Host-Microbe Biology
Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyThiamine Acquisition Strategies Impact Metabolism and Competition in the Gut Microbe Bacteroides thetaiotaomicronVariation in the ability of gut microbes to transport, synthesize, and compete for vitamin B1 (thiamine) is expected to impact the structure and stability of the microbiota, and ultimately this variation may have both direct and indirect effects on human health. Our study identifies the diverse strategies employed by gut Bacteroidetes to acquire thiamine. We demonstrate how the presence or absence of thiamine...
Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyThe Induction of Oxalate Metabolism In Vivo Is More Effective with Functional Microbial Communities than with Functional Microbial SpeciesOxalate is a central component in 80% of kidney stones. While mammals do not possess the enzymes to degrade oxalate, many gastrointestinal bacteria are efficient oxalate degraders. We examined the role of cohesive microbial networks for oxalate metabolism, using Sprague-Dawley rats as a model host. While the transplantation of oxalate-degrading bacteria alone to the Sprague-Dawley hosts did increase oxalate metabolism, fecal transplants...
Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyDevelopment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Is Linked to a Longitudinal Restructuring of the Gut Metagenome in MiceIBD patients harbor distinct microbial communities with functional capabilities different from those seen with healthy people. But is this cause or effect? Answering this question requires data on changes in gut microbial communities leading to disease onset. By performing weekly metagenomic sequencing and mixed-effects modeling on an established mouse model of IBD, we identified several functional pathways encoded by the gut microbiome...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyModerate Exercise Has Limited but Distinguishable Effects on the Mouse MicrobiomeThe bacteria that live in our gut have a complex yet vital relationship with our health. Environmental factors that influence the gut microbiome are of great interest, as recent research demonstrates that these microbes, mostly bacteria, are important for normal host physiology. Diseases such as obesity, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and colon cancer have also been linked to shifts in the microbiome. Exercise is known to have...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyIntegration of Metabolomics and Transcriptomics Reveals a Complex Diet of Mycobacterium tuberculosis during Early Macrophage InfectionThe nutrients consumed by intracellular pathogens are mostly unknown. This is mainly due to the challenge of disentangling host and pathogen metabolism sharing the majority of metabolic pathways and hence metabolites. Here, we investigated the metabolic changes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, and its human host cell during early...
Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyFluoride Depletes Acidogenic Taxa in Oral but Not Gut Microbial Communities in MiceFluoride has been added to drinking water and dental products since the 1950s. The beneficial effects of fluoride on oral health are due to its ability to inhibit the growth of bacteria that cause dental caries. Despite widespread human consumption of fluoride, there have been only two studies of humans that considered the effect of fluoride on human-associated microbial communities, which are increasingly understood to play important...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyClostridium difficile Colonizes Alternative Nutrient Niches during Infection across Distinct Murine Gut MicrobiomesInfection by the bacterium Clostridium difficile causes an inflammatory diarrheal disease which can become life threatening and has grown to be the most prevalent nosocomial infection. Susceptibility to C. difficile infection is strongly associated with previous antibiotic treatment, which disrupts the gut microbiota and reduces its ability to prevent colonization. In this study, we demonstrated that C. difficile...
Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyThe Skin Microbiome of Cohabiting CouplesOur work characterizes the influence of cohabitation as a factor influencing the composition of the skin microbiome. Although the body site and sampled individual were stronger influences than other factors collected as metadata in this study, we show that modeling of detected microbial taxa can help with correct identifications of cohabiting partners based on skin microbiome profiles using machine learning approaches. These results...
Commentary | Host-Microbe BiologyParasite Microbiome Project: Systematic Investigation of Microbiome Dynamics within and across Parasite-Host InteractionsUnderstanding how microbiomes affect host resistance, parasite virulence, and parasite-associated diseases requires a collaborative effort between parasitologists, microbial ecologists, virologists, and immunologists. We hereby propose the Parasite Microbiome Project to bring together researchers with complementary expertise and to study the role of microbes in host-parasite interactions.
Editor's Pick Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyMetabolic Fingerprints from the Human Oral Microbiome Reveal a Vast Knowledge Gap of Secreted Small Peptidic MoleculesMetabolomics is the ultimate tool for studies of microbial functions under any specific set of environmental conditions (D. S. Wishart, Nat Rev Drug Discov 45:473–484, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2016.32). This is a great advance over studying genes alone, which only inform about metabolic potential. Approximately 25,000 compounds have been chemically characterized thus far;...