BacterioFiles 318 - Killers Controlling Coral Contamination

Predator attacking and killing prey
From: Welsh et al. 2017 PeerJ
CC-BY 4.0

This episode: Bacteria that prey on other bacteria could help keep corals healthy! Thanks to Rory Welsh for his contribution.

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Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Latino mammarenavirus

Journal Paper:
Welsh RM, Rosales SM, Zaneveld JR, Payet JP, McMinds R, Hubbs SL, Thurber RLV. 2017. Alien vs. predator: bacterial challenge alters coral microbiomes unless controlled by Halobacteriovorax predators. PeerJ 5:e3315.

Other interesting stories:

Using trees and their microbes to clean up pollution

Using bacteria to preserve/repair stone monuments and statues (paper)

Stable gut microbes could help defend against amoeba infection

Phage therapy treats very resistant infection in person

Probiotic + probiotic food could help prevent infant sepsis (paper)

Post questions or comments here or email to bacteriofiles@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

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Episode outline:

BacterioFiles 317 - Mosquito Microbe Movement

Aedes aegypti
By Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Own work, GFDL 1.2

This episode: Studying how Wolbachia bacteria spread through a mosquito population helps efforts to use them to prevent the spread of Dengue! Thanks to Tom Schmidt for his contribution.

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Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Heterosigma akashiwo virus 01

News item

Journal Paper:
Schmidt TL, Barton NH, Rašić G, Turley AP, Montgomery BL, Iturbe-Ormaetxe I, Cook PE, Ryan PA, Ritchie SA, Hoffmann AA, O’Neill SL, Turelli M. 2017. Local introduction and heterogeneous spatial spread of dengue-suppressing Wolbachia through an urban population of Aedes aegypti. PLOS Biol 15:e2001894.

Other interesting stories:

Gut bacteria affect what foods and bacteria that fruit flies prefer to eat

Using mouth bacteria to estimate time of death

Huge bacterial protein attaches to ice and diatoms

Feeding friendly gut microbes helps prevent imbalance

Bacteria can sense and respond to touch

Post questions or comments here or email to bacteriofiles@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

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Episode outline:

BacterioFiles 316 - Studying Sizeable Special Synthetases

Beauvericin
By Yu et al. 2017, Nat Commun
CC-BY 4.0

This episode: Scientists study how fungi make interesting peptides using large proteins instead of ribosomes.

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Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Nerine virus X

News item

Journal Paper:
Yu D, Xu F, Zhang S, Zhan J. 2017. Decoding and reprogramming fungal iterative nonribosomal peptide synthetases. Nat Commun 8:ncomms15349.

Other interesting stories:

Using CRISPR to encode a short movie into a bacterial genome (paper)

Virus that tolerates boiling acid could be model for super-tough nanomaterials

Avoiding microbiota disruption protects frogs from parasites

Soil microbe communities are also recovering in prairie restoration

Couples modify each other's microbe communities, though not much

Post questions or comments here or email to bacteriofiles@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

Subscribe: iTunes, RSS, Google Play. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook.

Episode outline: