Bacterial and Fungal Dynamics during Exacerbations of Severe COPD – Jin Su – PLOS ONE

Human gut microbiome

Chemotherapy-driven dysbiosis in the intestinal microbiome – E. Montassier – Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics

Animal models of microbiome research

Perilipin-2 Modulates Lipid Absorption and Microbiome Responses in the Mouse Intestine – Daniel N. Frank – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

NGS metabarcoding proves successful for quantitative assessment of symbiont abundance: the case of feather mites on birds – J. Diaz-Real

Genetic Structure and Antimicrobial Resistance of Escherichia coli and Cryptic Clades in Birds with Diverse Human Associations – Michaela D. J. Blyton – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Coral transplantation triggers shift in microbiome and promotion of coral disease associated potential pathogens – Jordan M. Casey – Scientific Reports

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Metabarcoding Analysis of Fungal Diversity in the Phyllosphere and Carposphere of Olive (Olea europaea) – Ahmed Abdelfattah – PLOS ONE

High carbon use efficiency in soil microbial communities is related to balanced growth, not storage compound synthesis – Paul Dijkstra – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Earthworms modify microbial community structure and accelerate maize stover decomposition during vermicomposting – Yuxiang Chen – Environmental Science and Pollution Research

Water microbiome

Microbial Communities Associated with Zones of Elevated Magnetic Susceptibility in Hydrocarbon-contaminated Sediments – Carol L. Beaver – Geomicrobiology Journal

Bacterial diversity differences along an epigenic cave stream reveal evidence of community dynamics, succession, and stability – Kathleen Brannen-Donnelly – Frontiers in Microbiology

Firmicutes is an Important Component of Microbial Communities in Water-Injected and Pristine Oil Reservoirs; Western Siberia, Russia – Yulia Frank – Geomicrobiology Journal

Functional interactions among filamentous Epsilonproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent biofilm – Runar Stokke – Environmental Microbiology

Temporal Study of the Microbial Diversity of the North Arm of Great Salt Lake, Utah, U.S. – Swati Almeida-Dalmet – Microorganisms

Diversity of the Sediment Microbial Community in the Aha Watershed (Southwest China) in Response to Acid Mine Drainage Pollution Gradients – Weimin Sun – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Microbial Transport, Retention, and Inactivation in Streams: A Combined Experimental and Stochastic Modeling Approach – Jennifer D. Drummond – Environmental Science & Technology

Extremophile microbiome

Ribosomal tag pyrosequencing of DNA and RNA reveals ‘rare’ taxa with high protein synthesis potential in the sediment of a hypersaline lake in Western Australia – Pascal Weigold – Geomicrobiology Journal

Microbial Diversity in Engineered Haloalkaline Environments Shaped by Shared Geochemical Drivers Observed in Natural Analogues – Talitha C. Santini – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Built environment microbiome

A New Perspective on Microbiome and Resource Management in Wastewater Systems – Veera Gnaneswar Gude – Biotechnology & Biomaterials

Microbial Ecology

A functional perspective on phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms – Martin Ackermann – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Bioinformatics and statistics

USEARCH: Error filtering, pair assembly, and error correction for next-generation sequencing reads – Robert C. Edgar – Bioinformatics

Assessment and Selection of Competing Models for Zero-Inflated Microbiome Data – Lizhen Xu – PLOS ONE

Metabolomics and metatranscriptomics

Functional metabolomics: from biomarker discovery to metabolome reprogramming – Bo Peng – Protein & Cell

Stool metatranscriptomics: A technical guideline for mRNA stabilisation and isolation – Michael Reck – BMC Genomics

Hydrodynamic chronoamperometry for probing kinetics of anaerobic microbial metabolism – case study of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii – Antonin Prévoteau – Scientific Reports

Techniques

A flexible and economical barcoding approach for highly multiplexed amplicon sequencing of diverse target genes – Craig W. Herbold – Frontiers in Microbiology

This paper is not novel at all: An improved method for bacterial identification through 16S rDNA sequencing using double set of primers: a case study – Amanat Ali – Pak. J. Agri. Sci.,

Microbes in the news

How Bacteria Make This Underground, Awe-Inspiring Cave Shine Gold – Michele Lent Hirsch – Smithsonian

Bacteria in a bottle? AOBiome offers ways to stay clean without traditional soap – Nidhi Subbaraman – The Boston Globe

uBiome to Award Grant of up to $100k for Groundbreaking Microbiome Research – PR Web

Bik’s Picks

NASA Releases Time-Lapse Video Of Mars Rover Opportunity’s Journey: 11 Years In Just 8 Minutes – Jim Algar – Tech Times

Self-Driving ‘Robocabs’ Could Help Curb Global Warming – Wendy Koch – National Geographic

‘Vampires’ keep doctors in the dark for fear of stereotyping: study – Reuters

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July 6, 2015

Oral microbiomes of dogs and their owners, airway mycobiome in CF patients, memory B cells and antibodies to gut microbiota, and yogurt containing seawater (?).

Human oral microbiome

Comparison of the Oral Microbiomes of Canines and Their Owners Using Next-Generation Sequencing – Changin Oh – PLOS ONE

Systemic immunity shapes the oral microbiome and susceptibility to bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw – Shirin Kalyan – Journal of Translational Medicine

Review: Oral malodorous gases and oral microbiota: From halitosis to carcinogenesis – Naoko Tanda – Journal of Oral Biosciences

Human respiratory microbiome

A cohort study of the airway mycobiome in adult cystic fibrosis patients: differences in community structure of fungi compared to bacteria reveal predominance of transient fungal elements – Rolf Kramer – Journal of Clinical Microbiology

Review: The role of the local microbial ecosystem in respiratory health and disease – Wouter A. A. de Steenhuijsen Piters – Philosophical Transactions B

Review: The mechanism or mechanisms driving atopic asthma initiation: The infant respiratory microbiome moves to center stage – Patrick G. Holt – Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Human gut microbiome

Diversification of memory B cells drives the continuous adaptation of secretory antibodies to gut microbiota – Cornelia Lindner – Nature Immunology

Dietary modulation of the gut microbiota – a randomised controlled trial in obese postmenopausal women – Lena K. Brahe – British Journal of Nutrition

Anti-TNF treatment with adalimumab induces changes in the microbiota of Crohn’s disease – Busquets David – Journal of Crohn’s and Colitis

Effects of high doses of vitamin D3 on mucosa-associated gut microbiome vary between regions of the human gastrointestinal tract – Mina Bashir – European Journal of Nutrition

Review: Suppression of inflammation by helminths: a role for the gut microbiota? – Paul Giacomin – Philosophical Transactions B

Review: Immune-microbiota interactions in health and disease – Noah W. Palm – Clinical Immunology

Animal models

Lentinula edodes-derived polysaccharide rejuvenates mice in terms of immune responses and gut microbiota – Xiaofei Xu – Food and Function

Effect of Lactobacillus plantarum FH185 on the Reduction of Adipocyte Size and Gut Microbial Changes in Mice with Diet-induced Obesity – Sun-Young Park – Korean Journal for Food Science of Animal Resources

In vitro probiotic characteristics of Lactobacillus plantarum ZDY 2013 and its modulatory effect on gut microbiota of mice – Renhui Huang – Journal of Dairy Science

Reduced airway microbiota diversity is associated with elevated allergic respiratory inflammation – Wenkai Yu – Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology

The prebiotics 3’Sialyllactose and 6’Sialyllactose diminish stressor-induced anxiety-like behavior and colonic microbiota alterations: evidence for effects on the gut-brain axis – Andrew J. Tarr – Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Effect of yogurt containing deep sea water on health-related serum parameters and intestinal microbiota in mice – Sun Moon Kang – Journal of Dairy Science

Animal microbiome

In situ identification and quantification of starch-hydrolyzing bacteria attached to barley and corn grain in the rumen of cows fed barley-based diets – Yun Xia – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Developmental Dynamic Analysis of the Excreted Microbiome of Chickens Using Next-Generation Sequencing – Lim S. – Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology

Wolbachia influences the production of octopamine and affects Drosophila male aggression – Chelsie E. Rohscheib – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Expanding the Entamoeba Universe: New Hosts Yield Novel Ribosomal Lineages – Alison S. Jacob – Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology

Interactions between multiple helminths and the gut microbiota in wild rodents – Jakub Kreisinger – Philosophical Transactions B

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

The Hidden World within Plants: Ecological and Evolutionary Considerations for Defining Functioning of Microbial Endophytes – Pablo R. Hardoim – Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews

The evolution of bacterial resistance against bacteriophages in the horse chestnut phyllosphere is general across both space and time – Britt Koskella – Philosophical Transactions B

Influence of corn, switchgrass, and prairie cropping systems on soil microbial communities in the upper Midwest of the United States – Ederson da C. Jesus – GCB Bioenergy

Phylogenetic congruence and ecological coherence in terrestrial Thaumarchaeota
Eduard Vico Oton – The ISME Journal

Composition of soil microbial communities in the rhizosphere of cucumber cultivars with differing nitrogen acquisition efficiency – Xingang Zhou – Applied Soil Ecology

Differential Decay of Wastewater Bacteria and Change of Microbial Communities in Beach Sand and Seawater Microcosms – Qian Zhang – Environmental Science & Technology

New traceability strategies based on a biological Bar Code by PCR-DGGE using bacterial and yeast communities for determining farming type of peach – Ahmed El Shobaky – Egyptian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences

Optimization of biostimulant for bioremediation of contaminated coastal sediment by response surface methodology (RSM) and evaluation of microbial diversity by pyrosequencing – Bakthavachallam Subha – Marine Pollution Bulletin

Water microbiome

Metagenomic study of red biofilms from Diamante Lake reveals ancient arsenic bioenergetics in haloarchaea – Nicolás Rascovan – ISME Journal

Viral assemblage composition in Yellowstone acidic hot springs assessed by network analysis – Benjamin Bolduc – The ISME Journal

Built Environment Microbiome

Bacteriological assessment of the hospital environment in two referral hospitals in Yaoundé-Cameroon – Kamga Hortense Gonsu – Pan African Medical Journal

Green spaces and cognitive development in primary schoolchildren – Payam Dadvand – PNAS

Food microbiology

Source Tracking and Succession of Kimchi Lactic Acid Bacteria during Fermentation
Se Hee Lee – Journal of Food Science

House microbiotas as sources of lactic acid bacteria and yeasts in traditional Italian sourdoughs – Fabio Minervini – Food Microbiology

Proteomics

Estimating the computational limits of detection of microbial non-model organisms – Mathias Kuhring – Proteomics

Antarctic archaea–virus interactions: metaproteome-led analysis of invasion, evasion and adaptation – Bernhard Tschitschko – The ISME Journal

Microbial Ecology

Paleobiological Perspectives on Early Microbial Evolution – Andrew H. Knoll – Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology

Review: Building the microbiome in health and disease: niche construction and social conflict in bacteria – Luke McNally – Philosophical Transactions B

Hypothesis: Restriction modification systems as engines of diversity – Kim Sneppen – Frontiers in Microbiology

Review: A Replisome’s journey through the bacterial chromosome – Thomas R. Beattie – Frontiers in Microbiology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

Horizontal gene transfer in an acid mine drainage microbial community – Jiangtao Guo – BMC Genomics

ISQuest: Finding Insertion Sequences in Prokaryotic Sequence Fragment Data – Abhishek Biswas – Bioinformatics

Comparing K-mer based methods for improved classification of 16S sequences – Hilde Vinje – BMC Bioinformatics

Databases for Microbiologists – Igor B. Zhulin – Journal of Bacteriology

Techniques

Here, there, and everywhere: From PCRs to next‐generation sequencing technologies and sequence databases, DNA contaminants creep in from the most unlikely places – Karl Gruber – EMBO Reports

Microbes in the news

Bacteria ‘Fight Club’ could help find new cures for diseases – Alexandra Ossola – Popular Science
Sold on Symbiosis: A love of the ocean lured Nicole Dubilier into science; gutless sea worms and their nurturing bacterial symbionts keep her at the leading edge of marine microbiology – Anna Azvolinsky – The Scientist

Terroir: how fungi, yeasts and bacteria affect the taste of your wine – Max Allen – The Australian

Brookline’s Maya Sekhar wins grand prize at state science fair (work on phages)

Almost half of Americans don’t understand threat of antibiotic resistance – Ginger Skinner – Consumer Reports

The Human Microbiome: do not underestimate microbes! – John Dalton – David Game College

Faecal transplants, diet on trend as society embraces gut health – Hamish Fitzsimmons – ABC.au

Aquarium Microbiome Project – Shedd Aquarium – YouTube

The Microbiology Weekly – Cesar Sanchez

This Bacteria-Slaying Light Fixture Is Perfectly Safe For Humans – Andrew Liszewski – Gizmodo

Researcher finds bacteria in pistachio trees – Angela Simental – Las Cruces Sun

Bacteria-Eating Viruses Could Be New Ally Against Superbugs In A ‘Post-Antibiotic Era’ – Ben Hirschler – Reuters / Huffington Post

Linking the microbiome and colorectal cancer: an author Q+A – Sophie Marchant – BioMedCentral blogs

Bik’s Picks

US Fish & Wildlife struggles to save remaining polar bears – Sam Catherman – News Quench

Professor: Nothing Fishy About Portuguese Man o’ War at Jersey Shore – NBC

Japan And The U.S. Are Going To Have An Actual Giant Robot Battle – Damon Beres – The Huffington Post

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June 30, 2015

Metabolomics and gut colonization of gnotobiotic mice, metabolomics of mice treated with antibiotics, inter-individual and temporal variation in human oral microbiotas, and several papers on microbes in agricultural-use soil.

Events

Free Cell Press webinar on Microbiome, Antibiotics and Human Disease: July 28th – Cell Press

Microbiome of pregnancy and birth

Book chapter: The Effect of Diet and Probiotics on the Human Gut Microbiome – Lorenzo Morelli – Metabolic Syndrome and Complications of Pregnancy

Human oral microbiome

Inter-Individual Differences in the Oral Bacteriome Are Greater than Intra-Day Fluctuations in Individuals – Yukuto Sato – PLOS ONE

Oral microflora of supragingival and subgingival biofilms in Algerian healthy adults – Sara Ziouani – African Journal of Microbiology Research

Human respiratory microbiome

Airway bacteria and respiratory symptoms are common in ambulatory HIV-positive UK adults – Camus Nimmo – European Respiratory Journal

Oral application of lactic acid bacteria following treatment with antibiotics inhibits allergic airway inflammation – Qiuxiang Zhang – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Human vaginal microbiome

Soluble Immune Mediators and Vaginal Bacteria Impact Innate Genital Mucosal Antimicrobial Activity in Young Women – Rebecca Pellett Madan – American Journal of Reproductive Immunology

Human gut microbiome

Fetal programming of overweight through the microbiome: boys are disproportionately affected – A. L. Kozyrskyj – Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease

Impact of fluoroquinolones on human microbiota. Focus on the emergence of antibiotic resistance – Victoire de Lastours – Future Microbiology

Animal models

Metabolome progression during early gut microbial colonization of gnotobiotic mice – Angela Marcobal – Scientific Reports

Metabolic and metagenomic outcomes from early-life pulsed antibiotic treatment – Yael R. Nobel – Nature Communications

Altered Interactions between the Gut Microbiome and Colonic Mucosa Precede Polyposis in APCMin/+ Mice – Joshua S. Son – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Review: The use of probiotics in aquaculture – Ngo Van Hai – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Thesis: Roles of the symbiotic microbial communities associated with sponge hosts in the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles – Russell T Hill – University of Maryland

Master Thesis: Arsenic Exposure Alters the Microbiome of Larval Zebrafish: A Metagenomic Analysis – Dylan A. Dahan – Bard Digital Commons

Discovery of a novel circular DNA virus in the Forbes sea star, Asterias forbesi – Elizabeth Fahsbender – Archives of Virology

Sexual transmission of beneficial microbes – Chad C. Smith – Trends in Ecology & Evolution

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Rhizosphere bacteria and fungi associated with plant growth in soils of three replanted apple orchards – Ingrid H. Franke-Whittle – Plant and Soil

Microbial population dynamics in response to Pectobacterium atrosepticum infection in potato tubers – Viia Kõiv – Scientific Reports

Maternal effects on tree phenotypes: considering the microbiome – Maria Vivas – Trends in Plant Science

Bacterial population and biodegradation potential in chronically crude oil-contaminated marine sediments are strongly linked to temperature – Rafael Bargiela – Scientific Reports

Soil Microbial Communities are Shaped by Plant-Driven Changes in Resource Availability During Secondary Succession – Lauren C. Cline – Ecology

Warmer temperature accelerates methane emissions from the Zoige wetland on the Tibetan Plateau without changing methanogenic community composition – Mengmeng Cui – Scientific Reports

Water microbiome

Constitutive presence of antibiotic resistance genes within the bacterial community of a large subalpine lake – Andrea Di Cesare – Molecular Ecology

Draft Genome Sequences of Leviviridae RNA Phages EC and MB Recovered from San Francisco Wastewater – Alexander L. Greninger – Genome Announcements

Seasonal Dynamics of Marine Microbial Community in the South Sea of Korea – Sung-Suk Suh – PLOS ONE

Built environment / water treatment microbiology

Comparative metagenomics reveals microbial community differentiation in a biological heap leaching system – Qi Hu – Research in Microbiology

Impact of disinfection on drinking water biofilm bacterial community – Zilong Mi – Journal of Environmental Sciences

Intensive care unit environmental surfaces are contaminated by multidrug-resistant bacteria in biofilms: combined results of conventional culture, pyrosequencing, scanning electron microscopy, and confocal laser microscopy – H. Hu – The Journal of Hospital Infection

A review of melanized (black) fungal contamination in pharmaceutical products – incidence, drug recall and control measures – Rajendran Vijayakumar – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

BioMaS: a modular pipeline for Bioinformatic analysis of Metagenomic AmpliconS – Bruno Fosso – BMC Bioinformatics

Challenges and opportunities in understanding microbial communities with metagenome assembly (accompanied by IPython Notebook tutorial) – Adina Howe – Frontiers in Microbiology

Metabolomics

Human Urinary Composition Controls Antibacterial Activity of Siderocalin – Robin R. Shields-Cutler – The Journal of Biological Chemistry

Human Urine Decreases Function and Expression of Type 1 Pili in Uropathogenic Escherichia coli – Sarah E. Greene – mBio

New techniques

To Celebrate Marriage Equality, Illumina to Release “BiSeq” Genome Sequencer – The Allium

More microbiology

More than the sum of its parts – Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink – Science

Ecological communities by design – James K. Fredrickson – Science

The bacterial pangenome as a new tool for analyzing pathogenic bacteria – Laetitia Rouli – New Microbes and New Infections

Microbes in the news

Antibiotics and the Gut Microbiome: Antibiotics given to infant mice may have long-term effects on the animals’ metabolism and gut microbiota – Anna Azvolinsky – The Scientist

Study: Breast milk helps babies develop immunity-boosting gut bacteria – Deena Shanker – Quartz

Your Diet May Be Causing Your Urinary Tract Infections – Mandy Oaklander – Time

uBiome and OpenBiome Partner for Microbiome Study in FMT Patients – Study will provide new insights on mechanics of fecal microbiota transplantation in C. difficile patients – uBiome

Passive Aggressive: Drosophila microbiota influence behavior – Julie Wolf – mBioSphere

Soil water, microbes influence carbon in world’s coldest desert, study finds – Phys.org

Invisible You: Art and Microbiology at the Eden Project – Microbe Post

Science, publishing, and career

The Myth of the Academic Lottery – Kelly J. Baker – Chronicle Vitae

Bik’s Picks

I saw this last night and it was so pretty: Venus and Jupiter to Put on ‘Best Backyard Sky Show of 2015’ – Alyssa Newcomb – ABC News

Say hello to the centipede from hell – Rachel Feltman – Washington Post

California governor signs strict law requiring vaccinations for most kids – Liz Szabo – USA Today

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June 23, 2015

Gill structure and microbiome of clownfish (Nemo), the Ocean Sampling Day consortium, and capturing prokaryotic dark matter genomes.

Human respiratory microbiome

The use of Next Generation Sequencing in the diagnosis and typing of respiratory infections – Fiona Thorburn – Journal of Clinical Virology

Effects of Vaccination with 10-Valent Pneumococcal Non-Typeable Haemophilus influenza Protein D Conjugate Vaccine (PHiD-CV) on the Nasopharyngeal Microbiome of Kenyan Toddlers – Leah M. Feazel – PLOS ONE

Human vaginal microbiome

Isolation of Vaginal Lactobacilli and Characterization of Anti-Candida Activity – Carola Parolin – PLOS ONE

Letter: Accuracy of Self-Report of Sexual Activity among Adolescent Girls: Implications for Interpretation of Vaginal Flora Patterns – Christina A. Muzny – mBio

Human gut microbiome

Effects of a Formula Containing Two Types of Prebiotics, Bifidogenic Growth Stimulator and Galacto-oligosaccharide, and Fermented Milk Products on Intestinal Microbiota and Antibody Response to Influenza Vaccine in Elderly Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial – Nagafuchi S – Pharmaceuticals

Systemic Sclerosis is Associated with a Unique Colonic Microbial Consortium – E. Volkmann – Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases

Review: Influence of the human intestinal microbiome on obesity and metabolic dysfunction – Herbert Tilg and Timon E. Adolph

Review: Is intestinal inflammation linking dysbiosis to gut barrier dysfunction during liver disease? – Katharina Brandl – Expert Review of Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Review: Microbiome-generated amyloid and potential impact on amyloidogenesis in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) – Yuhai Zhao – Journal of Nature and Science

Animal models

Non Digestible Oligosaccharides Modulate the Gut Microbiota to Control the Development of Leukemia and Associated Cachexia in Mice – Laure B. Bindels – PLOS ONE

Engineering the gut microbiota to treat hyperammonemia – Ting-Chin David Shen – Journal of Clinical Investigation

Animal microbiome

Exposure of clownfish larvae to suspended sediment levels found on the Great Barrier Reef: Impacts on gill structure and microbiome – Sybille Hess – Scientific Reports

