Category Archives: Transcriptomics Proteomics

April 30, 2022

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Human Microbiome

Three-dimensional imaging for the quantification of spatial patterns in microbiota of the intestinal mucosa – Octavio Mondragón-Palomino – PNAS

Global, distinctive, and personal changes in molecular and microbial profiles by specific fibers in humans – Samuel M Lancaster – Cell Host & Microbe

Comprehensive human amniotic fluid metagenomics supports the sterile womb hypothesis – HanChen Wang – Scientific Reports

Disordered development of gut microbiome interferes with the establishment of the gut ecosystem during early childhood with atopic dermatitis – Min-Jung Lee – Gut Microbes

A starch- and sucrose-reduced dietary intervention in irritable bowel syndrome patients produced a shift in gut microbiota composition along with changes in phylum, genus, and amplicon sequence variant abundances, without affecting the micro-RNA levels – Clara Nilholm – United European Gastroenterology Journal

Alterations in intestinal microbiota in ultramarathon runners – Mika Sato – Scientific Reports

Lost microbes of COVID-19: Bifidobacterium, Faecalibacterium depletion and decreased microbiome diversity associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection severity – Sabine Hazan – BMJ Open Gastroenterology

Gut microbiota alterations in critically ill older patients: a multicenter study – Mesa Victoria – BMC Geriatrics

Bone marrow transplantation induces changes in the gut microbiota that chronically increase the cytokine response pattern of splenocytes – Saeed Katiraei – Scientific Reports

Gut microbial β-glucuronidases regulate host luminal proteases and are depleted in irritable bowel syndrome – Adam L Edwinson – Nature Microbiology

Review: Communication between the gut microbiota and peripheral nervous system in health and chronic disease – Tyler M Cook – Gut Microbe

Systematic Review: Adverse events in fecal microbiota transplantation: a systematic review and meta-analysis – Eliot A Rapoport – Annals of Gastroenterology

Review: Eco-evolutionary impact of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure on microorganisms, with a special focus on our skin microbiome – Sandhya Rai – Microbiological Research

Beneficial Microbes and Compounds

Review: The huge clinical potential of microbiota in the treatment of pancreatic cancer: The next frontier – Zhilin Zhang – Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. Reviews on Cancer

Oral Administration of Lactobacillus paracasei N1115 on Neonatal Mice Prevents the Intestinal Inflammation in Adulthood – Yiping Xun – Letters in Applied Microbiology

Animal Model Microbiome

ABO genotype alters the gut microbiota by regulating GalNAc levels in pigs – Hui Yang – Nature

External light-dark cycle shapes gut microbiota through intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells – Chi-Chan Lee – EMBO Reports

Non-Model Animal Microbiome

Host-Associated Bacterial Communities Vary Between Daphnia galeata Genotypes but Not by Host Genetic Distance – Amruta Rajarajan – Microbial Ecology

Faecal Microbiota Divergence in Allopatric Populations of Podarcis lilfordi and P. pityusensis, Two Lizard Species Endemic to the Balearic Islands – Iris Alemany – Microbial Ecology

Gut microbiota of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) vary across natural and captive populations and correlate with environmental microbiota – Sally L Bornbusch – Animal Microbiome

Mechanisms of fungal community assembly in wild stoneflies moderated by host characteristics and local environment – Yu-Xi Zhu – NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes

Changes to the gut microbiota of a wild juvenile passerine in a multidimensional urban mosaic – Öncü Maraci – Scientific Reports

Comparative study on gut microbiota in three Anura frogs from a mountain stream – Zhuo Chen – Ecology and Evolution

Plant Microbiome

Insights into the microbiome assembly during different growth stages and storage of strawberry plants – Expedito Olimi – Environmental Microbiome

More Microbes, Genes, and Proteins

Hypothesis: Does Lactobacillus reuteri influence ergothioneine levels in the human body? – Irwin K Cheah – FEBS Letters

Type VI secretion systems of pathogenic and commensal bacteria mediate niche occupancy in the gut – Antonio Serapio-Palacios – Cell Reports

