August 19, 2020

Greetings!

Today’s digest is heavy on environmental microbiology with topics ranging from marine microplastics to carbon budgets to kitchen waste. I want to especially highlight a study that examines the phyllosphere of the mānuka. They found that the mānuka, or tea tree, has a stable core microbiome and variation in the non-core taxa is explained by biogeographical patterns.

Enjoy!

Events and jobs

Virtual Microbiome Bioinformatics Qiime2 Workshop – October 5-9, 2020

General microbiome

Opinion: Oceanic hitchhikers – Assessing pathogen risks from marine microplastic – Bowley et al. – Trends in Microbiology

Multi-site human microbiome

Analysis of the composition and functions of the microbiome in diabetic foot osteomyelitis based on 16S rRNA and metagenome sequencing technology – Mengchen et al. – Diabetes

Animal experiments

Developmental stage-associated microbiota profile of the peach fruit fly, Bactrocera zonata (Diptera: Tephritidae) and their functional prediction using 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding sequencing – Naaz et al. – 3 Biotech

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

A core phyllosphere microbiome exists across distant populations of a tree species indigenous to New Zealand – Noble et al. – PLOS One

Water and extremophile microbiome

Carbon budgets for soil and plants respond to long-term warming in an Alaskan boreal forest – Alster et al. – Biogeochemistry

First insights to the microbial communities in the plant process water of the multi-metal Kevitsa mine – Bomberg et al. – Research in Microbiology

Halomicroarcula amylolytica sp. nov., a novel halophilic archaeon isolated from a salt mine – Chen et al. – International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Spatial patterns of microbial communities across surface waters of the Great Barrier Reef – Frade et al. – Communications Biology

Isolation and characterization of a novel acidophilic zero-valent sulfur- and ferric iron-respiring Firmicute – Holanda and Johnson – Research and Microbiology

Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants – Maguvu et al. – PLOS One

Transient dynamics of archaea and bacteria in sediments and brine Across a salinity gradient in a solar saltern of Goa, India – Mani et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Diversity and distribution of cultivable fungi present in acid sulphate soils in chronosequence under para-periglacial conditions in King George Island, Antarctica – Porto et al. – Extremophiles

Investigation of the ecological roles of putative keystone taxa during tailing revegetation – Sun et al. – Environmental Science & Technology

Geochemistry and microbiology predict environmental niches with conditions favoring potential microbial activity in the Bakken shale – Tinker et al. – Frontiers in Microbiology

Spatial patterns of selenium and profiling of Se-tolerant Bacillus strains in Shiwalik foot-hills – Tiwana et al. – Geomicrobiology Journal

Bacterial laccase of Anoxybacillus ayderensis SK3-4 from hot springs showing potential for industrial dye decolorization – Wang et al. – Annals of Microbiology

Built environment

Comparison of microbial communities during anaerobic digestion of kitchen waste: Effect of substrate sources and temperatures – Jiang et al. – Bioresource Technology

August 16, 2020

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

August 14, 2020

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

Have a great weekend!

Events

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

General microbiome

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

Pregnancy and early life

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

Human milk microbiome

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

Human oral microbiome

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

Human gut microbiome

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

Animal experiments

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

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

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

Animal microbiome

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

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

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Water, air, and extremophile microbiome

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

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

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

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

Built environment

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

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

Bioinformatics and other techniques

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

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

Microbes in the News

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

Science Publishing and Career

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

August 13, 2020

Today’s updates – microbiome connections in various disease cohorts such as gastric cancer, IBD, anorexia nervosa, obesity and diabetes; information on gut bacterial polyphosphates and o-glycanases and their role in host immunity and mucin breakdown; and new sequencing strategies to identify antibiotic-resistant genes. Happy reading!

