March 20, 2021

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Have a nice weekend! Today we have to remark a Free webinar to be online next March 24. We also have a bunch of articles about different beneficial compounds, microbes, or interventions on the microbiome (from human milk to dietary supplements). Today we also highlight articles about the potential effect of resident bacteria on opportunistic respiratory infections, a set of papers about insect microbiome, and a review about the use of Machine Learning in microbiome studies.

Webinars

Free webinar: The One You Feed: Identifying Specific Interactions Of Dietary Fiber Structures And The Microbiota That Ferment Them. March 24, 1:30-2:30 ET

Human and General Microbiome

Parasites, niche modification, and the host microbiome: A field survey of multiple parasites – Kayleigh R. O’Keeffe – Molecular Ecology

Large-scale functional network connectivity mediate the associations of gut microbiota with sleep quality and executive functions – Huanhuan Cai – Human Brain Mapping

Early Life Microbiome

Factors Associated With the Microbiome in Moderate-Late Preterm Babies: A Cohort Study From the DIAMOND Randomized Controlled Trial – Clara Yieh Lin Chong – Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

Respiratory Tract Microbiome

Resident bacteria contribute to opportunistic infections of the respiratory tract – Yifan Wu – PLoS Pathogens

The influence of nasal microbiome diversity and inflammatory patterns on the prognosis of nasal polyps – Weigang Gan – Scientific Reports

Animal Microbiome

Persistence of the ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) microbiome to diet manipulation – Anita Silver – PLoS One

Pollinators mediate floral microbial diversity and network under agrochemical disturbance – Na Wei – Molecular Ecology

Assessment of bacterial and fungal populations in urine from clinically healthy dogs using next-generation sequencing – Tonatiuh Melgarejo – Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine

Immunosuppressive effect of mesenchymal stem cells on lung and gut CD8 + T cells in lipopolysaccharide-induced acute lung injury in mice – Yanping Xu – Cell Proliferation

Environmental Microbiome

Aerobiological study of bacterial and fungal community composition in the atmosphere of Mexico City throughout an annual cycle – María del Carmen Calderón-Ezquerro – Environmental Pollution

Beneficial Microbes and Compounds

Bio-therapeutics from Human Milk: Prospects and Perspectives – Kumar Siddharth Singh – Journal of Applied Microbiology

Low fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols diet compared with traditional dietary advice for diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome: a parallel-group, randomized controlled trial with analysis of clinical and microbiological factors associated with patient outcomes – Yawen Zhang – The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Synergistic Protective Effects of Different Dietary Supplements Against Type 2 Diabetes via Regulating Gut Microbiota – Leilei Yu – Journal of Medicinal Food

Characterization of antibacterial activity of a N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase produced by Latilactobacillus sakei isolated from salami – Adriana Lopez-Arvizu – World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology 

Administration of β-lactam antibiotics and delivery method correlate with intestinal abundances of Bifidobacteria and Bacteroides in early infancy, in Japan – Naruaki Imoto – Scientific Reports

Lactobacillus acidophilus LA5 improves saturated fat-induced obesity mouse model through the enhanced intestinal Akkermansia muciniphila – Thunnicha Ondee – Scientific Reports

Plant Microbiome

Review: Linking Plant Secondary Metabolites and Plant Microbiomes: A Review – Zhiqiang Pang – Frontiers in Plant Science

Bioinformatics

Review: Applications of Machine Learning in Human Microbiome Studies: A Review on Feature Selection, Biomarker Identification, Disease Prediction and Treatment – Laura Judith Marcos-Zambrano – Frontiers in Microbiology

Mycobiome (Early 2021 Semi-Annual Fungal Microbiome Picks)

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It’s been a while, but its time to highlight some recent mycobiome articles!

Human mycobiome

Intestinal mycobiota in health and diseases: from a disrupted equilibrium to clinical opportunities – Wu et al. – Microbiome

Gut mycobiota in immunity and inflammatory disease – Li et al. – Immunity

Response to fungal dysbiosis by gut-resident CX3CR1(+) mononuclear phagocytes aggravates allergic airway disease.- Li et al. – Cell Host Microbe. 

Human anti-fungal Th17 immunity and pathology rely on cross-reactivity against Candida albicans. – Bacher et al. – Cell. 

Prevalence and diversity of filamentous fungi in the airways of cystic fibrosis patients – a Dutch, multicentre study. – Engle et al. – J Cyst Fibros.

Early gut mycobiota and mother-offspring transfer. – Schei – Microbiome

Fungi form interkingdom microbial communities in the primordial human gut that develop with gestational age. – Willis et al – FASEB J.

Investigating colonization of the healthy adult gastrointestinal tract by fungi. – Auchtung et al. – mSphere.

CX3CR1+ mononuclear phagocytes control immunity to intestinal fungi. – Leonardi et al. – Science.

Commensal Candida albicans positively calibrates systemic Th17 immunological responses. – Shao et al – Cell Host Microbe. 

Macrophages maintain epithelium integrity by limiting fungal product absorption. – Chikina et al. – Cell.

Fungal symbionts produce prostaglandin E2 to promote their intestinal colonization. – Tan et al. – Front Cell Infect Microbiol.

The fungal mycobiome promotes pancreatic oncogenesis via activation of MBL. – Aykut et al – Nature. 

Fungal microbiota dysbiosis in IBD. – Sokol et al – Gut.

Malassezia is associated with Crohn’s disease and exacerbates colitis in mouse models. – Limon et al – Cell Host Microbe.

Macrophage interactions with fungi and bacteria in inflammatory bowel disease. – Leonardi et al. – Curr Opin Gastroenterol.

Fungi participate in the dysbiosis of gut microbiota in patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis. – Lemoinne et al – Gut

Intestinal fungi contribute to development of alcoholic liver disease. – Yang et al – J Clin Invest.

Animal mycobiome

The gut mycobiome of healthy mice is shaped by the environment and correlates with metabolic outcomes in response to diet – Mims and Al Abdallah et al. – Communications Biology

Profound mycobiome differences between segregated mouse colonies do not influence Th17 responses to a newly introduced gut fungal commensal. – Doron et al. – Fungal Genet Biol.

Season, age, and sex affect the fecal mycobiota of free-ranging Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana). – Sun et al – Am J Primatol.

Altered immunity of laboratory mice in the natural environment is associated with fungal colonization. – Yeung et al – Cell Host Microbe. 

Mycobiome techniques

The fungal frontier: a comparative analysis of methods used in the study of the human gut mycobiome. – Huseyin et al. – Front Microbiol. 

MetaEuk—sensitive, high-throughput gene discovery, and annotation for large-scale eukaryotic metagenomics – Karen et al. – Microbiome

Accurate and sensitive detection of microbial eukaryotes from whole metagenome shotgun sequencing – Lind et al – Microbiome

Tiara: Deep learning-based classification system for eukaryotic sequences –  Karlicki et al – bioRxiv.org

~ Kent Willis, MD

March 18, 2021

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Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Today’s digest has a lot of food and agriculture associated articles. Several articles focus on the effects of various pathogens on dairy cows, beef steers, and poultry breeds! For those of us who are more interested in plants, there is an article on biogas production from tomato waste and a preprint on how the microbial community of food waste changes during the composting process. Finally, I included a research article about social media during the pandemic since I’m sure I’m not the only one who has relied on it a little too heavily over the last year…

Happy reading!

General microbiome

Preprint: Toward quantifying the adaptive role of bacterial pangenomes during environmental perturbations – Conrad et al. – bioRxiv

BlueFeather, the singleton that wasn’t: Shared gene content analysis supports expansion of Arthrobacter phage Cluster FE – Demo et al. – PLOS ONE

Review: The gut microbiota–brain axis in behaviour and brain disorders – Morais et al. – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Preprint: Cross-species evolutionary rewiring in the enteric bacterium Campylobacter – Taylor et al. – bioRxiv

Human gut microbiome

Gut microbiota profiles in diarrheic patients with co-occurrence of Clostridioides difficile and Blastocystis – Vega et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal experiments

Preprint: Low pathogenic avian influenza virus infection retards colon microbiome diversification in two different chicken lines – Chrzastek et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: Borrelia infection in rodent host has dramatic effects on the microbiome of ticks – Hamilton et al. – bioRxiv

Animal microbiome

Preprint: The discovery, distribution and diversity of DNA viruses associated with Drosophila melanogaster in Europe – Wallace et al. – bioRxiv

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Effects of precipitation change and nitrogen addition on the composition, diversity, and molecular ecological network of soil bacterial communities in a desert steppe – Jia et al. – PLOS ONE

Preprint: Changes and composition of microbial community during aerobic composting of household food waste – Jin et al. – bioRxiv

Preprint: What’s under the Christmas tree? Soil acidification alters fir tree rhizosphere bacterial and eukaryotic communities, their interactions, and functional traits – Steven et al. – bioRxiv

A comparative analysis of biogas production from tomato bio-waste in mesophilic batch and continuous anaerobic digestion systems – Szilágyi et al. – PLOS ONE

Food microbiology

Red seaweed (Asparagopsis taxiformis) supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80 percent in beef steers – Roque et al. – PLOS ONE

Prevalence and distribution of multilocus sequence types of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from bulk tank milk and cows with mastitis in Pennsylvania – Thomas et al. – PLOS ONE

Multidrug-resistant enterobacteria in newborn dairy calves in Germany – Waade et al. – PLOS ONE

Phages and viruses

Review: Viral and host heterogeneity and their effects on the viral life cycle – Jones et al. – Nature Review Microbiology

Bioinformatics

Dcmd: Distance-based classification using mixture distributions on microbiome data – Shestopaloff et al. – PLOS Computational Biology

Kara’s non-microbiology pick

Don’t put all social network sites in one basket: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and their relations with well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic – Masciantonio et al. – PLOS ONE

March 16, 2021

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Human gut microbiome

Strain-level functional variation in the human gut microbiota based on bacterial binding to artificial food particles – Patnode et al. Cell Host & Microbe. 

Debaryomyces is enriched in Crohn’s disease intestinal tissue and impairs healing in mice – Jain et al. Science.

Dysbiosis in Metabolic Genes of the Gut Microbiomes of Patients with an Ileo-anal Pouch Resembles That Observed in Crohn’s Disease – Dubinsky et al. mSystems

Human-associated microbiota suppress invading bacteria even under disruption by antibiotics – Letten et al. ISME

Early life 

Key bacterial taxa and metabolic pathways affecting gut short-chain fatty acid profiles in early life – Tsukuda et al. ISME

Human oral microbiome

Tonsillar Microbiota: a Cross-Sectional Study of Patients with Chronic Tonsillitis or Tonsillar Hypertrophy – Wu et al. mSystems

Animal experiments 

Long-term evolution and short-term adaptation of microbiota strains and sub-strains in mice – Yilmaz et al. Cell Host & Microbe

Bioinformatics

ContigExtender: a new approach to improving de novo sequence assembly for viral metagenomics data – Deng & Delart. BMC Bioinformatics

March 15th, 2021

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God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. Another Monday, a new week, and a new digest.

Today’s digest comes with a new review on gut microbiota focusing on the mycobiota which is mostly overlooked as a bulk of studies focus their interest on bacterial diversity in the gut instead. A very cool feature, which I think is now fast becoming common in papers published in Microbiome is the use of a very informative video abstract. As I mentioned in my previous digest, a video abstract catches the eye and it could very well be the next big thing in academic publishing.

There is some potential bad news from Brazil as a team has identified a new nCoV variant of interest (VoI) which probably originated in August 2020 and accounted for about 3% of all samples analyzed between November 2020 and February 2021. The variant also accounted for a very high fraction (35%) of all the B.1.1.33 lineage samples analyzed during the aforementioned period and is now considered widely distributed in Brazil. The troubling fact is that this variant has a S:E484K mutation in the spike protein and this mutation has been implicated in immune evasion and resistance to several monoclonal antibodies. Speaking about COVID-19, there is a new study that tested the viability of nCoV on various inanimate surfaces. The virus persisted longest on a surgical mask (for about 124 hours) and reduced the fastest on a polyester shirt (about 2.5 hours).

Elsewhere in the digest is a preprint that analysed publically available datasets to determine the effect of space type radiation on the gut microbiome, a somewhat controversial study (check out the comments section) hypothesizing the use of fungus to attenuate ionizing radiation on the ISS, and a comprehensive study of E. coli phage-host interactions within the BASEL phage collection.

Hope you’ll enjoy today’s digest.

Intestinal mycobiota in health and diseases: from a disrupted equilibrium to clinical opportunities – Xiaoyan Wu, et al., Microbiome

Preprint: A potential SARS-CoV-2 variant of interest (VOI) harboring mutation E484K in the Spike protein was identified within lineage B.1.1.33 circulating in Brazil – Paola C Resende, et al.

Preprint: Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 virus and viral RNA on hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces and investigating contamination concentration – Susan Elizabeth Paton, et al.

Preprint: Systematic exploration of Escherichia coli phage-host interactions with the BASEL phage collection – Enea Maffei, et al.