Review: Utilization of glycosaminoglycans by the human gut microbiota: participating bacteria and their enzymatic machineries – Parkash Singh Rawat – Gut Microbes

Bioinformatics

DEPP: Deep Learning Enables Extending Species Trees using Single Genes – Yueyu Jiang – Systematic Biology

A deep siamese neural network improves metagenome-assembled genomes in microbiome datasets across different environments – Shaojun Pan – Nature Communications

Compositionally Aware Phylogenetic Beta-Diversity Measures Better Resolve Microbiomes Associated with Phenotype – Cameron Martino – mSystems

Review: Could Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Inclusion of Diet-Gut Microbiome Interactions Improve Disease Risk Prediction? Case Study: Coronary Artery Disease – Baiba Vilne – Frontiers in Microbiology

Review: Microbial dark matter: from discovery to applications – Yuguo Zha – Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics

February 9, 2022

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

Animal experiments

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

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

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

Water and extremophile microbiome

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

Bioinformatics

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

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

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

Science, publishing, and career

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

January 4, 2022

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Happy new year! Today’s digest is jam packed with articles published over the Christmas period. This includes the Skin Microbial Genome Collection (SMGC), a fascinating study linking the gut virome to rotavirus vaccine response, multiple cancer-microbiome papers and a catalogue of the human gut archaeome

General microbiome

The Metaproteomics Initiative: a coordinated approach for propelling the functional characterization of microbiomes – Bossche et al. Microbiome

Directional Gaussian Mixture Models of the Gut Microbiome Elucidate Microbial Spatial Structure – Pasarkar et al. mSystems

Human gut microbiome

Human gut-microbiome-derived propionate coordinates proteasomal degradation via HECTD2 upregulation to target EHMT2 in colorectal cancer – Ryu et al. ISME

Gut microbiomes from Gambian infants reveal the development of a non-industrialized Prevotella-based trophic network – Goffau et al. Nature Microbiology.

Reuterin in the healthy gut microbiome suppresses colorectal cancer growth through altering redox balance – Bell et al. Cancer Cell. 

Population study of the gut microbiome: associations with diet, lifestyle, and cardiometabolic disease – Walker et al. Genome Medicine

Enteric virome negatively affects seroconversion following oral rotavirus vaccination in a longitudinally sampled cohort of Ghanaian infants – Kim et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Maternal gut bacteria drive intestinal inflammation in offspring with neurodevelopmental disorders by altering the chromatin landscape of CD4+ T cells – Kim et al. Immunity

Lactobacillus gallinarum modulates the gut microbiota and produces anti-cancer metabolites to protect against colorectal tumourigenesis – Sugimura et al. Gut

A catalogue of 1,167 genomes from the human gut archaeome – Chibani et al. Nature Microbiology

Variation and transmission of the human gut microbiota across multiple familial generations – Valles-Colomer et al. Nature Microbiology. 

The Mouse Gastrointestinal Bacteria Catalogue enables translation between the mouse and human gut microbiotas via functional mapping – Beresford-Jones et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Human skin & oral microbiome

Integrating cultivation and metagenomics for a multi-kingdom view of skin microbiome diversity and functions – Kashaf et al. Nature Microbiology.

Alterations of human skin microbiome and expansion of antimicrobial resistance after systemic antibiotics – Jo et al. Science Translational Medicine

Microbiome-mediated incapacitation of interferon lambda production in the oral mucosa – Rodriguez-Hernandez et al. PNAS

Plant microbiome

Glutamic acid reshapes the plant microbiota to protect plants against pathogens – Kim et al. Microbiome. 

Water microbiome

Metagenomics of Antarctic Marine Sediment Reveals Potential for Diverse Chemolithoautotrophy – Garber et al. mSphere

Dissecting the dominant hot spring microbial populations based on community-wide sampling at single-cell genomic resolution – Bowers et all. ISME

Bioinformatics

Fast and accurate metagenotyping of the human gut microbiome with GT-Pro – Shi et al. Nature Biotechnology

Rapid screening and identification of viral pathogens in metagenomic data – Song et al. BMC Medical Genomics. 