General microbiome

Gut microbiota and COVID-19: A superfluous diagnostic biomarker or therapeutic target? – Emily Klann – Clinical Infectious Diseases

Engineered Live Biotherapeutics: Progress and Challenges – Yang Tan – Biotechnology Journal

Human microbiome

Gut microbial co-abundance networks show specificity in inflammatory bowel disease and obesity – Lianmin Chen – Nature Communications

Multi-omics data integration in anorexia nervosa patients before and after weight regain: A microbiome-metabolomics investigation – Alessio Maria Monteleone – Clinical Nutrition

Gastric Microbiome Diversities in Gastric Cancer Patients from Europe and Asia Mimic the Human Population Structure and Are Partly Driven by Microbiome Quantitative Trait Loci – Bruno Cavadas – Microorganisms

Faecal microbiota signatures of IBD and their relation to diagnosis, disease phenotype, inflammation, treatment escalation and anti-TNF response in a European Multicentre Study (IBD-Character) – S. Vatn – Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology

A randomized crossover trial on the effect of plant-based compared with animal-based meat on trimethylamine-N-oxide and cardiovascular disease risk factors in generally healthy adults: Study With Appetizing Plantfood—Meat Eating Alternative Trial (SWAP-MEAT) – Anthony Crimarco – Americal Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Whole-blood transcriptome profiling reveals signatures of metformin and its therapeutic response – Monta Ustinova – PlosOne

Microbial Profile During Pericoronitis and Microbiota Shift After Treatment – Xiuling Huang – Frontiers in Microbiology

Animal experiments

Unraveling the camel rumen microbiome through metaculturomics approach for agriculture waste hydrolytic potential – Shweta Srivastava – Archives of Microbiology

Bacterial polyphosphates interfere with the innate host defense to infection – Julian Roewe – Nature Communications

Prominent members of the human gut microbiota express endo-acting O-glycanases to initiate mucin breakdown – Lucy I. Crouch – Nature Communications

Nostoc sphaeroids Kütz polysaccharide and powder enrich a core bacterial community on C57BL/6j mice – Meixia Li – International Journal of Biological Macromolecules

Maternal dietary omega-3 deficiency worsens the deleterious effects of prenatal inflammation on the gut-brain axis in the offspring across lifetime – Q. Leyrolle – Neuropsychopharmacology

Water microbiome

Influence of the polar light cycle on seasonal dynamics of an Antarctic lake microbial community – Pratibha Panwar – Microbiome

Techniques

Light into the darkness: Unifying the known and unknown coding sequence space in microbiome analyses – Chiara Vanni – BioRxiv

Metagenomic next-generation sequencing of rectal swabs for the surveillance of antimicrobial-resistant organisms on the Illumina Miseq and Oxford MinION platforms – Rebecca Yee – European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases

August 12, 2020

General microbiome

[REVIEW] Host–microbiota interactions in immune-mediated diseases – Ruff, Greiling and Kriegel – Nature Reviews Microbiology

[REVIEW] Diversity within species: interpreting strains in microbiomes – van Rossum et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Animal microbiome

Vast Differences in Strain-Level Diversity in the Gut Microbiota of Two Closely Related Honey Bee Species – Ellegaard et al. – Current Biology

Oral and vaginal microbiota in selected field mice of the genus Apodemus: a wild population study – Matejkova et al. – Scientific Reports

Characterization of Cutaneous Bacterial Microbiota from Superficial Pyoderma Forms in Atopic Dogs – Older et al. – Pathogens

Water and extremophile microbiome

Cryptic fungal diversity revealed in deep- sea sediments associated with whale-fall chemosynthetic ecosystems – Nagano et al. – Mycology

Bioinformatics

[PREPRINT] Feature selection and causal analysis for microbiome studies in the presence of confounding using standardization – Goren et al. – bioarxiv

A Distance-Based Framework for the Characterization of Metabolic Heterogeneity in Large Sets of Genome-Scale Metabolic Models – Cabbia et al. – Patterns

FORENSIC: an Online Platform for Fecal Source Identification – Roguet et al. – mSystems

Techniques

Bacterial mock communities as standards for reproducible cytometric microbiome analysis – Cichocki et al. – Nature Protocols

August 10th, 2020

God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. Today’s digest is a light one but carries a preprint with some very important findings. The study has suggested that the nCoV can potentially hijack the immune system completely by infecting the lymphocytes. This might lead to impaired antibody and T-cell response, something that could have a serious implication on the success of the much-awaited vaccine. (Unfortunately, for some unknown reasons, the PDF of the preprint is inaccessible to me! Let me know down in the comments if you are able to download it.)

