Category Archives: Water microbiome

August 19, 2022

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Today’s digest is short and sweet! We have articles on the gut microbiota in rats, the influence of host genetics on the leaf fungal microbiome, and biofilm fouling in drinking water. There are also two manuscripts which provide tips for pathway enrichment analysis and biomarker discovery.

Happy reading! Also, if you’re in Scotland, consider checking out the enormous E. coli in Edinburgh this weekend!

Animal experiments

Effects of sea salt intake on metabolites, steroid hormones, and gut microbiota in rats – Chanmuang et al. – PLOS One

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

The changing influence of host genetics on the leaf fungal microbiome throughout plant development – Karasov & Lundberg – PLOS Biology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Impacts of temperature and hydraulic regime on discolouration and biofilm fouling in drinking water distribution systems – Fish et al. – PLOS Water

Bioinformatics

Nine quick tips for pathway enrichment analysis – Chicco & Agapito – PLOS Computational Biology

Ten quick tips for biomarker discovery and validation analyses using machine learning – Diaz-Uriarte et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

August 10, 2022

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General microbiome

Microbiome-associated human genetic variants impact phenome-wide disease risk – Markowitz et al. – PNAS

Microbial risk score for capturing microbial characteristics, integrating multi-omics data, and predicting disease risk – Wang et al. – Microbiome

[REVIEW]A framework for testing the impact of co-infections on host gut microbiomes – Schmid et al. – Animal Microbiome

Human vaginal microbiome

Vaginal microbiota and personal risk factors associated with HPV status conversion—A new approach to reduce the risk of cervical cancer? – Yang et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

[REVIEW]The role of the gut microbiota in multiple sclerosis – Correale, Hohlfeld & Baranzini

Specific gut microbiota alterations in essential tremor and its difference from Parkinson’s disease – Zhang et al. – NPJ Parkinson’s Disease

Identification of clinical and ecological determinants of strain engraftment after fecal microbiota transplantation using metagenomics – Podlesny et al. – Cell Reports Medicine

Alterations in gut microbiota of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients – Cheung et al. – Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Targeted suppression of human IBD-associated gut microbiota commensals by phage consortia for treatment of intestinal inflammation – Federici et al. – Cell

Animal microbiome

Camel milk microbiota: A culture-independent assessment – Rahmeh et al. – Food Research International

Effect of processing on the anti-inflammatory efficacy of cocoa in a high fat diet-induced mouse model of obesity – Weikart et al. – The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry

The impacts of viral infection and subsequent antimicrobials on the microbiome-resistome of growing pigs – Gaire et al. – Microbiome

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Soil microbial community structures are shaped by agricultural systems revealing little temporal variation – Fox, Widmer & Lüscher – Environmental Research

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

The streamwater microbiome encodes hydrologic data across scales – URycki et al. – Science of The Total Environment

Bioinformatics / Data

[PREPRINT]Lake iTag measurements over nineteen years, introducing the limony dataset – Rohwer & McMahon – bioRxiv

August 1st, 2022

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God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden.

Today’s digest has studies from diverse topics but the one that caught my attention is a preprint that addresses the controversial question of presence of a ‘normal blood microbiota’ in humans. The authors of this preprint analysed about 10,000 humans samples and provide evidence that there is no core blood microbiota.

A new preprint describes a unique Taleocin (a bacteriocin) from Pseudomonas syringae which defies the convention that bacteriocins have a narrow spectrum. The bacteriocin has a broad range killing activity against agriculturally important pathogens like Erwinia amylovora and Xanthomonas perforans as well as against the clinical human pathogen Salmonella choleraesuis.

Another preprint reports metabolic interactions responsible for unusually high Iron and lipid content in Geobacter sulfurreducens, a bacterium known iron reducing bacterium in the soil. Another environmental study found that human pathogens are the major carriers of antibiotic resistance genes in the Yangtze river – one of the longest in the world. This is in contrast to prevalent belief that conventional supercarriers are Enterococcus spp. and other fecal indicator bacteria.

Elsewhere in the digest is a preprint from my previous lab where my old colleagues have reported a small RNA and metal dependent mechanism that regulates the survival of Acinetobacter baumannii under oxidative stress.

As a bonus, there is a super intriguing preprint where the authors have actually provided evidence that coming up with creative and funny titles for your papers can help them gain more visibility and citations! So, all of you writing an article or planning to write one soon, this is a great tip!