June 23, 2021

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Happy Wednesday!

Today’s digest includes a review on the microbial transformations of human bile acids as well as research articles focused on extremophiles including Arthrobacter, Acidithiobacillus, and Atribacteria. Also included are a wide variety of preprints on topics such as CRISPR-Cas, the vaginal microbiome, immunocompetence in pigs, the evaluation of RNAlater for preserving field samples for metaproteomics, and more!

Happy reading!

General microbiome

Preprint: CRISPR-Cas systems are widespread accessory elements across bacterial and archaeal plasmids – Pinilla-Redondo et al. – bioRxiv

Human respiratory microbiome

Indoor bacterial, fungal and viral species and functional genes in urban and rural schools in Shanxi Province, China–association with asthma, rhinitis and rhinoconjunctivitis in high school students – Fu et al. – Microbiome

Human vaginal microbiome

Preprint: Insight into the ecology of vaginal bacteria through integrative analyses of metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data – France et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Review: Microbial transformations of human bile acids – Guzior & Quinn – Microbiome

Preprint: Targeted high-resolution taxonomic identification of Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis using human milk oligosaccharide metabolizing genes – Tso et al. – bioRxiv

An integrated gene catalog and over 10,000 metagenome-assembled genomes from the gastrointestinal microbiome of ruminants – Xie et al. – Microbiome

Animal experiments

Preprint: Leveraging host-genetics and gut microbiota to determine immunocompetence in pigs – Ramayo-Caldas et al. – bioRxiv

Joint contributions of the gut microbiota and host genetics to feed efficiency in chickens – Wen et al. – Microbiome

Animal microbiome

Holobiont nitrogen control and its potential for eutrophication resistance in an obligate photosymbiotic jellyfish – Röthig et al. – Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Preprint: Microbial metabolism and adaptations in Atribacteria-dominated methane hydrate sediments – Glass et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Seed microbiota revealed by a large-scale meta-analysis including 50 plant species – Simonin et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: The activity and functions of subarctic soil microbial communities vary across vegetation types – Viitamäki et al. – bioRxiv

Water and extremophile microbiome

Preprint: Revealing the full biosphere structure and versatile metabolic functions in the deepest ocean sediment of the Challenger Deep – Chen et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Mechanistic insights into the success of xenobiotic degraders resolved from metagenomes of microbial enrichment cultures – Li et al. – bioRxiv

Low shifts in salinity determined assembly processes and network stability of microeukaryotic plankton communities in a subtropical urban reservoir – Mo et al. – Microbiome

Linking genomic and physiological characteristics of psychrophilic Arthrobacter to metagenomic data to explain global environmental distribution – Shen et al. – Microbiome

Genomic adaptations enabling Acidithiobacillus distribution across wide-ranging hot spring temperatures and pHs – Sriaporn et al. – Microbiome

Built environment

Preprint: Metagenome-based comparisons of decay rates and host-specificity of fecal microbial communities for improved microbial source tracking – Suttner et al. – bioRxiv

Phages and viruses

Preprint: Expanding clinical phage microbiology: Simulating phage inhalation for respiratory tract infections – Porat et al. – bioRxiv

Techniques

Ultra-accurate microbial amplicon sequencing with synthetic long reads – Callahan et al. – Microbiome

Preprint: Evaluation of RNAlater as a field-compatible preservation method for metaproteomic analyses of bacteria-animal symbioses – Jensen et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Predicting microbiome compositions through deep learning – Michel-Mata et al. – bioRxiv

February 25, 2021

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General microbiome
The evolution of coexistence from competition in experimental co-cultures of Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae – Jake N. Barber – ISME Journal

Human microbiome
Quantifying the effects of antibiotic treatment on the extracellular polymer network of antimicrobial resistant and sensitive biofilms using multiple particle tracking – Lydia C. Powell – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Biofilms harbour Clostridioides difficile, serving as a reservoir for recurrent infection – Charmaine Normington – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Gut microbiome
REVIEW: The contribution of gut bacterial metabolites in the human immune signaling pathway of non-communicable diseases – F. Hosseinkhani – Gut Microbes