A new paper in BMC microbiome shows a correlation between the indoor dust microbiota and the microbiota of infant airways. A classic example of how our environment impacts our health.  There is another interesting preprint where the authors show that a fungus alters its virulence when it is challenged by predatory amoebae. Perhaps the amoeba challenge selects for the warrior mutants which then carry on their warring ways!

Elsewhere in the digest is a preprint where Plasmodium knowlesi was used as a model to successfully determine new vaccine targets against more dangerous Plasmodium vivax, a paper detailing the effect of polar light cycles on the Antarctic lake microbiome, and identification of haloarchael species in Korean gut microbiota.

COVID-19

Preprint: Infection of human lymphomononuclear cells by SARS-CoV-2 – Marjorie C Pontelli, et al.

General Microbiology

Preprint: Amoeba predation of Cryptococcus neoformans results in pleiotropic changes to traits associated with virulence – Man Shun Fu, et al.

Preprint: Using Plasmodium knowlesi as a model for screening Plasmodium vivax blood-stage malaria vaccine targets reveals new candidates – Duncan N Ndegwa, et al.

General microbiome

Influence of the polar light cycle on seasonal dynamics of an Antarctic lake microbial community – Pratibha Panwar, et al. – Microbiome

Environmental shaping of the bacterial and fungal community in infant bed dust and correlations with the airway microbiota – Shashank Gupta, et al. – Microbiome

Archaea/Gut microbiota

The human gut archaeome: identification of diverse haloarchaea in Korean subjects – Joon Yong Kim, et al. – Microbiome

Techniques

Preprint: Successful introduction of the Colour Test into inexperienced settings – Kadri Klaos

Zoom Seminar

How a healthy gut microbe affects your whole body? – Karen Ranzi, Holistic Health Coach, Award-Winning Author, Motivational Speaker, Natural Foods Chef, Speech and Feeding Therapist (phew!)

August 9, 2020

Good morning and a wonderful Sunday!
While you are eating your Sunday eggs and sipping your coffee, enjoy the small collection of microbiome et al. papers- exactly the right size for a Sunday morning.
Visit the microbial community living at Antarctic volcanoes with the preprint from Benda et al. or read the findings by Gibb et al. that indicate that human-managed ecosystems favor the presence of reservoirs of zoonotic diseases- very interesting in the light of the current pandemic. Enjoy!


Human gut microbiome

Essential oils and microbiota: Implications for diet and weight control – Nurhan Unusan – Trends in Food Science & Technology


Animal microbiome

The Gut Microbiota of Pheasant Lineages Reflects Their Host Genetic Variation – Jinmei Ding et al – Frontiers in Genetics

Water and extremophile microbiome

*Preprint: Metabolic potential and survival strategies of microbial communities across extreme temperature gradients on Deception Island volcano, Antarctica – Amanda G Benda – BioRxiv

Review: New Microbial Biodiversity in Marine Sediments – Brett J Baker et al. – Annual Review of Marine Science


Bioinformatics

Improved normalization of species count data in ecology by scaling with ranked subsampling (SRS): application to microbial communities – Lukas Beule et al – PeerJ

Techniques

Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper – Maureen A. Carey et al – PLOS Computational Biology


Judith’s non-microbiology picks

*Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems – Rory Gibb et al – Nature

August 6, 2020

Good morning from Minnesota! A broad selection of papers to share with you today: Immune responses in lung transplant patients, an examination of how hurricanes can alter the soil microbiome, and a cool preprint on host–microbe interactions in stickleback, plus 10 more—