I hope you will enjoy reading today’s digest and have a great week ahead!

Human gut

Microbiota responses to different prebiotics are conserved within individuals and associated with habitual fiber intake – Zachary C. Holmes, et al., Microbiome

Near-sterile sites

Preprint: No evidence for a common blood microbiome based on a population study of 9,770 healthy humans – Cedric C.S. Tan, et al.

Water microbiome

Supercarriers of antibiotic resistome in a world’s large river – Jiawen Wang, et al., Microbiome

Oceanospirillales containing the DMSP lyase DddD are key utilisers of carbon from DMSP in coastal seawater – Jingli Liu, et al., Microbiome

Community structure of coral microbiomes is dependent on host morphology – Kathleen M. Morrow, et al., Microbiome

Preprint: The impact of primary colonizers on the community composition of river biofilm – Roshan Angoshtari, et al.

Soil microbiome

Long-term nitrogen deposition enhances microbial capacities in soil carbon stabilization but reduces network complexity – Xingyu Ma, et al., Microbiome

Animal microbiome

Host-microbiota interaction-mediated resistance to inflammatory bowel disease in pigs – Xuan Zhao, et al., Microbiome

Preprint: The differing roles of flavins and quinones in extracellular electron transfer in Lactiplantibacillus plantarum – Joe Gregory Tolar, et al.

Bacteria Hysteria

Preprint: Interspecies Killing Activity of Pseudomonas syringae Tailocins – Savannah L Weaver, et al.

Preprint: Enhanced production of natural shiga toxin by overexpressing A subunit of Stx2e in Stx2e-producing Escherichia coli isolated in South Korea – Jin Hur, et al.

Preprint: Geobacter sulfurreducens′ unique metabolism results in cells with a high iron and lipid content – Ethan T Howley, et al.

Preprint: Cloning, heterologous expression and characterization of o-phthalyl-CoA decarboxylase from phthalate degrading denitrifying bacterium – Madan Junghare

Preprint: Acinetobacter baumannii defends against oxidative stress through a Mn2+-dependent small RNA-mediated suppression of type VI secretion system – Somok Bhowmik, et al.

Techniques

Preprint: Programmable acetylation modification of bacterial proteins by a Cas12a-guided acetyltransferase – Liu yanqiang, et al.

Fun

Preprint: If this title is funny, will you cite me? Citation impacts of humour and other features of article titles in ecology and evolution – Stephen B Heard, et al.

July 28, 2022

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Today’s digest includes research on the gut microbiome of infants, ruminants, and sand flies! There is also a preprint about sewage microbiomes as well as a research article about photosynthetic bacterial communities in crop fields.

Happy reading!

Human skin microbiome

Lichen Planopilaris: The first biopsy layer microbiota inspection – Pinto et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

Adaptation of the infant gut microbiome during the complementary feeding transition – McKeen et al. – PLOS One

Animal microbiome

Metagenomic insights into the microbe-mediated B and K2 vitamin biosynthesis in the gastrointestinal microbiome of ruminants – Jiang et al. – Microbiome

Comparative analysis of the gut microbiota of sand fly vectors of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL) in Iran; host-environment interplay shapes diversity – Karimian et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Metagenomic analysis of the dynamical conversion of photosynthetic bacterial communities in different crop fields over different growth periods – Cheng et al. – PLOS One

Built environment

Preprint: A metagenomic investigation of spatial and temporal changes in sewage microbiomes across a university campus – Fierer et al. – bioRxiv

July 13, 2022

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Today’s digest features studies on the leaf-microbiome of 🍅 and 🍓 plants (+ bumblebees and mites), human gut and wastewater resistome, and more. Happy reading!

Reproductive tract

Female reproductive tract microbiota and recurrent pregnancy loss: a nested case-control study – Pirkko Peuranpää – Reproductive BioMedicine Online

Gut microbiome

Dynamic metabolic interactions and trophic roles of human gut microbes identified using a minimal microbiome exhibiting ecological properties – Sudarshan A. Shetty – Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology

*Within-patient evolution of plasmid-mediated antimicrobial resistance – Javier DelaFuente – bioRxiv

An expanded reference map of the human gut microbiome reveals hundreds of previously unknown species – Sigal Leviatan – Nature Communications

Animal microbiome

Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa) Harbor a Distinctive Gut Microbiome Related to That of Honey Bees and Bumble Bees – Jo-anne C. Holley – Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Animal experiments