The effect of acute moderate-intensity exercise on the serum and fecal metabolomes and the gut microbiota of cross-country endurance athletes – Mariangela Tabone – Scientific Reports

Oral microbiome
Candida albicans promotes tooth decay by inducing oral microbial dysbiosis – Qian Du – ISME Journal

Characterization of oral virome and microbiome revealed distinctive microbiome disruptions in paediatric patients with hand, foot and mouth disease – Si Xian Ho – npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

Skin microbiome
Characterization of the human skin resistome and identification of two microbiota cutotypes – Zhiming Li – Microbiome

Animal experiment
A gene co-association network regulating gut microbial communities in a Duroc pig population – Antonio Reverter – Microbiome

Modulating gut microbiota in a mouse model of Graves’ orbitopathy and its impact on induced disease – Sajad Moshkelgosha – Microbiome

Multi-compartment metabolomics and metagenomics reveal major hepatic and intestinal disturbances in cancer cachectic mice – Sarah A. Pötgens – Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle

Expanded catalog of microbial genes and metagenome-assembled genomes from the pig gut microbiome – Congying Chen – Nature Communications

Mining zebrafish microbiota reveals key community-level resistance against fish pathogen infection – Franziska A. Stressmann – ISME Journal

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
REVIEW: From exploration to remediation: A microbial perspective for innovation in mining – Alan Levett – Earth-Science Reviews

Food microbiology
A Combined Metagenomics and Metatranscriptomics Approach to Unravel Costa Rican Cocoa Box Fermentation Processes Reveals Yet Unreported Microbial Species and Functionalities – Marko Verce – Frontiers in Microbiology

Water and extremophile microbiome
Mechanistic strategies of microbial communities regulating lignocellulose deconstruction in a UK salt marsh – Daniel R. Leadbeater – Microbiome

Taxonomic and functional analyses of intact microbial communities thriving in extreme, astrobiology-relevant, anoxic sites – Alexandra Kristin Bashir – Microbiome

Genomic evidence for sulfur intermediates as new biogeochemical hubs in a model aquatic microbial ecosystem – Adrien Vigneron – Microbiome

REVIEW: The Seagrass Holobiont: What We Know and What We Still Need to Disclose for Its Possible Use as an Ecological Indicator – Chiara Conte – Water

Spatiotemporal variations and relationships of phosphorus, phosphomonoesterases, and bacterial communities in sediments from two Chilean rivers – Marco Camposa – Science of The Total Environment

Resource partitioning of phytoplankton metabolites that support bacterial heterotrophy – Frank Xavier Ferrer-González – ISME Journal

Phages and virues
Next-generation diagnostics: virus capture facilitates a sensitive viral diagnosis for epizootic and zoonotic pathogens including SARS-CoV-2 – Claudia Wylezich – Microbiome

Preliminary Assessment of Viral Metagenome from Cancer Tissue and Blood from Patients with Lung Adenocarcinoma – Hua‐Zhong Cai – Journal of Medical Virology

Bioinformatics
PathoFact: a pipeline for the prediction of virulence factors and antimicrobial resistance genes in metagenomic data – Laura de Nies – Microbiome

CANTARE: finding and visualizing network-based multi-omic predictive models – Janet C. Siebert – BMC Bioinformatics

kLDM: Inferring Multiple Metagenomic Association Networks based on the Variation of Environmental Factors – Yuqing Yang – Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics

Methods
REVIEW: Cross-species RNA-seq for deciphering host–microbe interactions – Alexander J. Westermann – Nature Review Genetics

A community resource for paired genomic and metabolomic data mining – Michelle A. Schorn – Nature Chemical Biology

Pre-prints
Cross-sectional analysis of the microbiota of the human gut and their direct environment (exposome) in a household cohort in northern Vietnam – Bich Vu Thi Ngoc – bioRxiv

