Feature Channels: Microbiome

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Researchers have discovered microbes living in a toxic volcanic lake that may rank as one of the harshest environments on Earth.

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Catalog of candidate genes involved in plant-microbe relationships.

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How can dietary changes shape a person’s gut bacteria, and then how do those bacteria shape health and diseases, like obesity, diabetes, and susceptibility to infection diseases?

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Drinking kefir may have a positive effect on blood pressure by promoting communication between the gut and brain. Kefir is a fermented probiotic milk beverage known to help maintain the balance of beneficial bacteria in the digestive system. Researchers will present their findings today at the American Physiological Society (APS) annual meeting at Experimental Biology 2018 in San Diego.

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The bacteria that reside on and within our bodies are known to have a significant influence on our health. New research suggests wiping out the gut microbiota could improve heart functioning and potentially slow the cardiac damage that occurs with heart failure.

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The Latest News On Marijuana Research

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The Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research has joined the International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research as a sponsoring partner, both organizations announced today

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Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reduced immune system regulation, as well as shifts in their gut microbiota. The immune deregulation appears to facilitate increased inflammation and may be linked to the gastrointestinal issues so often experienced by children with ASD. The research was published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

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A new study—one of a few to concentrate on microbes in the upper gastrointestinal tract—shows how the typical calorie-dense western diet can induce expansion of microbes that promote the digestion and absorption of high-fat foods. Over time, the steady presence of these microbes can lead to over-nutrition and obesity.

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New research from The Ohio State University offers a glimpse into the complexity of interactions between bacteria and the viruses – or phages – that infect them.

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The composition of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract may hold clues to help predict which cancer patients are most apt to benefit from the personalized cellular therapies that have shown unprecedented promise in the fight against hard-to-treat cancers.

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Bacterial infections that target the intestine can cause conditions that range from uncomfortable to deadly. While it’s easy to blame the bacteria, it’s actually the toxins the bacteria produce that trigger inflammation, diarrhea, fever and cramps.

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In Nature Biotechnology, an international team including JGI scientists presents a reference catalog of rumen microbial genomes and isolates, one of the largest targeted cultivation and sequencing projects to date.

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A new study indicates that the kinds of microbes living in the gut influence the severity and recurrence of parasitic worm infections in developing countries. The findings, by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, suggest that manipulating the gut’s microbial communities may protect against intestinal parasites, which affect more than 1 billion people worldwide.

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Exposure to psychological stress in the form of social conflict alters gut bacteria in Syrian hamsters, according to a new study by Georgia State University.

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The International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research announced today that the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD-France) has joined the organization as a sponsoring partner.

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Microbes are in your gut, in your medicine…and in the soil! The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) February 1 Soils Matter blog post explains how the soil microbiome makes a big impact on plants’ productivity and health.

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A team of scientists from Northern Arizona University’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently announced a major achievement in ecosystem science. Their research, published as “Estimating taxon-specific population dynamics in diverse microbial communities” in the journal Ecosphere, illustrates a powerful new technique to simultaneously measure the growth rates of hundreds of individual bacterial taxa in any given soil sample.

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A newly discovered family of viruses appears to play a major role in killing marine bacteria and maintaining the ocean’s ecology. Preliminary evidence suggests that related bacterial viruses also occur in the human gut. The study, by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was published online today in the journal Nature.

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Women who have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a common hormone condition that contributes to infertility and metabolic problems, such as diabetes and heart disease, tend to have less diverse gut bacteria than women who do not have the condition, according to researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with colleagues at Poznan University of Medical Sciences in Poland and San Diego State University.

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Consumption of dietary fiber can prevent obesity, metabolic syndrome and adverse changes in the intestine by promoting growth of “good” bacteria in the colon, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

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Patients who developed bloodstream infections had significantly reduced microbiome diversity than patients who remained free of infection.

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A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has uncovered how certain soil microbes cope in a phosphorus-poor environment to survive in a tropical ecosystem. Their novel approach could be applied in other ecosystems to study various nutrient limitations and inform agriculture and terrestrial biosphere modeling.

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A working group of human microbiome researchers and legal experts developed what they say is an improved regulatory process for fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) which will result in better outcomes for patients and could serve as a model for other countries contemplating regulatory frameworks for FMT.

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Specific compounds are transformed by and strongly associated with specific bacteria in native biological soil crust (biocrust) using a suite of tools called “exometabolomics.” Understanding how microbial communities in biocrusts adapt to harsh environments could shed light on the roles of soil microbes in the global carbon cycle.