Gardnerella Exposures Alter Bladder Gene Expression and Augment Uropathogenic Escherichia coli Urinary Tract Infection in Mice – Nicole M. Gilbert – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Plant microbiome

*The Greenhouse Phyllosphere Microbiome and Associations with Introduced Bumblebees and Predatory Mites – Marie Legein – Microbiology Spectrum

Food microbiome

Longitudinal, multi-platform metagenomics yields a high-quality genomic catalog and guides an in vitro model for cheese communities – Christina C. Saak – bioRxiv

New insights of bacterial communities in fermented vegetables from shotgun metagenomics and identification of antibiotic resistance genes and probiotic bacteria – Muhammad Yasir – Food Research International

Water microbiome

*High-resolution characterisation of short-term temporal variability in the taxonomic and resistome composition of wastewater influent – Kevin Kaibond Chau – bioRxiv

Pilot investigation on biostability of drinking water distribution systems under water source switching – Kejia Zhang – Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Bioinformatics

*BinaRena: a dedicated interactive platform for human-guided exploration and binning of metagenomes – Michael J. Pavia – bioRxiv

getSequenceInfo: a suite of tools allowing to get genome sequence information from public repositories – Vincent Moco – BMC Bioinformatics

baseLess: Lightweight detection of sequences in raw MinION data – Ben Noordijk – bioRxiv

June 22, 2022

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General microbiome

A 16th century Escherichia coli draft genome associated with an opportunistic bile infection – Long et al. – Communications Biology

Pregnancy and early life

[PREPRINT]Strong pathogen competition in neonatal gut colonisation – Mäklin et al. – bioRxiv

Human skin microbiome

Dysbiosis of Skin Microbiota with Increased Fungal Diversity is Associated with Severity of Disease in Atopic Dermatitis – Schmid et al. – JEADV

Human gut microbiome

Loss of Novel Diversity in Human Gut Microbiota Associated with Ongoing Urbanization in China – Sun et al. – mSystems

A comprehensive analysis of the microbiota composition and host driver gene mutations in colorectal cancer – Yuan et al. – Investigational New Drugs

[REVIEW]Vegetarianism, Microbiota and Cardiovascular health: Looking back, and forward – Kumar et al. – European Journal of Preventive Cardiology

[REVIEW]Effects of a low FODMAP diet on the colonic microbiome in irritable bowel syndrome: a systematic review with meta-analysis – So, Loughman & Staudacher – The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Profiling gut microbiota and bile acid metabolism in critically ill children – Kean et al. – Scientific Reports

Super-taxon in human microbiome are identified to be associated with colorectal cancer – Dai et al. – BMC Bioinformatics

The gut metagenomics and metabolomics signature in patients with inflammatory bowel disease – Xu et al. – Gut Pathogenes

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

Immune checkpoint inhibitors unleash pathogenic immune responses against the microbiota – Hu et al. – PNAS

Deletion of both Dectin-1 and Dectin-2 affects the bacterial but not fungal gut microbiota and susceptibility to colitis in mice – Wang et al. – Microbiome

Animal microbiome (for animals in the wild)

Fecal microbiome of horses transitioning between warm-season and cool-season grass pasture within integrated rotational grazing systems – Weinert-Nelson, Biddle & Williams – Animal Microbiome

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

Full-Length 16S rRNA Gene Sequences from Raw Sewage Samples Spanning Geographic and Seasonal Gradients in Conveyance Systems across the United States – LaMartina, Schmoldt & Newton – Microbiology Resource Announcements

Techniques

SRS-FISH: A high-throughput platform linking microbiome metabolism to identity at the single-cell level – Ge et al. – PNAS

June 18, 2022

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Have a nice weekend! Today, in this Digest: The effect of the gut dysbiosis on prostate cancer, microbial inheritance, bee microbiome, rhizosphere microbiota, a comparison of DNA isolation techniques for deep amplicon sequencing, and more…

Human and General Microbiome

Gut dysbiosis promotes prostate cancer progression and docetaxel resistance via activating NF-κB-IL6-STAT3 axis – Weibo Zhong – Microbiome

On the effect of inheritance of microbes in commensal microbiomes – Román Zapién-Campos – BMC Ecology and Evolution

Ureaplasma and Prevotella colonization with Lactobacillus abundance during pregnancy facilitates term birth – Sunwha Park – Scientific Reports