HumGut: A comprehensive Human Gut prokaryotic genomes collection filtered by metagenome data – Pranvera Hiseni – bioRxiv

Comparative analysis of 16S rRNA gene and metagenome sequencing in pediatric gut microbiomes – Danielle Peterson – bioRxiv

Unifying the known and unknown microbial coding sequence space – Chiara Vanni – bioRxiv

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

August 16, 2020

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Today’s quite diverse digest features: a study on antimicrobial resistance in the drinking water microbiome in disinfected and disinfection-free drinking water systems, how Antarctic soil microorganisms stay energised and hydrated, and several awesome webinars and podcasts. Happy reading/listening!

General microbiome

Development of Microbiome Biobanks – Challenges and Opportunities – M.J. Ryan – Trends in Microbiology

Review: STROBE-metagenomics: a STROBE extension statement to guide the reporting of metagenomics studies – Tehmina Bharucha – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

Theme issue: The role of the microbiome in host evolution – compiled and edited by Oren Kolodny, Benjamin J. Callahan and Angela E. Douglas – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Selected papers:
Review: Microbiota–host interactions shape ageing dynamics – Miriam Popkes and Dario Riccardo Valenzano – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Opinion: Pathogen resistance may be the principal evolutionary advantage provided by the microbiome – Michael R. McLaren and Benjamin J. Callahan – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Gut microbiome

A Randomized Clinical Trial of Fecal Microbiota Transplant for Alcohol Use Disorder – Jasmohan S Bajaj – Hepatology

Urogenital microbiome

Comparative Genomic Study of Lactobacillus jensenii and the Newly Defined Lactobacillus mulieris Species Identifies Species-Specific Functionality – Catherine Putonti – mSphere

Vaginal Estrogen Therapy Is Associated with Increased Lactobacillus in the Urine of Post-Menopausal Women with OAB Symptoms – Dr. Krystal Thomas-White – American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Vaginal microbiome

Vaginal microbiota, genital inflammation, and neoplasia impact immune checkpoint protein profiles in the cervicovaginal microenvironment – Paweł Łaniewski –npj Precision Oncology

Lateral Gene Transfer Shapes Diversity of Gardnerella spp. – Lindsey L. Bohr – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Variation of the vaginal microbiome during and after pregnancy in Chinese women – Xiaoai Zhang – medRxiv

Review: Diversity of Vaginal Microbiome in Pregnancy: Deciphering the Obscurity – Parakriti Gupta – Frontiers in Public Health

Pregnancy and early life

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

Respiratory microbiome

A Novel Description of the Human Sinus Archaeome During Health and Chronic Rhinosinusitis – Brett Wagner Mackenzie – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Animal microbiome

Temporal changes in the gut microbiota in farmed Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) outweigh the response to diet supplementation with macroalgae – Ciara Keating – bioRxiv

Broiler Chickens and Early Life Programming: Microbiome transplant-induced cecal bacteriome dynamics and phenotypic effects – Gustavo A. Ramírez – bioRxiv

Rumen metaproteomics: Closer to linking rumen microbial function to animal productivity traits – Thea Os Andersen – Methods

Fast and Slow-Growing Management Systems: Characterisation of Broiler Caecal Microbiota Development throughout the Growing Period – Laura Montoro-Dasi – animals

Animal experiment

Mucosal or systemic microbiota exposures shape the B cell repertoire – Hai Li – Nature

The immune system fails to mount a protective response to Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacterial prostatitis – Federico Lupo – bioRxiv

Oncogenic Gene Fusions in Non-Neoplastic Precursors as Evidence that Bacterial Infection Initiates Prostate Cancer – Eva Shrestha – bioRxiv

Microbiome-derived inosine modulates response to checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy – Lukas F. Mager – Science

Lung and gut microbiota are altered by hyperoxia and contribute to oxygen-induced lung injury in mice – Shanna L. Ashley – Science Translational Medicine

Plant/root/soil microbiome

*A genome compendium reveals diverse metabolic adaptations of Antarctic soil microorganisms – Maximiliano Ortiz – bioRxiv

Healthy soils for healthy plants for healthy humans – Heribert Hirt – EMBO reports

The Impact of Mercury Selection and Conjugative Genetic Elements on Community Structure and Resistance Gene Transfer – James P. J. Hall – Frontiers in Microbiology

Review: Plant–microbiome interactions: from community assembly to plant health – Pankaj Trivedi – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Water microbiome

*Differential prevalence and host-association of antimicrobial resistance traits in disinfected and non-disinfected drinking water systems – Maria Sevillano – Science of The Total Environment

MiDAS 3: An ecosystem-specific reference database, taxonomy and knowledge platform for activated sludge and anaerobic digesters reveals species-level microbiome composition of activated sludge – Marta Nierychlo – Water Research

Metagenomic profiling of ammonia- and methane-oxidizing microorganisms in two sequential rapid sand filters – Lianna Poghosyan – Water Research

Shotgun metagenomics of indigenous bacteria collected from the banks of the San Jacinto River for biodegradation of aromatic waste – Rupa Iyer and Ashish Damania – FEMS Microbiology Letters

Viruses and phages

Viruses in wastewater: occurrence, abundance and detection methods – Mary Vermi Aizza Corpuz – Science of The Total Environment

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

Techniques

Correlative Light Electron Ion Microscopy reveal in vivo localisation of bedaquiline in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infected lungs – Antony Fearns – bioRxiv

Label-free smartphone quantitation of bacteria by darkfield imaging of light scattering in fluoropolymer micro capillary film allows portable detection of bacteriophage lysis – Sultan İlayda Dönmez – Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical

Bioinformatics

Raven: a de novo genome assembler for long reads – Robert Vaser and Mile Sikic – bioRxiv

SHAMAN: a user-friendly website for metataxonomic analysis from raw reads to statistical analysis – Stevenn Volant – BMC Bioinformatics

Rapid discovery of novel prophages using biological feature engineering and machine learning – Kimmo Sirén – bioRxiv

Critical Relevance of Stochastic Effects on Low-Bacterial Biomass 16S rRNA Gene Analysis – John R. Erb-Downward – mBio

On the complexity of haplotyping a microbial community – Samuel M Nicholls – bioRxiv

Inclusion of Oxford Nanopore long reads improves all microbial and viral metagenome‐assembled genomes from a complex aquifer system – Will A. Overholt – Environmental Microbiology

Webinar

Microbiome, machine learning and network models – Amy Willis and Ben Bloem-Reddy – Northwest Data Science Seminar Series

The Gut Brain Axis across the Life Span – John Cryan – iScience webinar

Pushing the Envelope: Remodeling the Gram-negative Outer Membrane – M. Stephen Trent – SG BUG (Singapore Bacterial Ultra Group) seminar series

Podcast

Getting to Know Your Friendly Neighbourhood Microbiologist – Lucie Semenec and Amy Cain – The Joint Academic Microbiology Seminars podcast

Does not compute – Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire – The Black Goat podcast

July 10, 2020

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Today’s digest contains many exciting articles – gut microbiome in precision medicine for cancer, important review on patent protection in microbiome therapeutics, role of the gut microbiota in sympathetic neurons, interaction of pacemaker neurons with the gut microbiota, gut dysbiosis in lupus and many more….Enjoy reading and happy weekend!

General microbiome

Gut microbiome, big data and machine learning to promote precision medicine for cancer – Giovanni Cammarota – Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Co-evolution and Co-speciation of Host-Gut Bacteria Systems – Mathieu Groussin – Cell Host and Microbe

Microbiome therapeutics and patent protection – Mark J. FitzGerald – Nature Biotechnology

Human microbiome

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation is Safe and Effective in Patients with Clostridioides difficile Infection and Cirrhosis – Yao-WenCheng – CLinial Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Association of Gut Microbiota-Dependent Metabolite Trimethylamine N-Oxide with First Ischemic Stroke – Taoping Sun – Journal of Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis

Dietary Strategies for Maintenance of Clinical Remission in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Are We There Yet? – Konstantinos Gkikas – Nutrients

The duodenal microbiome is altered in small intestinal bacterial overgrowth – Gabriela Leite – PlosOne

Faecal microbiota transplantation: A life-saving therapy challenged by commercial claims for exclusivity – Christian LodbergHvas – EClinical Medicine

Animal experiments

Microbiota modulate sympathetic neurons via a gut–brain circuit – Paul A. Muller – Nature

Prototypical pacemaker neurons interact with the resident microbiota – Alexander Klimovich – PNAS

Gut microbiota dysbiosis and altered tryptophan catabolism contribute to autoimmunity in lupus-susceptible mice – Seung-Chul Choi – Science Translational Medicine

The relationship between gut microbiota and short chain fatty acids in the renal calcium oxalate stones disease – Yu Liu – Faseb Journal

Sodium Butyrate Alleviates Mouse Colitis by Regulating Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis – Xiujing Dou – Animals

Dietary sphinganine is selectively assimilated by members of the mammalian gut microbiome – Min-Ting Lee – Journal of Lipid Research

Commentary: Modulating microbiome metabolites in vivo – Chun-Jun Guo – Science

Plant, root and soil microbiome

Quantitative comparison between the rhizosphere effect of Arabidopsis thaliana and co-occurring plant species with a longer life history – Martinus Schneijderberg – ISME Journal

Water microbiome

Anthropogenic dissolved organic carbon and marine microbiomes – Maria Vila-Costa – ISME Journal

Functional foods

Effect of a functional fibre supplement on glycemic control when added to a year-long medically supervised weight management program in adults with type 2 diabetes – Raylene A. Reimer – European Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Prenatal exposure to the probiotic Lactococcus lactis decreases anxiety-like behavior and modulates cortical cytoarchitecture in a sex specific manner – Natalia Surzenko – PlosOne

Non microbiology picks

SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted via contact and via the air between ferrets – Mathilde Richard – Nature Communications

July 1, 2020

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Greetings Everyone,
I want to began the month of July on a note that diversity is the basis for life. I can’t think of anything better to teach us about diversity, co-existence, and evolution than the fascinating Microbiome.
The microbiome affects us right from our birth till the end affecting our mental as well as physical health. The microbiome exhibits all sorts of differences in shape, size, color, metabolic functions in order to sustain life.
Much to learn from these tiny beings!!!!
Today’s Digest comprises of some interesting studies about effect of microbiome on chemotherapy and studies on tumor microbiome. It also includes articles exploring genetics of gut microbiome and the role of microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease. Additionally has a news article about taking microbiome therapies to clinical trials.
Hope you enjoy reading today’s digest!!
“Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning… Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings”. – Lynn Margulis

General microbiome
Human Microbiota and Effectiveness of Cancer Chemotherapy – Shvets et al – Experimental Oncology

Immunity to commensal skin fungi promotes psoriasiform skin inflammation – Hurabielle et al – PNAS

Human Tumor microbiome
*Perspective: Probing the tumor micro(b)environment – Atreya et al – Science

Human Eye microbiome
Review: Current Knowledge on the Human Eye Microbiome: A Systematic Review of Available Amplicon and Metagenomic Sequencing Data – Delbeke et al – Acta Ophthalmologica

Human nearly-sterile sites (blood, organs, brain)
Blood Bacterial Profiles Associated with HIV Infection and Immune Recovery – Serranno-Villar et al – The Journal of Infectious Diseases

Human gut microbiome
*Genetics of human gut microbiome composition – Kurilshikov et al – bioRxiv

Review: The microbiome in inflammatory bowel diseases: from pathogenesis to therapy – Liu et al – Protein&Cell

Built environment
Vertical Stratification in Urban Green Space Aerobiomes – Robinson et al – bioRxiv

Food microbiology
Food and mood: how do diet and nutrition affect mental wellbeing? – Firth et al – BMJ