Human respiratory microbiome

(Preprint) Nasal commensal, Staphylococcus epidermidis shapes the mucosal environment to prevent influenza virus invasion through Serpine1 induction, Ara Jo et al., bioRxiv

Cystic Fibrosis Lung Transplant Recipients Have Suppressed Airway Interferon Responses during Pseudomonas Infection, Daniel T. Dugger et al., Cell Reports Medicine

Human gut microbiome

The alteration of gut microbiome and metabolism in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients, Qianqian Zeng et al., Scientific Reports

Home, Sweet Home: How Mucus Accommodates our Microbiota, Benjamin X Wang et al., The FEBS Journal

Animal experiments

Preprint: Immune gene expression covaries with gut microbiome composition in stickleback, Lauren E Fuess et al., bioRxiv

Transient neonatal antibiotic exposure increases susceptibility to late-onset sepsis driven by microbiota-dependent suppression of type 3 innate lymphoid cells, Xinying Niu et al., Scientific Reports

Animal microbiome

Concentration and chemical form of dietary zinc shape the porcine colon microbiome, its functional capacity and antibiotic resistance gene repertoire, Robert Pieper et al., The ISME Journal

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Major changes in grapevine wood microbiota are associated with the onset of esca, a devastating trunk disease, Emilie Bruez et al., Environmental Microbiology

Increase in abundance and decrease in richness of soil microbes following Hurricane Otto in three primary forest types in the Northern Zone of Costa Rica, William D. Eaton et al., PLOS ONE

Water and extremophile microbiome

Planet Microbe: a platform for marine microbiology to discover and analyze interconnected ‘omics and environmental data, Alise J Ponsero et al., Nucleic Acids Research

Microbial communities can predict the ecological condition of headwater streams, Robert H. Hilderbrand et al., PLOS ONE

Bioinformatics

(Preprint) Snipe: Highly sensitive pathogen detection from metagenomic sequencing data, Lihong Huang et al., bioRxiv

Techniques

Impact of time and temperature on gut microbiota and SCFA composition in stool samples, Janet L. Cunningham et al., PLOS ONE

August 5, 2020

Today’s Microbiome Digest showcases a study of a microbiota derived metabolite that promotes HDAC3 in the gut indicating an epigenetic senror of the microbiota, as well as several interesting papers from Cell Host & Microbe, Nature Microbiology and mSystems.

Covid-19

Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – Boni et al. Nature Microbiology

Retrospective Multicenter Cohort Study Shows Early Interferon Therapy Is Associated with Favorable Clinical Responses in COVID-19 Patients – Wang et al. Cell Host & Microbe

General microbiome

The human gut archaeome: identification of diverse haloarchaea in Korean subjects – Kim et al. BMC Microbiome. 

Microbiota-derived metabolite promotes HDAC3 activity in the gut – Wu et al. Nature

Antibiotics

Distinct Bacterial Pathways Influence the Efficacy of Antibiotics against Mycobacterium tuberculosis – Bellerose et al. mSystems

Novel Antimicrobials from Uncultured Bacteria Acting against Mycobacterium tuberculosis – Quigley et al. mBio

 

Water and extremophile microbiome

Microbial Metabolic Redundancy Is a Key Mechanism in a Sulfur-Rich Glacial Ecosystem – Trivedi et al. mSystems

Bioinformatics

Precise Species Identification for Enterobacter: a Genome Sequence-Based Study with Reporting of Two Novel Species, Enterobacter quasiroggenkampii sp. nov. and Enterobacter quasimori sp. Nov. – Wu et a. mSystems

Phages and viruses

Doubling of the known set of RNA viruses by metagenomic analysis of an aquatic virome – Wolf et al. Nature Microbiology

August 4, 2020

Greetings Everyone. Today’s Microbiome Digest comprises of a wide variety of topics covering soil microbiota, tumor to water to extremophile microbiome. The digest has some reviews, books, as well as interesting articles on how synthetic microbial communities facilitate sustainable growth and the role of microbial communities in balancing the environment. A terrific news article covering the isolation of microbes buried beneath the sea floor for more than 100 million years. Today’s digest can be summarized by a quote by Julie Morley.