Longitudinal analysis reveals characteristically high proportions of bacterial vaginosis-associated bacteria and temporal variability of vaginal microbiota in northern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca leonina) – Lin Zhu – Zoological Research

Review: Giving microbes their due – animal life in a microbially dominant world – Margaret J. McFall-Ngai – The Journal of Experimental Biology

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Context dependency and saturating effects of loss of rare soil microbes on plant productivity – Gera Hol – Frontiers in Plant Science

Genetic Diversity and Functional Traits of Jacq. Associated with Symbiotic Microbial Communities in Caribbean Swamp Forests in Relation to Insular Distribution, Salinity and Flooding – Amadou Bâ – Wetlands

Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis of Soil Bacterial Communities under Different Vegetation Types in Subtropical Area – Zeyan Wu – PLOS ONE

Water microbiome

The ocean sampling day consortium – Anna Kopf and many others – Gigascience

Thesis: Analysis of the Microbial Community Along Three Sites of the Rio Grande by Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis – Rebeca Imelda Castro – Texas A&M International University

Bioinformatics

On the Origins and Control of Community Types in the Human Microbiome – Travis E. Gibson – ArXiv

Thesis: Exploring microbial community structure and resilience through visualization and analysis of microbial co-occurrence networks – Sarah Isa Esther Perez – University of British Columbia

Metagenomics

Phylogeny and physiology of candidate phylum ‘Atribacteria’ (OP9/JS1) inferred from cultivation-independent genomics – Masaru K Nobu – The ISME Journal

Review: Capturing prokaryotic dark matter genomes – Cyrielle Gasc – Research in Microbiology

Viruses and phages

Large tailed spindle viruses of Archaea: A new way of doing viral business – Rebecca Hochstein – Journal of Virology

Draft Genome Sequences of Marine RNA Viruses SF-1, SF-2, and SF-3 Recovered from San Francisco Wastewater – Alexander L. Greninger – Genome Announcements

Microbial ecology

Backbones of evolutionary history test biodiversity theory for microbes – James P. O’Dwyer – PNAS

Techniques

Effect of DNA Extraction Methods on the Apparent Structure of Yak Rumen Microbial Communities as Revealed by 16S rDNA Sequencing – Ya-Bing Chen – Polish Journal of Microbiology

Microbes in the news

Bacteria may help bats to fight deadly fungus: As white-nose syndrome spreads, researchers are trialling ways to stop colonies from collapsing – Nala Rogers – Nature

This mushroom might alter gut bacteria for the better, study finds – Catherine Woods – PBS Newshour

Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood? The rich array of microbiota in our intestines can tell us more than you might think – Peter Andrey Smith – New York Times

Urban microbes come out of the shadows: Genomic sequences reveal cities’ teeming masses of bacteria and viruses – Rachel Ehrenberg – Nature

NIH Earmarks $1.5M to Fund Human Microbiome Research Projects – GenomeWeb

Fat, sugar cause bacterial changes that may relate to loss of cognitive function – Oregon State University

Why Would Anyone Get a Fecal Transplant? Watch a Brother and Sister Explain – Maryn McKenna – National Geographic

Bik’s Picks

Astronaut Terry Virts on the Power of Space Photography – Andrew Katz – Time

Dangerous cervical lesions reduced since start of HPV vaccination – Kathryn Doyle – Reuters

This cockroach-inspired robot will scurry right into your nightmares: Crawling soon to a rescue squad near you – Arielle Duhaime-Ross – The Verge

 

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June 22, 2015

How do human gut microbiomes change after death, microbiome of Gulf of Mexico 1 year after Deepwater Horizon, and mining microbial dark matter.

Human gut microbiome

Estimating Time Since Death from Postmortem Human Gut Microbial Communities – Kathleen A. Hauther – Journal of Forensic Sciences

16S rRNA gene-based profiling of the human infant gut microbiota is strongly influenced by sample processing and PCR primer choice – Alan W. Walker – Microbiome Journal

Review: Peripheral aetiopathogenic drivers and mediators of Parkinson’s disease and co-morbidities: role of gastrointestinal microbiota – Sylvia M. Dobbs – Journal of NeuroVirology

Animal models

The effects of xylo-oligosaccharides on performance and microbiota in broiler chickens – De Maesschalck C – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

A comparison of faecal microbial populations of South African Windsnyer-type indigenous pigs (SAWIP) and Large White x Landrace (LW x LR) crosses fed diets containing ensiled maize cobs – Arnold T. Kanengoni – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Illumina-based analysis the microbial diversity associated with Thalassia hemprichii in Xincun Bay, South China Sea – Yu-Feng Jiang – Ecotoxicology

Methanotrophic and methanogenic communities in Swiss alpine fens dominated by Carex rostrata and Eriophorum angustifolium – Simrita Cheema – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Antibacterial effect of the Trichoderma viride fungi on soil microbiome during PAH’s biodegradation – Zuzanna Szczepaniak – International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation

Water microbiome

Microbial community composition, functions and activities in the Gulf of Mexico, one
year after the Deepwater Horizon accident – Etienne Yergeau – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Metagenomics and Bioinformatics

Compact graphical representation of phylogenetic data and metadata with GraPhlAn – Francesco Asnicar – PeerJ

Techniques

Design and application of a synthetic DNA standard for real-time PCR analysis of microbial communities in a biogas digester – T. May – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Optimizing a PCR protocol for cpn60-based microbiome profiling of samples variously contaminated with host genomic DNA – Lisa A Johnson – BMC Research Notes

Microbes in the news

Mining the microbial dark matter: Microbiologists are finding new ways to explore the vast universe of unknown microbes in the hunt for antibiotics – Corie Lok – Nature

Legumes control infection of nodules by both symbiotic and endophytic bacteria – Aarhus University

Correlation does not mean causation: Yogurt’s Probiotics Can Help Boost Your Socialization Skills – Daily Times Gazette

Teenager killed by plague in rural northern Colorado – Daniel Wallis – Reuters

Recent Built Environment Microbiology papers, June 21 edition – Elisabeth M Bik – MicroBE.net

Science, publishing, and career

Cold E-mails and Hot Coffee: Take action on your career – Albert Chen et al. – Science

Reset your brain: A bit of self-reflection can propel scientists into a career beyond the lab – Christopher Taylor – Nature

Enough talk. There are ways we can help women in science now – Athene Donald – The Guardian

Bik’s Picks

Neanderthal hybrid suggests modern humans bred with them much later than thought – Rachel Feltman – Washington Post

What Pope Francis and scientists have in common when they look at the natural world – Chris Mooney – Washington Post

Musicians don’t just hear in tune, they also see in tune – Science Daily
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June 10, 2015

Another load of microbiome reviews, historical responses of microbes to mercury in soil layers, and different pictures of microbial diversity using culture or molecular techniques.

