New Year

Happy New Year, may all your microbes be happy and good!

BacterioFiles 367 - Migrating Modifies Microbiota

Konjac root vegetable
By: Sebastian Stabinger
CC BY-SA 3.0

This episode: Women who immigrated to the US from southeast Asia lost much of their gut microbiota diversity, resulting in a microbe community similar to the typical American!

Takeaways
Our gut microbiota, the community of microbes in our gastrointestinal tract, is associated with many aspects of health, including weight. People living in less industrialized places often have a greater diversity of microbes in their gut communities than those living in more industrialized nations.

In this study, when women from Thailand immigrated to the US or were born of such immigrants in the US, their gut microbe communities soon came to resemble those of Americans of European descent, with lower diversity of species. They also tended to gain weight.

However, the diets of these immigrants and children of immigrants didn't resemble the typical American diet as closely as one might expect, suggesting that there may be other factors affecting the gut community of these women.

Download Episode (9.3 MB, 10.2 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Pseudomonas anguilliseptica

News item

Journal Paper:
Vangay P, Johnson AJ, Ward TL, Al-Ghalith GA, Shields-Cutler RR, Hillmann BM, Lucas SK, Beura LK, Thompson EA, Till LM, Batres R, Paw B, Pergament SL, Saenyakul P, Xiong M, Kim AD, Kim G, Masopust D, Martens EC, Angkurawaranon C, McGready R, Kashyap PC, Culhane-Pera KA, Knights D. 2018. US Immigration Westernizes the Human Gut Microbiome. Cell 175:962-972.e10.

Other interesting stories:

• Soil archaea help plants resist pathogenic microbes (paper)
• Engineering bacteria to evolve more heat-stable proteins with unusual amino acids
• Anemones and clown fish live together and also share microbes

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

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BacterioFiles 366 - Globules Get Garbage Gone

By: Rang et al, 2018
mSphere 3:e00428-18

This episode: Bacteria rid themselves of burdensome waste by ejecting it inside little pieces of their own cell, called minicells!


Download Episode (10.8 MB, 11.9 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Cacao yellow mosaic virus

News item

Journal Papers:
Rang CU, Proenca A, Buetz C, Shi C, Chao L. 2018. Minicells as a Damage Disposal Mechanism in Escherichia coli. mSphere 3:e00428-18.

Other interesting stories:

• Gut microbe can help protect mice from colon cancer (paper)
• Microbes living in super-dry desert couldn't survive excess rains

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

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

Episode outline:

BacterioFiles 365 - Saccharomycopsis Cells Slay Sickeners

Predator attacking prey with
penetration peg
By: Junker et al. 2018 Sci Rep 8
CC BY 4.0

This episode: Dr. Klara Junker joins me to discuss her work on the predatory yeast Saccharomycopsis schoenii that can kill the serious pathogenic yeast Candida auris!


Download Episode (11.0 MB, 12.0 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Lambdapapillomavirus 5

Movies of Saccharomycopsis attacking other yeasts

Journal Papers:
Junker K, Bravo Ruiz G, Lorenz A, Walker L, Gow NAR, Wendland J. 2018. The mycoparasitic yeast Saccharomycopsis schoenii predates and kills multi-drug resistant Candida auris. Sci Rep 8:14959.

Other interesting stories:

• Studying which microbes grow well on different gravestones
• Certain fiber-digesting bacteria in mouse gut correlate with less artery disease

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

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

BacterioFiles 364 - Polyproteins Promote Producing Pabulum

Nitrogenase enzyme
By Jjsjjsjjs - Own work,
CC BY-SA 3.0

This episode: Engineering other organisms to fix nitrogen by combining the required enzyme components into giant proteins that then get cut into the regular-sized subunit components!


Download Episode (10.5 MB, 11.5 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Blastochloris sulfoviridis

Journal commentary (paywall)

Journal Papers:
Yang J, Xie X, Xiang N, Tian Z-X, Dixon R, Wang Y-P. 2018. Polyprotein strategy for stoichiometric assembly of nitrogen fixation components for synthetic biology. Proc Natl Acad Sci 115:E8509–E8517.

Other interesting stories:

• How the human microbiota recovers after antibiotic treatment

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

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

Episode outline:

BacterioFiles 363 - Tiny Treasure Tunnels

Tunnels in garnet
By: Ivarsson et al. 2018,
PLoS ONE 13(8):e0200351
CC BY 4.0

This episode: Intricate networks of tunnels in garnet gemstones seem to have come from tunneling microorganisms!

Thanks to Magnus Ivarsson for his contribution!

Download Episode (5.4 MB, 5.9 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces griseosporeus

News item

Journal Papers:
Ivarsson M, Skogby H, Phichaikamjornwut B, Bengtson S, Siljeström S, Ounchanum P, Boonsoong A, Kruachanta M, Marone F, Belivanova V, Holmström S. 2018. Intricate tunnels in garnets from soils and river sediments in Thailand – Possible endolithic microborings. PLOS ONE 13:e0200351.

Other interesting stories:

• Swimming algae can move through bloodstream to deliver drugs
• Mosquito microbes engineered to inhibit spread of malaria (paper)
• A probiotic inhibits a pathogen by interfering with its signaling between cells
• Healthy microbiota seems important for mice recovering from heart attack

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

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

Episode outline:

BacterioFiles 362 - Combining Chromosomes

Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast

This episode: Combining all 16 of yeast's chromosomes into one or two only impairs their growth slightly in the lab, but it prevents them from successful mating with wild yeasts!

Download Episode (12.4 MB, 13.6 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Vibrio succinogenes

News item 1/News item 2

Journal Papers:
Luo J, Sun X, Cormack BP, Boeke JD. 2018. Karyotype engineering by chromosome fusion leads to reproductive isolation in yeast. Nature 560:392–396.
Shao Y, Lu N, Wu Z, Cai C, Wang S, Zhang L-L, Zhou F, Xiao S, Liu L, Zeng X, Zheng H, Yang C, Zhao Z, Zhao G, Zhou J-Q, Xue X, Qin Z. 2018. Creating a functional single-chromosome yeast. Nature 560:331–335.

Other interesting stories:

• Treating Salmonella infection with phages plus gut microbiota works better together (paper)
• Bioreactor fermentation strategy allows efficient vitamin K production

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

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

Episode outline: