The human milk microbiome changes over lactation and is shaped by maternal weight and mode of delivery

Background Breast milk is recognized as the most important postpartum element in metabolic and immunologic programming of health of neonates. The factors influencing the milk microbiome and the potential impact of microbes on infant health have not yet been uncovered. Objective Our objective was to identify pre- and postnatal factors that can potentially influence the bacterial communities inhabiting human milk. Design We characterized the milk microbial community at 3 different time points by pyrosequencing and quantitative polymerase chain reaction in mothers (n = 18) who varied in BMI, weight gain, and mode of delivery. Results We found that the human milk microbiome changes over lactati…

Mining virulence genes using metagenomics.

When a bacterial genome is compared to the metagenome of an environment it inhabits, most genes recruit at high sequence identity. In free-living bacteria (for instance marine bacteria compared against the ocean metagenome) certain genomic regions are totally absent in recruitment plots, representing therefore genes unique to individual bacterial isolates. We show that these Metagenomic Islands (MIs) are also visible in bacteria living in human hosts when their genomes are compared to sequences from the human microbiome, despite the compartmentalized structure of human-related environments such as the gut. From an applied point of view, MIs of human pathogens (e.g. those identified in enter…

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