Microbiome of pregnancy and health

Review: Lungs, Microbes and the Developing Neonate – Warner B.B., Hamvas A. – Neonatology

Review: Placentophagy: therapeutic miracle or myth? – Cynthia W. Coyle – Archives of Women’s Mental Health

Review: Preterm delivery and intimacy during pregnancy: interaction between oral, vaginal and intestinal microbiomes – Herrera Morban DA – Medwave

Human gut microbiome

Review: Monitoring host responses to the gut microbiota – Joshua S Lichtman, Justin L Sonnenburg and Joshua E Elias – The ISME Journal

ReviewIntestinal Fucose as a Mediator of Host–Microbe Symbiosis – Joseph M. Pickard and Alexander V. Chervonsky – The Journal of Immunology

Review: Novel players in coeliac disease pathogenesis: role of the gut microbiota – Elena F. Verdu – Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Review: Gut Microbiome-Brain Communications Regulate Host Physiology and Behavior – Sun Hye Lee and Claire B. de La Serre – Journal of Nutritional Health & Food Science

Review: Biliary Mucosal Barrier and Microbiome – Verdier J – Viszeralmedizin

ReviewFrom Next-Generation Sequencing to Systematic Modeling of the Gut Microbiome – Boyang Ji and Jens Nielsen – Frontiers in Microbiology

Animal and other models of microbiome research

Bioimage analysis of Shigella infection reveals targeting of colonic crypts – Ellen T. Arena – PNAS

Animal microbiome

Filamentous fungi isolated from the fur microbiota of callitrichids kept in captivity in Brazil – de Freitas RA – J Zoo Wildl Med

Plant root and soil microbiome

Microbial response to simulated global change is phylogenetically conserved and linked with functional potential – Anthony S Amend – The ISME Journal

Microbial and biochemical basis of a Fusarium wilt-suppressive soil – Jae-Yul Cha – The ISME Journal

Microbial DNA records historical delivery of anthropogenic mercury – Alexandre J Poulain – The ISME Journal

Riverbed methanotrophy sustained by high carbon conversion efficiency – Mark Trimmer – The ISME Journal

Culture-Dependent and -Independent Methods Capture Different Microbial Community Fractions in Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Soils – Franck O. P. Stefani – PLOS ONE

Crop monoculture rather than agriculture reduces the spatial turnover of soil bacterial communities at a regional scale – Eva L. M. Figuerola – Environmental Microbiology

Bacteria and fungi associated with isoprene consumption in soil – Christopher M. Gray – Elementa-Science of the Anthropocene

Microbial rRNA:rRNA gene ratios may be unexpectedly low due to extracellular DNA preservation in soils – Glade Dlott – Journal of Microbiological Methods

Differences in microbial community composition between injection and production water samples of water flooding petroleum reservoirs – P. K. Gao – Biogeosciences

Commentary: Scrambled and not-so-tiny genomes of fungal endosymbionts – Chih-Horng Kuo – PNAS

Water microbiome

Sampling the Sea Surface Microlayer – Michael Cunliffe, Oliver Wurl – Springer Protocols
Built environment microbiome

Book chapter: Bacteria and Fungi in Green Roof Ecosystems – Krista L. McGuire – Green Roof Ecosystems

Extremophile microbiome

Application of artificial neural networks as a tool for moisture prediction in microbially colonized halite in the Atacama Desert – K. Wierzchos – Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences

Bioreactor microbiology

Methanobacterium Dominates Biocathodic Archaeal Communities in Methanogenic Microbial Electrolysis Cells – Michael Siegert – ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

Metagenomics and bioinformatics

ProDeGe: a computational protocol for fully automated decontamination of genomes – Kristin Tennessen – The ISME Journal

RNeXML: a package for reading and writing richly annotated phylogenetic, character, and trait data in R – Carl Boettiger – arXiv

PrimerView: high-throughput primer design and visualization – Damien M. O’Halloran – Source Code for Biology and Medicine

Techniques

Whole genome capture of vector-borne pathogens from mixed DNA samples: a case study of Borrelia burgdorferi – Giovanna Carpi – BMC Genomics

Cultivation of Environmental Bacterial Communities as Multispecies Biofilms – Marc A. Demeter – Springer Protocols Handbook

Microbes in the news

Brits will swab surfers’ butts to understand antibiotic-resistant bacteria – Alexandra Ossola – Popular Science

You’ve been invaded – by your Microbiome! Video with Rob Knight – UCSD TV

Understanding the nasal microbiome – American Microbiome Institute

How gut bacteria affects your health: What we know, what we don’t – Emily Kaiser – MPR News

The Secrets of Ocular Microbiomes – Mark B. Abelson – Review of Ophthalmology

Nice graphics: To the Phyllosphere and Beyond! – Ben Wolfe – Lucky Peach

Meanwhile in the Future: When Antibiotics Stop Working – Rose Eveleth – Gizmodo

Obesity and Microbiota: What’s Hype, What’s Helpful? – Jeannette Y. Wick – HCP Live

Science, publishing, and career

Nobel Prize Winner Tim Hunt Shocks Journalists With Sexist Comments – Cat Ferguson – BuzzFeed Science

Career coaching for scientists – Joanne Kamens – Nature Biotechnology

Intel Capital Creates $125M Fund for Women-, Minority-led Startups – Deborah Gage – Wall Street Journal

UTHealth’s Kevin Morano, microbiologist receives prestigious teaching honor by Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation – EurekAlert

Bik’s Picks

Caffeine acts through neuronal adenosine A2A receptors to prevent mood and memory dysfunction triggered by chronic stress – Manuella P. Kaster – PNAS

Chimps dig palm wine, new study finds: And in case you were wondering, the apes did occasionally get tipsy – Amina Khan – Los Angeles Times

This new Google-backed app will identify a bird just from a photo – Quartz

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June 8, 2015

General microbiome

Minireview: The brain’s Geppetto—microbes as puppeteers of neural function and behaviour? – Roman M. Stilling – Journal of NeuroVirology

Thesis: Novel computational approaches to investigate microbial diversity – Qingpeng Zhang – Michigan State University

Microbiome of pregnancy and birth

Distinctive Intestinal Lactobacillus Communities in Six-Month-Old Infants From Rural Malawi and South-Western Finland – Aakko, Juhani – Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology & Nutrition

Antenatal Microbiome: Potential Contributor to Fetal Programming and Establishment of the Microbiome in Offspring – Michelle L. Wright, Angela R. Starkweather – Nursing Research

Review: Should Abnormal Vaginal Flora in 2 nd Trimester of Pregnancy be Treated to Prevent Preterm Labor – Gunjan Kumari, Anjali Tempe – Journal of Medical Sciences

Human oral microbiome

The oral mucosal and salivary microbial community of Behcet’s syndrome and recurrent aphthous stomatitis – Noha Seoudi – Journal of Oral Microbiology

Human gut microbiome

Review: Unraveling the environmental and genetic interactions in atherosclerosis: Central role of the gut microbiota – Elin Org – Atherosclerosis

Review: The Effects of Diet and the Microbiome on Reproduction and Longevity: A Comparative Review Across 5 Continents – Stephanie N. Chilton – Nutrition and Food Sciences

Animal models of microbiome research

Lack of Vitamin D Receptor Causes Dysbiosis and Changes the Functions of the Murine Intestinal Microbiome – Dapeng Jin – Clinical Therapeutics

Animal microbiome

Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants have simple gut microbiota with nitrogen-fixing potential – Panagiotis Sapountzis – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Anemone: Response of bacterial colonization in Nematostella vectensis to development, environment and biogeography – Benedikt Mortzfeld – Environmental Microbiology

Plant root and soil microbiome

Responses of bacterial communities in seagrass sediments to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-induced stress – Juan Ling – Ecotoxicology

Analyses of microbial biomass and community diversity in kiwifruit orchard soils of different planting ages – Qingxia Fu – Acta Ecologica Sinica

The effects of the presence of Bt-transgenic oilseed rape in wild mustard populations on the rhizosphere nematode and microbial communities – Yongbo Liu – Science of The Total Environment

Long-term conservation tillage influences the soil microbial community and its contribution to soil CO2 emissions in a Mollisol in Northeast China – Shuxia Jia – Journal of Soils and Sediments