Bioinformatics
DRAM for distilling microbial metabolism to automate the curation of microbiome function – Shaffer et al – bioRxiv

Techniques
MetaRibo-Seq measures translation in microbiomes – Fremin et al – Nature Communications

Microbes on the market
Enterome Secures €46M to Take Microbiome Therapies to Clinical Trials – Helen Albert – Labiotech.eu

Human Microbiome Therapeutics Market Research: Global Status & Forecast by Geography, Type & Application (2016-2026)

Probiotics to precision probiotics

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After “precision medicine”, it is now time to conceptualize the term “precision probiotics”. In simple words, fundamental idea of precision medicine is to develop “new taxonomy” of disease employing molecular characterization of disease based on individual data that will enable better stratification of patients and determining most effective treatments. On similar lines, Veiga and colleagues offer strategies to develop precision probiotics, combine with multi-omics host response data to find most optimal probiotic modality in stratified individuals/populations.

I would recommend to read the review in full. To motivate you, following are some excerpts from the review:

“Historically, the discovery of probiotics relied on a top-down approach, where a microorganism enriched in healthy individuals (compared to an altered health state) is suggested to be beneficial and correlates with a health benefit upon administration to humans…While this empirical top-down approach provides robust leads for the development of probiotics, in the absence of prior mechanistic information, it inherently necessitates multiple cycles of trial and error to identify health benefits.”

Problems with top-down approach

  • “Probiotic efficacy being both strain- and indication-specific
  • Person-specific factors also contribute to heterogeneity in the outcome of probiotic supplementations, including diet, age and the microbiome. Colonization-resistant microbiomes are more resilient to probiotic interventions compared to colonization-permissive individuals.”

Bottom up approach

“The phenotypic approach is based on screening for probiotic effects using in vitro and ex vivo cell cultures as well as animal models with immune, neuronal, metabolic or microbial read-outs.

Target-based discovery relies on the selection of probiotic candidates based primarily on in silico prediction of their capacity to produce molecular effectors that are potentially able to modulate host or microbial pathways, which are foreseen to play a critical role in health or disease. Such in silico predictions would require the use of multi-omics (such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and proteomics) possibly coupled to metabolic reconstruction to infer the metabolic capacity of the screened microorganisms.”

Challenges with bottom-up approach

  • “A greater challenge lies in applying a person-specific approach to predict efficacy, which likely requires obtaining profound individualized host data (including genetics, anthropometrics and immune profiling) and microbiome data (such as strain-level composition, transcriptomics and metabolomics), as well as identifying relevant biomarkers that predict colonization resistance and/or a health outcome.
  • As stool samples do not accurately reflect colonization and impact on the gut microbiota along the gastrointestinal tract during probiotic supplementation, there is a great need to devise non-invasive means for identifying compatible probiotic–individual matches.
  • Another important factor to consider is safety, as exogenous microorganisms can have unexpected effects on the microbiome, and can even compromise the health of vulnerable subjects and result in bacteraemia or fungaemia.”

I believe that these challenges also hold true for top-down approach

Precision probiotics strategies

The big aim

“…developing algorithms that, when provided with these individualized parameters, can suggest the optimal probiotic modality that would result in a beneficial outcome.”

  • “To achieve this goal, on one hand, scientists need to better characterize the physiological or pathological pathways that can be modulated by probiotics, in line with the increasing effort to use bottom-up approaches.
  • On the other hand, further digitization of tools for the collection and processing of person-specific data, and their integration with genomic and metabolomic host and microbiome profiles, will be required.
  • Setting up standardized protocols that allow bio-citizens to self-experiment in ‘N-of-1 trials’ and report their experiences with probiotics, coupled with individualized measurements, would greatly expand our understanding of differential probiotic activity in the heterogenous human population. This approach will require devising strict validation and safety measurements for promising centralized data collection while maintaining participants’ anonymity.“

“…While today, this (refers to microbiome data) personal information is poorly actionable, tomorrow it could serve as the basis for microbiome-centred precision nutrition and preventive medicine, including precision probiotics.”