Deep Grouping Analysis of the Altered Cervical Canal Microbiota in Intrauterine Adhesion Patients – Xiangdong Hua – Reproductive Sciences

Intestinal microbiota transplantation: do not forget the metabolites – Benjamin H Mullish – The Lancet. Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Characterization of oral and gut microbiome and plasma metabolomics in COVID-19 patients after 1-year follow-up – Guang-Ying Cui – Military Medical Research

Congenitally underdeveloped intestine drives autism-related gut microbiota and behavior – Jie Li – Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Beneficial Microbes and Compounds

Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus HA-114 improves eating behaviors and mood-related factors in adults with overweight during weight loss: a randomized controlled trial – Béatrice S-Y Choi – Nutritional Neuroscience

Model Animal Microbiome

New Strains of Akkermansia muciniphila and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii are Effective for Improving the Muscle Strength of Mice with Immobilization-Induced Muscular Atrophy – Hye Rim Byeon – Journal of Medicinal food

Non-Model Animal Microbiome

Comparative metagenomics reveals expanded insights into intra- and interspecific variation among wild bee microbiomes – Wyatt A Shell – Communications Biology

Rumen multi-omics addressing diet-host-microbiome interplay in farm animals: a review – Sonam Dixit – Animal Biotechnology

Plant Microbiome

Spatio-temporal variation in the root-associated microbiota of orchard-grown apple trees – Maximilian Fernando Becker – Environmental Microbiome

Identifying plant genes shaping microbiota composition in the barley rhizosphere – Carmen Escudero-Martinez – Nature Communications

Disentangling the genetic basis of rhizosphere microbiome assembly in tomato – Ben O Oyserman – Nature Communications

Environmental Microbiome

Rapid changes in coastal ocean microbiomes uncoupled with shifts in environmental variables – Jessica L Gronniger – Environmental Microbiology

Microplastics alter nitrous oxide production and pathways through affecting microbiome in estuarine sediments – Cheng Chen – Water Research

500 metagenome-assembled microbial genomes from 30 subtropical estuaries in South China – Lei Zhou – Scientific Data

Food Microbiome

Microbiome and -omics application in food industry – Ilario Ferrocino – International Journal of Food Microbiology

Bioinformatic and Experimental Microbiome Analysis

A comparison of six DNA extraction protocols for 16S, ITS and shotgun metagenomic sequencing of microbial communities – Justin P Shaffer – BioTechniques

Review: Machine Learning Advances in Microbiology: A Review of Methods and Applications – Yiru Jiang – Frontiers in Microbiology

June 8, 2022

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Happy Friday! Today’s digest includes articles about Gardnerella vaginalis clades in pregnancy, how a Japanese herbal medicine may alleviate a leaky gut, and a feasibility study of the impact of oral activated charcoal on healthy volunteers.

General microbiome

Clinical Burkholderia pseudomallei isolates from north Queensland carry diverse bimABm genes that are associated with central nervous system disease and are phylogenomically distinct from other Australian strains – Burnard et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Preprint: The energy requirements of ion homeostasis determine the lifespan of starving bacteria – Schink et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: A novel bacterial speciation process observed in a symbiotic marine population – Wang et al. – bioRxiv

Human vaginal microbiome

Gardnerella vaginalis clades in pregnancy: New insights into the interactions with the vaginal microbiome – Severgnini et al. – PLOS One

Human gut microbiome

Saireito, a Japanese herbal medicine, alleviates leaky gut associated with antibiotic-induced dysbiosis in mice – Ozaka et al. – PLOS One

A dose-finding safety and feasibility study of oral activated charcoal and its effects on the gut microbiota in healthy volunteers not receiving antibiotics – Rashidi et al. – PLOS One

Water and extremophile microbiome

The microbial community and functional potential in the Midland Basin reveal a community dominated by both thiosulfate and sulfate-reducing microorganisms – Tinker et al. – Microbiology Spectrum

Techniques

Performance of the TaqMan COVID-19 Pooling Kit for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic and symptomatic populations – Ganz et al.- PLOS One

June 13, 2022

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Today’s digest features metagenomics for clinical UTI diagnostics, microbial diversity in kombucha tea, microbial source tracking using single nucleotide variants, and more. Happy reading!