Microbial communities inhabiting oil-contaminated soils from two major oilfields in Northern China: Implications for active petroleum-degrading capacity – Weimin Sun – Journal of Microbiology

Differential degradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures by indigenous microbial assemblages in soil – Przemyslaw Sawulski – Letters in Applied Microbiology

A novel salt-tolerant chitobiosidase discovered by genetic screening of a metagenomic library derived from chitin-amended agricultural soil – Mariana Silvia Cretoiu – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Book chapter: Irrigation with Treated Wastewater: Potential Impacts on Microbial Function and Diversity in Agricultural Soils – Ana Rita Lopes – The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry 2015

Water microbiome

Response of bacteria and meiofauna to iron oxide colloids in sediments of freshwater microcosms – Sebastian Höss – Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

Response of rare, common and abundant bacterioplankton to anthropogenic perturbations in a Mediterranean coastal site – Federico Baltar – FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Book Chapter: Marine Litter as Habitat and Dispersal Vector – Tim Kiessling – Marine Anthropogenic Litter

Thesis: Metagenomic profiling of microbial metal interaction in Red Sea deep-anoxic brine pools – Hanna, Mina Magdy Abdelsayed – American University in Cairo

Built environment microbiome

Microbial community composition of a household sand filter used for arsenic, iron, and manganese removal from groundwater in Vietnam – Katja Sonja Nitzsche – Chemosphere

The role of bacterial communities and carbon dioxide on the corrosion of steel – K.M. Usher – Corrosion Science

Extremophile microbiome

Review: Metagenomics of extreme environments – DA Cowan – Current Opinion in Microbiology

Food microbiology

Review: The impact of climate change on existing and emerging microbial threats across the food chain: An island of Ireland perspective – Linda D. Stewart – Trends in Food Science & Technology

Review: Microbial decontamination of food by electron beam irradiation – Hsiang-Mei Lung – Trends in Food Science & Technology

Bioreactor microbiome

Bioreactor microbial ecosystems for thiocyanate and cyanide degradation unraveled with genome-resolved metagenomics – Rose S. Kantor – Environmental Microbiology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

CCLasso: Correlation Inference for Compositional Data through Lasso – Huaying Fang – Bioinformatics

GAML: genome assembly by maximum likelihood: combination of diverse sequencing datasets into a single assembly – Vladimír Boža – Algorithms for Molecular Biology

Effects of library size variance, sparsity, and compositionality on the analysis of microbiome data – Sophie J Weiss – PeerJ

Review: Identification of Viruses and Viroids by Next-Generation Sequencing and Homology-Dependent and Homology-Independent Algorithms – Qingfa Wu – Annual Reviews Phytopathology

Metabolomics

Mapping microbial response metabolomes for induced natural product discovery – Dagmara K. Derewacz – ACS Chemical Biology
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acschembio.5b00001

Techniques

Analysis of microsamples of human faeces: a non-invasive approach to study the bioavailability of fat-soluble bioactive compounds – E. Hernandez-Alvarez – European Journal of Nutrition

Microbes in the news

Say hello to your little friends: Making sense of gut bacteria – Wency Leung – Globe and Mail

Surfers help science in fight against antibiotic resistant bacteria with their poop – Luigi Lugmayer – i4u

Effects of zinc oxide on intestinal microbiota – All About Feed

VideoWaxworm Bacteria Could Recycle Plastic Trash – NBC News

Is That Water Hot Enough to Kill Germs? – C. Claiborne Ray – New York Times

Gut bacteria play a vital role to your health – Sharon Ní Chonchuir – Irish Examiner

New microscope technique could speed identification of deadly bacteria – EurekAlert

Science, publishing, and career

Better advice for ‘Bothered’ – Science Careers Staff – Science Magazine

Retractions and High Profile Journals – Peter Edmonds

Bik’s Picks

Black Hole Hunters – Dennis Overbye – New York Times

Everything You Need to Know About Bill Nye’s Crazy Experimental Spaceship – Jack Linshi – Time

Under the Sea: Google Views for World Oceans Day – Patrick J. Kiger – Discovery

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June 3, 2015

Microbiomes of seahorses, diet and human stool, gut microbes influencing CNS, lichen-associated bacteria, sequencing beer, and news from #ASM2015.

Human gut microbiome

Fecal Microbiota in Healthy Subjects Following Omnivore, Vegetarian and Vegan Diets: Culturable Populations and rRNA DGGE Profiling – Ilario Ferrocino – PLOS ONE

Animal models of microbiome research

Host microbiota constantly control maturation and function of microglia in the CNS – Daniel Erny – Nature Neuroscience

Effects of Dietary Linseed Oil and Propionate Precursors on Ruminal Microbial Community, Composition, and Diversity in Yanbian Yellow Cattle – Xiang Z. Li – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

A Metagenomic Survey of Viral Abundance and Diversity in Mosquitoes from Hubei Province – Chenyan Shi – PLOS ONE

Comparison of the Intestinal Bacterial Flora in Healthy and Intestinal-diseased Seahorses Hippocampus trimaculatus, Hippocampus erectus, and Hippocampus spinosissimus – Feng Li – Journal of the World Aquaculture Society

Plant and soil microbiome

Analysis of the Peltigera membranacea metagenome indicates that lichen-associated bacteria are involved in phosphate solubilization – Margrét Auður Sigurbjörnsdóttir – Microbiology

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Community Structure, Abundance and Species Richness Changes in Soil by Different Levels of Heavy Metal and Metalloid Concentration – Ramasamy Krishnamoorthy – PLOS ONE

Built environment microbiome

Chamber Bioaerosol Study: Outdoor Air and Human Occupants as Sources of Indoor Airborne Microbes – Rachel I. Adams – PLOS ONE

Survey of Microbial Diversity in Flood Areas during Thailand 2011 Flood Crisis Using High-Throughput Tagged Amplicon Pyrosequencing – Wuttichai Mhuantong – PLOS ONE

Metagenomic Insights into the Bioaerosols in the Indoor and Outdoor Environments of Childcare Facilities – Su-Kyoung Shin – PLOS ONE

Food microbiology

PCR-DGGE assessment of the bacterial diversity in Spanish-style green table-olive fermentations – Helena Lucena-Padrós – International Journal of Food Microbiology

Microbial ecology

Perspectives on the context-dependency of stream community responses to contaminants – William H. Clements – Freshwater Biology

Metacommunity speciation models and their implications for diversification theory – Nicolas Hubert – Ecology Letters

The complex relationship between microbial growth rate and yield and its implications for ecosystem processes – David A. Lipson – Frontiers in Microbiology

Techniques

The Effect of Sampling and Storage on the Fecal Microbiota Composition in Healthy and Diseased Subjects – Danyta I. Tedjo – PLOS ONE

Microbes in the news

Sequence your beer: BeerDeCoded: the 1,000 beer genomes

#ASM2015 – Soil microbes ally with plants to fight disease and tolerate stress – Phys.org

#ASM2015 video: A Critical Role of the Plant Microbiome for Immunocompetency – ASM

#ASM2015: Share a Bathroom With Other People? Here’s Something You May or May Not Want to Know About Your Toothbrush – Liz Klimas – The Blaze

All About Flora: How Important Gut Health Really Is. Don’t be grossed out – those little guys living in your guts are your friends – Lacie Glover – US News
Ancient algae found deep in tropical glacier – Biology News

Microbes, biodiversity and the benefits of getting dirty – David Suzuki – National Observer

Former COD Theater Major Researches Microbiology in South Africa – Mitchell11 – Chicago Tribune

