Latest Articles
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceGenomic Variations Underlying Speciation and Niche Specialization of Shewanella balticaSpeciation in nature is a fundamental process driving the formation of the vast microbial diversity on Earth. In the central Baltic Sea, the long-term stratification of water led to formation of a large-scale vertical redoxcline that provided a gradient of environmental niches with respect to the availability of electron acceptors and donors. The region was home to ...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyGenomewide Analysis of Mode of Action of the S-Adenosylmethionine Analogue Sinefungin in Leishmania infantumThe two main cellular metabolic one-carbon donors are reduced folates and S-adenosylmethionine, whose biosynthetic pathways have proven highly effective in chemotherapeutic interventions in various cell types. Sinefungin, a nucleoside analogue of S-adenosylmethionine, was shown to have potent activity against the protozoan parasite Leishmania. Here, we studied resistance to sinefungin using whole-genome...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Clinical Science and EpidemiologyUsing DNA Metabarcoding To Evaluate the Plant Component of Human Diets: a Proof of ConceptCurrent methods for capturing human dietary patterns typically rely on individual recall and as such are subject to the limitations of human memory. DNA sequencing-based approaches, frequently used for profiling nonhuman diets, do not suffer from the same limitations. Here, we used metabarcoding to broadly characterize the plant portion of human diets for the first time. The majority of sequences corresponded to known human foods,...
Opinion/Hypothesis | Therapeutics and PreventionMetaMed: Linking Microbiota Functions with Medicine TherapeuticsUnderstanding how the human microbiome affects human health has consequences for treating disease and minimizing unwanted side effects in clinical research.
Perspective | Applied and Environmental ScienceCurrent State of and Future Opportunities for Prediction in Microbiome Research: Report from the Mid-Atlantic Microbiome Meet-up in Baltimore on 9 January 2019...Accurate predictions across multiple fields of microbiome research have far-reaching benefits to society, but there are few widely accepted quantitative tools to make accurate predictions about microbial communities and their functions. More discussion is needed about the current state of microbiome analysis and the tools required to overcome the hurdles preventing development and implementation of predictive analyses.
Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyDistinct Gut Microbiota Induced by Different Fat-to-Sugar-Ratio High-Energy Diets Share Similar Pro-obesity Genetic and Metabolite Profiles in Prediabetic MiceVarious types of diet can lead to type 2 diabetes. The gut microbiota in type 2 diabetic patients are also different. So, two questions arise: whether there are any commonalities between gut microbiota induced by different pro-obese diets and whether these commonalities lead to disease. Here we found that high-energy diets with two different fat-to-sugar ratios can both cause obesity and prediabetes but enrich different gut microbiota....
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceContrasting Biogeographic Patterns of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversity in the Top- and Subsoils of Temperate GrasslandsExploring the biogeographic patterns of soil microbial diversity is critical for understanding mechanisms underlying the response of soil processes to climate change. Using top- and subsoils from an ∼1,500-km temperate grassland transect, we find divergent patterns of microbial diversity and its determinants in the topsoil versus the subsoil. Furthermore, we find important and direct legacy effects of historical climate change on the...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceDistinct Drivers of Core and Accessory Components of Soil Microbial Community Functional Diversity under Environmental ChangesOur results demonstrated increased ecosystem nitrogen and water content as the primary drivers of the core and accessory components of soil microbial community functional diversity, respectively. Our findings suggested that more attention should be paid to certain components of community functional diversity under specific global change conditions. Our findings also indicated that microbial communities have adapted to nitrogen addition...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyConserved Central Intraviral Protein Interactome of the Herpesviridae FamilyHerpesviruses are an important socioeconomic burden for both humans and livestock. Throughout their long evolutionary history, individual herpesvirus species have developed remarkable host specificity, while collectively the Herpesviridae family has evolved to infect a large variety of eukaryotic hosts. The development of approaches to fight herpesvirus infections has been hampered by the complexity of herpesviruses’ genomes,...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceLying in Wait: Modeling the Control of Bacterial Infections via Antibiotic-Induced ProvirusesAntibiotic resistance is a growing concern for management of common bacterial infections. Here, we show that antibiotics can be effective at subinhibitory levels when bacteria carry latent phage. Our findings suggest that specific treatment strategies based on the identification of latent viruses in individual bacterial strains may be an effective personalized medicine approach to antibiotic stewardship.
About mSystems
mSystems®, an open access journal from the American Society for Microbiology, publishes the best research in single-cell and community microbial systems biology, new computational and laboratory approaches, and synthetic biology.
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