Preprint: PulseNet international: the missing link between PFGE and WGS – Ibrahim El-khalil M Adam

Preprint: Spontaneous Escherichia coli persisters with week-long survival dynamics and lasting memory of a short starvation pulse – Mikkel Skjoldan Svenningsen, et al.

Preprint: A Self-Replicating Radiation-Shield for Human Deep-Space Exploration: Radiotrophic Fungi can Attenuate Ionizing Radiation aboard the International Space Station – Graham K. Shunk, Xavier R. Gomez, and Nils J. H. Averesch

Preprint: Resistance to aztreonam in combination with non-β-lactam β-lactamase inhibitors due to the layering of mechanisms in Escherichia coli identified following mixed culture selection – Ching Hei Phoebe Cheung, et al.

Preprint: Yersinia pestis lipopolysaccharide remodeling confers resistance to a Xenopsylla cheopis cecropin – Basil Mathew, Kari L. Aoyagi, and Mark A. Fisher

Preprint: Rare transmission of commensal and pathogenic bacteria in the gut microbiome of hospitalized adults – Benjamin A Siranosian, et al.

Preprint: Radiation Threats to Humans in Space and an alternative approach with Probiotics – Dilara Diken, et al.

March 12, 2021

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Today’s digest is HUGE.

Read about the healthy urogenital microbiome profiling by culturomics, gutSMASH (Specialized Primary Metabolite Analysis From Anaerobic Bacteria), (sub)strains evolution in mice, and AMPSphere (a comprehensive catalog of antimicrobial peptides).

There are interesting results of a new metaanalysis of the neonatal microbiome, maternal strain inheritance, and persistence into adolescence, evaluation of the effect of long-term freezing storage temperature on fecal samples, and estimation of the bioinformatic carbon footprint using the freely available Green Algorithms calculator. Find out more about statistics & challenges in molecular microbiology (with a reproducible research appendix!).

NEWS: The Transbiome project is a community driven research program using crowdfunding and co-creation to discover the diversity of the neo-vaginal microbiome. You can support the project here.

Check out a list of awesome webinars, courses and podcasts. Happy Friday!

Gut microbiome

*A systematic analysis of metabolic pathways in the human gut microbiota – Victòria Pascal Andreu – bioRxiv

*Strain inheritance and neonatal gut microbiota development: A meta-analysis – Daniel Podlesny and W. Florian Fricke – International Journal of Medical Microbiology

Adaptive ecological processes and metabolic independence drive microbial colonization and resilience in the human gut – Andrea R. Watson – bioRixv

Effect of fecal microbiota transplantation on neurological restoration in a spinal cord injury mouse model: involvement of brain-gut axis – Yingli Jing – Microbiome

Review: Association between antibiotics and gut microbiome dysbiosis in children: systematic review and meta-analysis – Lucy McDonnell – Gut Microbes

Review: Salmonella versus the Microbiome – Andrew W. L. Rogers – Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews

Respiratory microbiome

Strain-Resolved Dynamics of the Lung Microbiome in Patients with Cystic Fibrosis – Marija Dmitrijeva – mBio

Oral microbiome

Review: Resilience of the oral microbiome – William G. Wade – Periodontology 2000

Skin microbiome

Skin microbiota and clinical associations in Netherton sindrome – Veera Sillanpää – JID Innovations

Urogenital microbiome

*Long-term stability of the urogenital microbiota of asymptomatic European women – Magdalena Ksiezarek – BMC Microbiology

Limosilactobacillus urinaemulieris sp. nov. and Limosilactobacillus portuensis sp. nov. isolated from urine of healthy women – Magdalena Ksiezarek – International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Vaginal microbiome

The structure and diversity of strain-level variation in vaginal bacteria – Brett A. Tortelli – Microbial Genomics

Obesity is associated with lower bacterial vaginosis prevalence in menopausal but not pre-menopausal women in a retrospective analysis of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study – Elizabeth Daubert – PlosOne

Bacterial biofilm formation on vaginal ring pessaries used for pelvic organ prolapse – Felicity G. Gould – International Urogynecology Journal

Animal microbiome

*Long-term storage of feces at −80 °C versus −20 °C is negligible for 16S rRNA amplicon profiling of the equine bacterial microbiome – Stefan Gavriliuc – PeerJ

Differences in the gut microbiomes of dogs and wolves: roles of antibiotics and starch – Yuting Liu – BMC Veterinary Research

An Expanded Gene Catalog of Mouse Gut Metagenomes – Jiahui Zhu – mSphere

Animal experiments

*Long-term evolution and short-term adaptation of microbiota strains and sub-strains in mice – Bahtiyar Yilmaz – Cell Host & Microbe

The gut mycobiome of healthy mice is shaped by the environment and correlates with metabolic outcomes in response to diet – Tahliyah S. Mims – Communications Biology

Functional genetics of human gut commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron reveals metabolic requirements for growth across environments – Hualan Liu – Cell Reports

Tea polyphenols regulate gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by antibiotic in mice – Jie Li – Food Research International

Plant microbiome

Designing a home for beneficial plant microbiomes – Chunxu Song – Current Opinion in Plant Biology

Food

Review: Polymicrobial interaction between Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae: coexistence-relevant mechanisms – Zhenbo Xu – Critical Reviews in Microbiology

Viruses and phages

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

Review: Biases in Viral Metagenomics-Based Detection, Cataloguing and Quantification of Bacteriophage Genomes in Human Faeces, a Review – Julie Callanan – Microorganisms

Techniques

High molecular weight DNA extraction strategies for long-read sequencing of complex metagenomes – Florian Trigodet – bioRxiv

Bioinformatics

*AMPSphere: the worldwide survey of prokaryotic antimicrobial peptides – Célio Dias Santos-Júnior – Zenodo

*A Statistical Perspective on the Challenges in Molecular Microbial Biology – Pratheepa Jeganathan and Susan P. Holmes – arXiv

*The carbon footprint of bioinformatics – Jason Grealey – bioRxiv

*Make Interactive Complex Heatmaps in R – Zuguang Gu and Daniel Huebschmann – bioRxiv

Machine learning applications in microbial ecology, human microbiome studies, and environmental monitoring – Ryan B.Ghannam and Stephen M.Techtmann – Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Tutorial: assessing metagenomics software with the CAMI benchmarking toolkit – Fernando Meyer – Nature Protocols

STATegra: Multi-Omics Data Integration – A Conceptual Scheme With a Bioinformatics Pipeline – Nuria Planell – Frontiers in Genetics

Exploring bacterial diversity via a curated and searchable snapshot of archived DNA sequences – Grace A. Blackwell – bioRxiv

clinker & clustermap.js: automatic generation of gene cluster comparison figures – Cameron L M Gilchrist & Yit-Heng Chooi – Bioinformatics

gapseq: informed prediction of bacterial metabolic pathways and reconstruction of accurate metabolic models – Johannes Zimmermann – Genome Biology

Webinars

mSystems Thinking Series: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Microbiology – ASM – March 26

The Microbiome Centers Consortium Seminar Series – weekly seminars featuring early career researchers – Thursdays

Americas Webinar: Mother’s Milk & Baby’s Bacteria: Discoveries from the CHILD Cohort Study – Meghan Azad – April 14

Courses & Workshops

Get R Done: R Tutorials video series – Chad C. Williams

Machine Learning in Genomics: Tools, Resources, Clinical Applications and Ethics – the NHGRI Genomic Data Science Working Group of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research – April 13-14

Podcast

February 2021 Pod: Global Chang‪e‬ – Bengtsson-Palme Lab – Microbiology Lab Pod

Enhancers with Molly Gasperini – Jacob Schreiber – The Bioinformatics Chat

Matthew Schechter: Metagenomics History Part 1 and 2 – Leo Elworth – The Bioinformatics and Beyond Podcast

Ep. 33 Oyster Microbiome with Dr. Rachel Diner – Julie Laurin – Planet B612

Art

UMich Microbial Masterpieces – Community for microbe enthusiasts and artists – Erica Gardner, Anna Urso, Bruna Iunes Sanches
*Check out their giant Winogradsky Panel in the Duderstadt Center gallery

March 5, 2021

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Human microbiome

A multi-omic investigation of male lower urinary tract symptoms: Potential role for JC virus – Thomas S. et al. – PLOS ONE

Association between physical activity and changes in intestinal microbiota composition: A systematic review – Aya V. et al. – PLOS ONE

Plant microbiome

Specialized microbiomes facilitate natural rhizosphere microbiome interactions counteracting high salinity stress in plants – Santos S. et al. – Environmental and Experimental Botany

Methods

Impact of sampling depth on pathogen detection in pit latrines – Capone D. et al. – PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

A novel methodology to study antimicrobial properties of high-touch surfaces used for indoor hygiene applications—A study on Cu metal – Chang T. et al. – PLOS ONE

Functional capacities of microbial communities to carry out large scale geochemical processes are maintained during ex situ anaerobic incubation – Wilson R. M. et al. – PLOS ONE

Animal microbiome

Wastewater treatment works change the intestinal microbiomes of insectivorous bats – Mehl C. et al. – PLOS ONE

Microbial communities developing within bulk sediments under fish carcasses on a tidal flat – Kawamoto Y. et al. – PLOS ONE

Host-microbe interactions

Host-microbe cross-talk governs amino acid chirality to regulate survival and differentiation of B cells – Suzuki M. et al. – Science Advances

Education

An integrated, modular approach to data science education in microbiology – Dill-McFarland, K. A. et al. – PLOS Computational biology

Tools

Five key aspects of metaproteomics as a tool to understand functional interactions in host-associated microbiomes – Salvato, F. et al. – PLOS Pathogens

March 4, 2021

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Happy Thursday from San Francisco! Today’s Microbiome Digest includes: a paper by Marbouty et al. in which a large number of phages and their interacting bacteria were identified in the healthy human gut; a thorough examination by Zhu et al. of the composition and metabolic potential of cave-dwelling bacteria, including sequencing of 14 new bacterial species; and a study by Mu et al. which found that the maternally-derived microbe Lactobacillus reuteri promotes immunoglobulin A production in the neonatal gut.

There is also a study by Serrano-Villar et al. which examined the use of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMTs) in HIV patients. The authors observed that FMT led to engraftment of two bacterial families–Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae–typically depleted in HIV-infected subjects and decreased levels of a plasma biomarker of intestinal permeability. While the findings are interesting, I remain skeptical of the appropriateness of FMTs in this context. Instead of an FMT–which requires donors and screening of their stool to ensure quality and safety–why not use a probiotic cocktail of Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae family members and perhaps include prebiotic factors to try to promote engraftment?

Additionally, there is a great article by Ras et al. discussing the results of a pilot study that successfully implemented microbiome-related bioinformatics courses across 11 African countries.

Pregnancy and Early Life
Distinct Changes Occur in the Human Breast Milk Microbiome Between Early and Established Lactation in Breastfeeding Guatemalan Mothers. – Gonzales, E. et al., Frontiers in Microbiology.

Human Skin Microbiome
Spermidine-induced recovery of human dermal structure and barrier function by skin microbiome. – Kim, G. et al. Communications Biology.

Human Vaginal Microbiome
Influence of dapivirine vaginal ring use on cervicovaginal immunity and functional microbiome in adolescent girls. – Farr Zuend, C. et al., AIDS.

Mapping the entire functionally active endometrial microbiota. – Sola-Leyva, A. et al., Human Reproduction.

Genomic relatedness and clinical significance of Streptococcus mitis strains isolated from the urogenital tract of sexual partners. – Mores, C.R. et al., Microbial Genomics.

Human Gut Microbiome
Identification of an N-acetylneuraminic acid-presenting bacteria isolated from a human microbiome. – Han, Z. et al., Scientific Reports.

Fecal microbiota transplantation in HIV: A pilot placebo-controlled study. – Serrano-Villar, S. et al., Nature Communications.

Gastrointestinal microbiota composition predicts peripheral inflammatory state during treatment of human tuberculosis. – Wipperman, M.F. et al., Nature Communications.

Animal Experiments
Regulation of neonatal IgA production by the maternal microbiota. – Mu, Q. et al., PNAS.

Lysates of Methylococcus capsulatus Bath induce a lean-like microbiota, intestinal FoxP3+RORγt+IL-17+ Tregs and improve metabolism. – Jensen, B.A.H., et al., Nature Communications.

Sex-dependent modulation of immune development by secretory IgA–coated Lactobacillus reuteri isolated from breast milk. – Qi, C. et al., Journal of Dairy Science.

Oral berberine improves brain dopa/dopamine levels to ameliorate Parkinson’s disease by regulating gut microbiota. – Wang, Y. et al., Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

Animal Microbiome
Lactobacillus reuteri-derived extracellular vesicles maintain intestinal immune homeostasis against lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory responses in broilers. – Hu, R. et al., Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology.

Plant, Root, and Soil Microbiome
Dicer-like proteins influence Arabidopsis root microbiota independent of RNA-directed DNA methylation. – Kaushal, R. et al., Microbiome.

Succession of the Resident Soil Microbial Community in Response to Periodic Inoculations. – Wang, Z. et al., Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Climate change alters temporal dynamics of alpine soil microbial functioning and biogeochemical cycling via earlier snowmelt. – Broadbent, A.A.D. et al., ISME Journal.

Water and Extremophile Microbiome
Microbial Community Structure Driven by a Volcanic Gradient in Glaciers of the Antarctic Archipelago South Shetland. – García-Lopez, E. et al., Microorganisms.

Effect of polymer type on the colonization of plastic pellets by marine bacteria. – Hansen, J. et al., FEMS Microbiology Letters.

Lifestyle of sponge symbiont phages by host prediction and correlative microscopy. – Jahn, M.T. et al., ISME Journal.

Bacteria and Metabolic Potential in Karst Caves Revealed by Intensive Bacterial Cultivation and Genome Assembly. – Zhue, H-Z et al., Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Phages and Viruses
MetaHiC phage-bacteria infection network reveals active cycling phages of the healthy human gut. – Marbouty, M. et al., Elife.

Bioinformatics
On the evolutionary origins of host–microbe associations. – Sieber, M. et al., PNAS.

Ecology-guided prediction of cross-feeding interactions in the human gut microbiome. – Goyal, A. et al., Nature Communications.

Using a multiple-delivery-mode training approach to develop local capacity and infrastructure for advanced bioinformatics in Africa. – Ras, V. et al., PLoS Computational Biology.

Techniques
Amplicon-based skin microbiome profiles collected by tape stripping with different adhesive film dressings: a comparative study. – Ogai, K. et al., BMC Microbiology.

High-Resolution Differentiation of Enteric Bacteria in Premature Infant Fecal Microbiomes Using a Novel rRNA Amplicon. – Graf, J. et al., mBio.

March 1st, 2021

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God morgon!

Good morning from Sweden. It is hard to believe that it has been a year since the unprecedented happenings of March 2020 but regardless of how we see it, time flies!

The most interesting read of the day is a study that conclusively proves that the oral microbiota is not influenced by your genetics, but by environmental factors. I was intrigued by the use of a video byte, a small video abstract of the paper, which is something new for me. In my opinion, it could very well be the next big thing in academic publishing as it took me just two minutes to understand the whole study! Do check it out!

A promising study is in a preprint where the researchers show that the pre-colonization with a less virulent strain of Clostridioides difficile protects model organisms from subsequent lethal colonization of C. difficile. This has important therapeutic implications in case of nosocomial, antibiotic-promoted diarrhea. Another exciting study shows the influence of gut microbiome on colorectal cancer. The researchers showed that the transplant of ‘good’ microbiota from healthy donors could even reduce the tumorigenesis in the disease models.

Elsewhere in the digest are studies on microbiome of tropical marine sediments, novel proteins from human intestinal microbiome, virulence factors of Trypanosoma brucei, and new therapeutic epitopes in N1 neuraminidase of Influenza virus.

Happy reading!

Bacteria Hysteria

Preprint: Protection from lethal Clostridioides difficile infection via intraspecies competition for co-germinant – Jhansi L. Leslie, et al.

Preprint: Fiber-associated Lachnospiraceae reduce colon tumorigenesis by modulation of the tumor-immune microenvironment – Ana S Almeida, et al.

Preprint: G9a and Sirtuin6 epigenetically modulate host cholesterol accumulation to facilitate mycobacterial survival – Praveen Prakhar, et al.

Preprint: Identification of a chromosomally-encoded sucrose operon-like gene cluster in Vibrio parahaemolyticus strain PH05 isolated from Negros Island, Philippines – Czarina Anne E. De Mesa, et al.

Preprint: Gene flux and acid-imposed selection are the main drivers of antimicrobial resistance in broiler chicks infected with Salmonella enterica serovar Heidelberg – Adelumola Oladeine, et al.

Preprint: Analyses of the complete genome sequence of 2,6-dichlorobenzamide (BAM) degrader Aminobacter sp. MSH1 suggests a polyploid chromosome, phylogenetic reassignment, and functions of (un)stable plasmids – Tue Kjærgaard Nielsen, et al.

Preprint: Growth response and recovery of Corynebacterium glutamicum colonies on single-cell level upon defined pH stress pulses – Sarah Täuber, et al.

Preprint: Comparative genomics analysis of Chryseobacterium sp. KMC2 reveals metabolic pathways involved in keratinous utilization and natural product biosynthesis – Dingrong Kang, et al.

Preprint: Calprotectin-mediated zinc chelation inhibits Pseudomonas aeruginosa protease activity in cystic fibrosis sputum – Danielle M. Vermilyea, et al.