Interview with Jessica Richman of uBiome – Tracy Mac – The Power of Poop

Bacteria study may curb antibiotics use – Jeremy Watson – The Times

Could remnants of the earliest life be preserved in volcanic glass? Controversy about microbial “biotextures” – Shalini Saxena – ArsTechnica

Science, publishing, and career

Why we should help people understand our scientific literature – R. W. Abrams – Conservation Biology

Announcing mSystems™: a new ASM open-access journal launching in early 2016 with Jack Gilbert as Founding Editor in Chief – ASM

Scientists Behaving Badly (On Social Media) – Brett Buttliere – PLOS Blogs

Publons and the American Society for Microbiology announce pilot partnership – ASM

Helpful websites for women scientists interested in fellowships, scholarships and funding opportunities – ASM

Bik’s Picks

Chimps Can’t Cook, But Maybe They’d Like To – Michael D. Lemonick – National Geographic

20-year-old invents ingenious system to rid ocean of trash – Olivia Solon – Mirror

Sea lions injured in chlorine attack return to ocean (video) – Chicago Tribune

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June 2, 2015

General human microbiome

The human microbiome in hematopoiesis and hematological disorders – Veronica E. Manzo and Ami S. Bhatt – Blood

Special issue of Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease: Editorial: We all need friends – Jørgen Valeur

Early Factors Leading to Later Obesity: Interactions of the Microbiome, Epigenome, and Nutrition – Lilly Chang, Josef Neu – Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care

Microbiome of pregnancy and birth

Opportunities to assess factors contributing to the development of the intestinal microbiota in infants living in developing countries – Dennis Lang – Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease

Review: Factors affecting infant gut microbiota and possible consequences for health
Merete Eggesbø – Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease

Human gut microbiome

Draft Genome Sequences of 24 Microbial Strains Assembled from Direct Sequencing from 4 Stool Samples – Patricio Jeraldo – Genome Announcements

Book Chapter: Physiology of Digestion and Absorption: The Functional Interdependence Between Food and the Gut – Stephen J. D. O’Keefe – The Principles and Practice of Nutritional Support

Review: With a little help from my enteric microbial friends – Ben Berkhout – Frontiers in Medicine

Editorial: AI-2 to the rescue against antibiotic-induced intestinal dysbiosis? – Zhongke Sun – Trends in Microbiology

Microbiome models

Evidence from Animal Models: Is a Restricted or Conventional Intestinal Microbiota Composition Predisposing to Risk for High-LET Radiation Injury? – Irene Maier – Radiation Research

Rumen Microbiome from Steers Differing in Feed Efficiency – Phillip R. Myer – PLOS ONE

Changes in the composition of intestinal fungi and their role in mice with dextran sulfate sodium-induced colitis – Xinyun Qiu – Scientific Reports

Microbiota prevents cholesterol loss from the body by regulating host gene expression in mice – Chun-Yan Zhong – Scientific Reports

Animal microbiome

Early-life establishment of the swine gut microbiome and impact on host phenotypes – Núria Mach – Environmental Microbiology Reports

Lifestyle Evolution in Cyanobacterial Symbionts of Sponges – Ilia Burgsdorf – mBio

Plant microbiome

Antagonistic interactions between endophytic cultivable bacterial communities isolated from the medicinal plant Echinacea purpurea – Isabel Maida – Environmental Microbiology

Soil microbiome

Distinct soil bacterial communities along a small-scale elevational gradient in alpine tundra – Congcong Shen – Frontiers in Microbiology

Carcass mass has little influence on the structure of gravesoil microbial communities – Sophie Weiss – International Journal of Legal Medicine

Impact of different cropping conditions and tillage practices on the soil fungal abundance of a Phaeozem luvico – Romina P. Gomez – Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research

Biological activity and microbial genetic diversity of bare-fallow and grassland soils – Anna Kot – Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science

Masters Thesis: Assessing soil microbial tolerance to salt – Arpita Maheshwari – Lund University

Water microbiome

Microbial metagenomics in the Baltic Sea: Recent advancements and prospects for environmental monitoring – Karolina Ininbergs – AMBIO

Characterizing microbial communities dedicated for conversion of coal to methane in situ and ex situ – Ji Zhang – International Journal of Coal Geology

Dynamics of the bacterial and archaeal communities in the northern South China Sea revealed by 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene – Xia Xiaomin – Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography

Editorial: Microbial symbiosis of marine sessile hosts- diversity and function – Suhelen Egan – Frontiers in Microbiology

Review: Biodiversity, community structure and function of biofilms in stream ecosystems – Katharina Besemer – Research in Microbiology

Built environment microbiome

pecunia non olet? Screening Currency Notes for Microbial Pathogens and Antibiotic Resistance Genes Using a Shotgun Metagenomic Approach – Saakshi Jalali – PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

Dark matter of the biosphere: The amazing world of bacteriophage diversity – Graham F. Hatfull – Journal of Virology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

VirSorter: mining viral signal from microbial genomic data – Simon Roux – PeerJ

Denoising DNA deep sequencing data—high-throughput sequencing errors and their correction – David Laehnemann – Briefings in Bioinformatics

FCMM: A comparative metagenomic approach for functional characterization of multiple metagenome samples – Jongin Lee – Journal of Microbiological Methods

PuzzleCluster: A Novel Unsupervised Clustering Algorithm for Binning DNA Fragments in Metagenomics – Current Bioinformatics

Shotgun metagenomes and multiple primer pair-barcode combinations of amplicons reveal biases in metabarcoding analyses of fungi – Leho Tedersoo – MycoKeys

ANCOM: Analysis of composition of microbiomes: a novel method for studying microbial composition – Siddhartha Mandal – Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease

Transcriptomics and Metabolomics

MetabNet: an R package for metabolic association analysis of high-resolution metabolomics data – Karan Uppal – Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

Meta-omics uncover temporal regulation of pathways across oral microbiome genera during in vitro sugar metabolism – Anna Edlund – ISME Journal

Review: Enteric short-chain fatty acids: microbial messengers of metabolism, mitochondria, and mind: implications in autism spectrum disorders – Derrick F. MacFabe – Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease

Techniques

Co-extraction of DNA and PLFA from soil samples – Sheridan Brewer – Journal of Microbial Methods

Microbial ecology

Editorial: Flexible gene pools: hard to interpret the diversity often observed in microbial communities – Michael M. Desai – Science

Fine-scale diversity and extensive recombination in a quasisexual bacterial population occupying a broad niche – Michael J. Rosen – Science

Microbes in the news

Good craft beer can be spoiled by bacteria – Phys.org / American Society for Microbiology

Treating Koala STDs May also Quash Their Essential Gut Microbes – Katherine Harmon Courage – Scientific American

New study: Gut bacteria cooperate when life gets tough – EurekAlert

Metabolic activity and health of the skin microbiome – Medical Xpress / American Society for Microbiology

Is our first line of defense sleeping on the job? – Science Daily / American Society for Microbiology

Growing Up In an UnSterile World –The Importance of a Healthy Gut Through the Lifespan – Sarah Lobisco – Dr. Lobisco

Citizen Scientists Send Microbes Into Space – Science 2.0

Methanogens: Earth organisms survive under low-pressure Martian conditions – Science Daily

Why is the H-pylori bacteria developing a liking for Mumbai police? – Santosh Andhale – DNA India

Book review: The great microbial beauty – Vittorio Capozzi – Trends in Microbiology

Science, publishing, and career

Plagiarism is the most common cause of retractions in BioMed Central journals:
Retractions Often Due to Plagiarism: Study – Kerry Grens – The Scientist

Bik’s Picks: not-microbial science

Giant Sawfish Have Virgin Births, Rewrite Biology Textbooks – Charles Q. Choi – Live Science

These newly discovered marsupials basically sex each other to death – Elahe Izadi – Washington Post

Seals Help Scientists Probe Remote Seas – Discovery

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June 1, 2015

Still catching up from my trip abroad – lots of new papers to share, so I will do two blog posts today.