Neonatal microbiome

Editorial: More data needed on neonatal microbiome seeding – W. Florian Fricke & Jacques Ravel – Microbiome

Urinary microbiome

The Urobiomes of Adult Women With Various Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms Status Differ: A Re-Analysis – Cara Joyce – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

*Metagenomic DNA sequencing for semi-quantitative pathogen detection from urine: a prospective, laboratory-based, proof-of-concept study – Victoria A Janes – The Lancet Microbe

Gut microbiome

Perspective: Tiny Gatekeepers: Microbial Control of Host Drug Transporters – Than S. Kyaw and Peter J. Turnbaugh – Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics

Host hepatic metabolism is modulated by gut microbiota-derived sphingolipids – Henry H. Le – Cell Host & Microbe

Linking gastrointestinal microbiota and metabolome dynamics to clinical outcomes in paediatric haematopoietic stem cell transplantation – Gintare Vaitkute – Microbiome

Animal microbiome

Microbiomes of microscopic marine invertebrates do not reveal signatures of phylosymbiosis – Vittorio Boscaro – Nature Microbiology

Water microbiome

Cyanopeptides restriction and degradation co-mediate microbiota assembly during a freshwater cyanobacterial harmful algal bloom (CyanoHAB) – Han Gao – Water Research

Low diversity and microdiversity of comammox bacteria in wastewater systems suggests wastewater-specific adaptation within the Ca. Nitrospira nitrosa cluster – Irmarie Cotto – bioRxiv

Soil microbiome

Substrate Utilization and Competitive Interactions Among Soil Bacteria Vary With Life-History Strategies – Ying Wang – Frontiers in Microbiology

In-depth characterization of denitrifier communities across different soil ecosystems in the tundra – Igor S. Pessi – bioRxiv

Food

*Microbial Diversity and Interaction Specificity in Kombucha Tea Fermentations – Elizabeth A. Landis – mSystems

Spontaneous Riboflavin-Overproducing Limosilactobacillus reuteri for Biofortification of Fermented Foods – Irina Spacova, Sarah Ahannach – Frontiers in Nutrition

Bioinformatics

coda4microbiome: compositional data analysis for microbiome studies – M.Luz Calle & Antoni Susin – bioRxiv

GeneToList: A web application to assist with gene identifiers for the non-bioinformatics-savvy scientist – Joshua D. Breidenbach – bioRxiv

*Microbiome source tracking using single nucleotide variants – Leah Briscoe – bioRxiv

June 3, 2022

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Happy Friday!

Today’s digest has articles on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, a new R package to extract network backbones, and a class of novel antibiotics that targets a Mycobacterium tuberculosis PE-PGRS protein. There also preprints on biofilm winkling in Bacillus subtilis, the dental calculus microbiome, and the relationship between eukaryotic genomes and ocean plankton in a global metagenomic dataset.

Events

Next week is ASM Microbe! I’ll be there, wearing a KN-95 and clutching a box of rapid tests. Feel free to comment or reach out if you’re also attending.

COVID-19

Oro-facial mucocutaneous manifestations of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19): A systematic review – Fakhruddin et al. – PLOS ONE

Preprint: The salivary and nasopharyngeal microbiomes are associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease severity – Kim et al. – bioRxiv

Determinants of the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy spectrum – Piltch-Loeb et al. – PLOS ONE

General microbiome

Preprint: Fatty acid synthesis knockdown promotes biofilm wrinkling and inhibits sporulation in Bacillus subtilis – Arjes et al. – bioRxiv

Association of Strongyloides stercoralis infection and type 2 diabetes mellitus in northeastern Thailand: Impact on diabetic complication-related renal biochemical parameters – Yingklang et al. – PLOS ONE

Analysis of secondary metabolite gene clusters and chitin biosynthesis pathways of Monascus purpureus with high production of pigment and citrinin based on whole-genome sequencing – Zhang et al. – PLOS ONE

Human respiratory microbiome

A novel class of antimicrobial drugs selectively targets a Mycobacterium tuberculosis PE-PGRS protein – Seo et al. – PLOS Biology

Human oral microbiome

Preprint: Assessing the influence of the Mediterranean diet on dental calculus microbiome composition: a pilot study – Innocenti et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Lactobacillus plantarum improves LPS-induced Caco2 cell line intestinal barrier damage via cyclic AMP-PKA signaling – Wei et al. – PLOS ONE

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

Preprint: Eukaryotic genomes from a global metagenomic dataset illuminate trophic modes and biogeography of ocean plankton – Alexander et al. – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

backbone: An R package to extract network backbones – Neal – PLOS ONE