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Specific strains of intestinal bacteria can improve the response rate to immunotherapy for patients being treated for advanced melanoma. Patients with a higher ratio of “beneficial” bacteria to “non-beneficial” bacteria all showed a clinical response: a reduction in tumor size.

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Approach can identify antibiotic resistance and virulence markers missed by conventional techniques

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A fundamental advance in the quality of an optical material used to make hyperlenses makes it possible to see features on the surface of living cells in greater detail than ever before.

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Researchers have found a two-way link between traumatic brain injury and intestinal changes. These interactions may contribute to increased infections in these patients, and may also worsen chronic brain damage.

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Like nomads who carry tokens of home on their travels, colorectal cancer cells that spread to other parts of the body appear to bring several of the species of bacteria that were their companions in the colon, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists report in a new study in the journal Science.

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Overcoming a major hurdle in microbiome research, scientists have developed a method to elucidate cause-effect relationships between gut bacteria and disease. The approach could help identify disease-modulating microbes and open doors to precision-targeted therapies derived from microbial molecules.

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Social group membership is the most important factor in structuring gut microbiome composition, even when considering shared diet, environment and kinship, according to research on lemurs at The University of Texas at Austin.

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The study utilized data from 74 mother-infant pairs in the McMaster pilot cohort called Baby & Mi. Participants came from low-risk populations in Hamilton and Burlington, Ontario. The gut bacteria development of the infants was tested at four points over the first 12 weeks of life, including at three days, 10 days, six weeks and 12 weeks.

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The study from the University of Notre Dame and Michigan State University could help researchers identify how to tone down the ability of mycobacteria to cause disease and help them in treating infection.

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Exposure to antibiotics in mothers may increase risk for inflammatory bowel diseases in their offspring.

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Penn Medicine researchers have singled out a bacterial enzyme behind an imbalance in the gut microbiome linked to Crohn’s disease. The new study, published online this week in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that wiping out a significant portion of the bacteria in the gut microbiome, and then re-introducing a certain type of “good” bacteria that lacks this enzyme, known as urease, may be an effective approach to better treat these diseases.

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Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast together with the University of Vienna have discovered that treatment for the antibiotic resistant bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae could lie within our bodies’ natural defences.

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With support from a four-year $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Blanca Barquera, an associate professor of biological sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a team including researchers at Tufts University and Harvard Brigham and Women’s Hospital are examining evidence that Bacteroides can create energy with and without oxygen by using aerobic and anaerobic respiration, an unusual feature among many human gut bacteria.

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In a new paper in Nature Communications, three Santa Fe Institute researchers describe a trio of paradoxical dynamics that can arise in simple microbial economies. The work could be important for approaching engineered microbial communities and better understanding microbiomes.

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Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

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An overabundance of the bacteria Veillonella in the digestive tract may increase pain in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). Researchers from Howard University will present their findings today at the American Physiological Society’s Physiological and Pathophysiological Consequences of Sickle Cell Disease conference in Washington, D.C.

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Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers report that the composition of people’s gut bacteria may explain why some of them suffer life-threatening reactions after taking a key drug for treating metastatic colorectal cancer. The findings, described online today in npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, a Nature research journal, could help predict which patients will suffer side effects and prevent complications in susceptible patients.

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The University of Maryland (UMD) has joined the International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research, both organizations announced today

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New research from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine suggests that the lung microbiome plays a significant role in asthma severity and response to treatment.

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Scientists around Tetyana Milojevic from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna are in search of unique biosignatures, which are left on synthetic extraterrestrial minerals by microbial activity. The biochemist and astrobiologist investigates these signatures at her own miniaturized "Mars farm" where she can observe interactions between the archaeon Metallosphaera sedula and Mars-like rocks. These microbes are capable of oxidizing and integrating metals into their metabolism. The original research was currently published in the journal "Frontiers in Microbiology".

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Soil organisms are diverse, with characteristics that can astound. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) October 15 Soils Matter blog post explains which soil critters glow—and why.

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Demonstrating the microfluidic-based, mini-metagenomics approach on samples from hot springs shows how scientists can delve into microbes that can’t be cultivated in a laboratory.

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A new mouse study found that, even in immunized animals, noroviruses can escape the immune system and still spread by hiding out in an extremely rare type of cell in the gut.

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A team of researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health has received a $3.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how gut bacteria play a role in the development of diabetes among residents of Starr County, Texas.