General microbiome

Elucidating microbial codes to distinguish individuals – Allyson L. Byrd and Julia A. Segre – PNAS

Human oral microbiome

Periodontal status and pathogenic bacteria after gastric bypass: a cohort study – Sílvia Helena de Carvalho Sales-Peres – Journal of Clinical Periodontology

Inflammation-associated microbiota in pediatric eosinophilic esophagitis – Alain J Benitez – Microbiome

Global transcription of CRISPR loci in the human oral cavity – Andrew G Lum – BMC Genomics

Oral and Gastric Helicobacter Pylori: Effects and Associations – Nélio Veiga – PLOS ONE

Book Chapter: Obesity and Periodontal Disease – Simon D. Tran – Environmental Metagenomics

Human gut microbiome

Investigation of the Association Between the Fecal Microbiota and Breast Cancer in Postmenopausal Women: a Population-Based Case-Control Pilot Study – James J. Goedert – Journal of the National Cancer Institute

Review: The art of targeting gut microbiota for tackling human obesity – Marisol Aguirre, Koen Venema – Genes and Nutrition

Review article: dietary fibre–microbiota interactions – H. L. Simpson and B. J. Campbell – Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics

Animal and other microbiome models

Evolutionary transition in symbiotic syndromes enabled diversification of phytophagous insects on an imbalanced diet – Sailendharan Sudakaran – ISME Journal

Fecal Microbial Transplant After Ileocolic Resection Reduces Ileitis but Restores Colitis in IL-102/2 Mice – Troy Perry – IBD Journal

Alteration of gut microbiota by vancomycin and bacitracin improves insulin resistance via glucagon-like peptide 1 in diet-induced obesity – Injae Hwang – The FASEB Journal

Pheromone killing of multidrug-resistant Enterococcus faecalis V583 by native commensal strains – Michael S. Gilmore – PNAS

Human Microbiota-Associated Swine: Current Progress and Future Opportunities – Mei Wang and Sharon M. Donovan – ILAR Journal

Animal microbiome

Marked seasonal variation in the wild mouse gut microbiota – Corinne F Maurice – ISME Journal

Evolution of host specialization in gut microbes: the bee gut as a model – Waidan K Kwong – Gut Microbes

Soil microbiome

Soil bacterial diversity patterns and drivers along an elevational gradient on Shennongjia Mountain, China – Yuguang Zhang – Microbial Biotechnology

High resolution dynamics of microbial communities during dissimilatory selenate reduction in an anoxic soil – Ronald Ragudo Navarro – Environmental Science & Technology

Study and assessment of microbial communities in natural and commercial bioleaching – Arevik Vardanyan – Minerals Engineering

Benefactor and allelopathic shrub species have different effects on the soil microbial community along an environmental severity gradient – S. Hortal – Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Evaluation of soil microbial communities as influenced by crude oil pollution – Eucharia Oluchi Nwaichi and Magdalena Frac – African Journal of Biotechnology

Water microbiome

Aquarium microbiome response to ninety-percent system water change: Clues to microbiome management – William Van Bonn – Zoo Biology

Frequency-based haplotype reconstruction from deep sequencing data of bacterial populations – Sergio Pulido-Tamayo – Nucleic Acids Research

Manganese and iron as structuring parameters of microbial communities in Arctic marine sediments from the Baffin Bay – Camelia Algora – FEMS Microbial Ecology

Quantitative analysis of commensal Escherichia coli populations reveals host-specific enterotypes at the intra-species level – Mounira Smati – Microbiology Open

Manganese cycling microbial communities inside deep-sea manganese nodules – Marco Blöthe – Environmental Science & Technology

Effects of Misgurnus anguillicaudatus and Cipangopaludina cathayensis on Pollutant Removal and Microbial Community in Constructed Wetlands – Pengfei Li – Water

Thesis: Evaluating changes in diversity and functional gene abundance of denitrifying microbe communities and nutrient concentrations in runoff following the implementation of low-grade weirs in agricultural drainage systems – Beth Baker – Mississippi State University/ Gradworks

Bioreactor microbiome

Lipid hydrolysis products affect the composition of infant gut microbial communities in vitro – Rikke G. Nejrup – British Journal of Nutrition

Effect of phospholipid on pyrite oxidation and microbial communities under simulated acid mine drainage (AMD) conditions – Andro-Marc Pierre-Louis – Environmental Science & Technology

Antibiotic resistome and its association with bacterial communities during sewage sludge composting – Jianqiang Su – Environmental Science & Technology

Food microbiology

Microbiota dynamics associated with environmental conditions and potential roles of cellulolytic communities in traditional Chinese cereal starter solid-state fermentation – Pan Li- Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

Note: not metagenomics but Single Locus Sequencing / OTU defining: MICCA: a complete and accurate software for taxonomic profiling of metagenomic data – Davide Albanese – Scientific Reports

An efficient and scalable analysis framework for variant extraction and refinement from population-scale DNA sequence data: GotCloud – Goo Jun – Genome Research

GITIRBio: A Semantic and Distributed Service OrientedArchitecture for Bioinformatics Pipeline – Luis F. Castillo – Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics

mmnet: an R package for metagenomics systems biology analysis: community-level metabolic network reconstruction – Yang Cao – BioMed Research International

Techniques

How to evaluate PCR assays for the detection of low-level DNA – Frederik Banch Clausen – APMIS
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apm.12405/full

A Novel Microbial Source Tracking Microarray for Pathogen Detection and Fecal Source Identification in Environmental Systems – Xiang Li – Environmental Science & Technology

Functional Foods

Programmable probiotics for detection of cancer in urine – Tal Danino – Science Translational Medicine

Microbes in the news

Alterations to the eye microbiome of contact lens wearers may increase infections – Medical News Today

U.S. defense chief monitoring military anthrax investigation – Reuters

Deadly Bacteria Now a Proven Cancer Detector? – Samantha Solomon – Wall Street Daily’

Gut Bacteria Impacts Toddlers’ Behavior, Particularly Boys – Traci Pederson – PsychCentral

Cervicovaginal Bacteria May Increase the risk of HIV Acquisition in Women – University of Kwazulu – Natal

DNA Genotek’s microbiome collection and stabilization blog: Microbiome learnings from the Weizmann Institute – Cindy MacCullough – DNA Genotek

Scientists probe mysterious wave of antelope deaths – Rory Galloway – BBC News

Bacteria may cause Type 2 diabetes – University of Iowa Now

Should we care about fungi? The mycobiome: an emerging field of the human microbiome research – Human Microbiome Club

Hardy bacteria thrive under hot desert rocks – Nola Taylor Redd – Phys.org

Colon Cancer Diagnosis With Lumninescent Bacteria: Modified Probiotics Can Successfully Detect Tumors In Liver – Colon Cancer News Today

Scientists Find Link Between Ocean Bacteria and Atmosphere – Simon Yu – UCSD Guardian

Woman goes blind after cat licks her and transmits rare bacteria that could affect the brain, eyes, heart, and internal organs – Daily Mail

Science, career, and publishing

This poor advice blog post was retracted from Science today, but the internet never forgets.

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