General Microbiome

Acquisition of oral microbiota is driven by environment, not host genetics – Chiranjit Mukherjee, et al., Microbiome

Dicer-like proteins influence Arabidopsis root microbiota independent of RNA-directed DNA methylation – Richa Kaushal, et al., Microbiome

The bacterial communities of Alaskan mosses and their contributions to N2-fixation – Hannah Holland-Moritz, et al., Microbiome

Preprint: A Tad-like apparatus is required for contact-dependent prey killing in predatory social bacteria – Sofiene Seef, et al.

Preprint: Completion of the gut microbial epi-bile acid pathway – Heidi L. Doden, et al.

Discovery of novel community-relevant small proteins in a simplified human intestinal microbiome – Hannes Petruschke, et al., Microbiome

Metagenomics and Bioinformatics

Preprint: Beyond taxonomic identification: integration of ecological responses to a soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene database – Briony A. Jones, et al.

Preprint: Amplicon sequence variants artificially split bacterial genomes into separate clusters – Patrick D. Schloss

Preprint: Microbial diversity in tropical marine sediments assessed using culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques – Alyssa M Demko, Nastassia V Patin, and Paul R. Jensen.

Viruses

Preprint: The Epstein-Barr virus ubiquitin deconjugase BPLF1 regulates the activity of Topoisomerase II during virus replication – JInlin Li, et al.

Preprint: Novel epitopes of human monoclonal antibodies targeting the influenza virus N1 neuraminidase – Ericka Kirkpatrick Roubidoux, et al.

Others

Preprint: Organotypic endothelial adhesion molecules are key for Trypanosoma brucei tropism and virulence – Mariana De Niz, et al.

February 27th, 2021

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Hyvää Päivää from Helsinki, Finland ! Today’s digest contains quite a lot of different topics. If you are interested in gut microbiomes, I recomment taking a look at the preprint by Weiss and collaborator. In this study, they explore bacteria-bacteria interactions, bacterial growth and metabolic interactions in a synthetic bacterial community: the Oligo-Mouse-Microbiota, which is increasingly used as model system in gut microbiome research.

Additionally, anyone interested in microbiome-based forensic tools should read the study from Sang You and collaborators.  They compared the composition of microbial communities in blood spot surfaces placed in different environments sampled across seasons and time points, in order to evaluate the environmental factors leading to variation in these microbial communities.

Today’s non-microbiology pick is a fascinating study looking at the prevalence of COVID-19 related misinformation among the Yemeni population and its association with vaccine acceptance and perceptions. From this study, the authors recommend the deployment of awareness campaigns to decrease misinformation before initiating any mass vaccination in Yemen.

Have a great Weekend!

Human gut microbiome

Review: The Multiomics Analyses of Fecal Matrix and Its Significance to Coeliac Disease Gut Profiling – Gangadoo et al. – International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Preprint: Exploring the interaction network of a synthetic gut bacterial community – Weiss et al. – BioRxiV

Animal experiments

Environmental concentrations of antibiotics alter the zebrafish gut microbiome structure and potential functions – Rehman Kayani et al. – Environmental Pollution

Fish farm effluents as a source of antibiotic resistance gene dissemination on Jeju Island, South Korea – Jo et al. – Environmental Pollution

Influence of environmental factors and bacterial community diversity in pond water on health of Chinese perch through Gut Microbiota change – Li et al. – Aquaculture Reports

Preprint: The diversity, composition, and metabolic pathways of archaea in pigs – Deng et al. – Preprints

Animal microbiome

Preprint: Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease biomarker bacteria identified in corals and overlying waters using a rapid field-based sequencing approach – Becker et al. – bioRxiV

Built environment

Microbial analyses of blood spot surfaces collected from a laboratory and the bathroom of a female single-person household under different environmental conditions – Sang You et al – FEMS Microbiology letters

Phages and viruses

Opinion paper: Rapid emergence of virus–host mutualism under stress – Dolja – PNAS

Patterns of virus growth across the diversity of life – Jin and Yin – Integrative biology

Techniques

Standard Bacteriophage Purification Procedures Cause Loss in Numbers and Activity – Carroll-Portillo et al. – Viruses

My non-microbiology picks

Preprint: Misinformation, Perceptions Towards COVID-19 and Willingness to be Vaccinated: A Population-Based Survey in Yemen – Naoras Bitar et al. – BioRxiV