“Every being devotes and dedicates itself to some innate purpose. Single cells, microbes, plants, insects, animals – every being makes it own unique contribution” – Julie J. Morley

General microbiome

*Shifts in the microbiota associated with male mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) exposed to an obligate gut fungal symbiont (Zancudomyces culisetae) – Jonas Frankel-Bricker – Scientific Reports

Microbiome-derived metabolites reproduce the mitochondrial dysfunction and decreased insulin sensitivity observed in type 2 diabetes – Ormsby et al – bioRxiv

*Synthetic microbial communities of heterotrophs and phototrophs facilitate sustainable growth – Zuñiga et al – Nature Communications

Multi-site human microbiome

Microbiome harbored within tumors: a new chance to revisit our understanding of cancer pathogenesis and treatment – Zhao et al – Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy

Human skin microbiome
Paradigms and Perspectives: The skin microbiome as a clinical biomarker in atopic eczema: Promises, navigation, and pitfalls – Reiger et al – The journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Human gut microbiome
Review: Gut microbiota and atherosclerosis: role of B cell for atherosclerosis focusing on the gut-immune-B2 cell axis – Chen et al – Journal of Molecular Medicine

Gut microbiome a promising target for management of respiratory diseases – Trivedi et al – Biochemical Journal

*A carbohydrate-active enzyme (CAZy) profile links successful metabolic specialization of Prevotella to its abundance in gut microbiota – Aakko et al – Scientific Reports

Effects of antibiotic treatment on gut microbiota and how to overcome its negative impacts on human health – Ribeiro et al – ACS Infect. Dis

Animal experiments
Dynamics of uterine microbiota in postpartum dairy cows with clinical or subclinical endometritis – Pascottini et al – Scientific Reports

Plant, root, and soil microbiome
Book chapter: The Extended Microbiota: How Microbes Shape Plant-Insect Interactions – Mayoral-Peña et al – Evolutionary Ecology of Plant-Herbivore Interaction

Response of Soil Microbial Community to C:N:P Stoichiometry along a Caragana korshinskii Restoration Gradient on the Loess Plateau, China – Zhang et al – forests

Review: The endosphere microbial communities, a great promise in agriculture – Adeleke et al – International Microbiology

Water and extremophile microbiome
Influence of microorganisms on initial soil formation along a glacier forefield on King George Island, maritime Antarctica – Krauze et al – Biogeosciences

Review: Microbial communities of soda lakes and pans in the Carpathian Basin: a review – Tamás Felföldi – Biologia Futura

Fungal Community in Antarctic Soil Along the Retreating Collins Glacier (Fildes Peninsula, King George Island) – dos Santos et al – microorganims

Culture Independent Diversity of Bacterial Communities Indigenous to Lower Altitude at Laohugou Glacial Environment – Ali et al – Geomicrobiology Journal

Review: Methanosarcina acetivorans: A Model for Mechanistic Understanding of Aceticlastic and Reverse Methanogenesis – James G. Ferry – Front.Microbiol

The Composition of Microbial Communities in Six Streams, and Its Association With Environmental Conditions, and Foodborne Pathogen Isolation – Chung et al – Front.Microbiol

Food microbiology
FoodOmics as a new frontier to reveal microbial community and metabolic processes occurring on table olives fermentation – Vaccalluzzo et al – Food Microbiology


Bioinformatics
Book: A Bioinformatics Primer for the Analysis of Illumina MiSeq Data of Litter-Associated Fungi and Bacteria – Seena et al – Methods to Study Litter Decomposition

Techniques
Review: Method development for cross-study microbiome data mining: challenges and opportunities – Su et al – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Microbes in the news
*Scientists pull living microbes, possibly 100 million years old, from beneath the sea – Elizabeth Pennnisi – Science