Search results for " metagenomics"

Beyond cells – The virome in the human holobiont

2019

Viromics, or viral metagenomics, is a relatively new and burgeoning field of research that studies the complete collection of viruses forming part of the microbiota in any given niche. It has strong foundations rooted in over a century of discoveries in the field of virology and recent advances in molecular biology and sequencing technologies. Historically, most studies have deconstructed the concept of viruses into a simplified perception of viral agents as mere pathogens, which demerits the scope of large-scale viromic analyses. Viruses are, in fact, much more than regular parasites. They are by far the most dynamic and abundant entity and the greatest killers on the planet, as well as th…

Gammaproteobacterial methanotrophs dominate methanotrophy in aerobic and anaerobic layers of boreal lake waters

2018

Small oxygen-stratified humic lakes of the boreal zone are important sources of methane to the atmosphere. Although stable isotope profiling has indicated that a substantial part of methane is already oxidized in the anaerobic water layers in these lakes, the contributions of aerobic and anaerobic methanotrophs in the process are unknown. We used next-generation sequencing of mcrA and 16S rRNA genes to characterize the microbial communities in the water columns of 2 boreal lakes in Finland, Lake Alinen-Mustajärvi and Lake Mekkojärvi, and complemented this with a shotgun metagenomic analysis from Alinen-Mustajärvi and an analysis of pmoA genes and 16S rRNA, mcrA, and pmoA transcripts from Me…

Exploring the diversity of the human blood virome

2021

This article belongs to the Special Issue Virus Bioinformatics 2022.

Five Challenges in the Field of Viral Diversity and Evolution

2021

Viral diversity and evolution play a central role in processes such as disease emergence, vaccine failure, drug resistance, and virulence. However, significant challenges remain to better understand and manage these processes. Here, we discuss five of these challenges. These include improving our ability to predict viral evolution, developing more relevant experimental evolutionary systems, integrating viral dynamics and evolution at different scales, more thoroughly characterizing the virosphere, and deepening our understanding of virus-virus interactions. Intensifying future research on these areas should improve our ability to combat viral diseases, as well as to more efficiently use vir…

CoproID predicts the source of coprolites and paleofeces using microbiome composition and host DNA content

2020

Shotgun metagenomics applied to archaeological feces (paleofeces) can bring new insights into the composition and functions of human and animal gut microbiota from the past. However, paleofeces often undergo physical distortions in archaeological sediments, making their source species difficult to identify on the basis of fecal morphology or microscopic features alone. Here we present a reproducible and scalable pipeline using both host and microbial DNA to infer the host source of fecal material. We apply this pipeline to newly sequenced archaeological specimens and show that we are able to distinguish morphologically similar human and canine paleofeces, as well as non-fecal sediments, fro…

Molecular analysis of the fungal community associated with phyllosphere and carposphere of fruit crops

Fragmentation and Coverage Variation in Viral Metagenome Assemblies, and Their Effect in Diversity Calculations

2015

Metagenomic libraries consist of DNA fragments from diverse species, with varying genome size and abundance. High-throughput sequencing platforms produce large volumes of reads from these libraries, which may be assembled into contigs, ideally resembling the original larger genomic sequences. The uneven species distribution, along with the stochasticity in sample processing and sequencing bias, impacts the success of accurate sequence assembly. Several assemblers enable the processing of viral metagenomic data de novo, generally using overlap layout consensus or de Bruijn graph approaches for contig assembly. The success of viral genomic reconstruction in these datasets is limited by the de…

Impact of DNA Extraction Method on Variation in Human and Built Environment Microbial Community and Functional Profiles Assessed by Shotgun Metagenom…

2020

Both the host microbiome and the microbiome of the built environment can have profound impacts on human health. While prior studies have suggested that the variability introduced by DNA extraction method is less than typical biologic variation, most studies have focused on 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing or on high biomass fecal samples. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing provides advantages over amplicon sequencing for surveying the microbiome, but is a challenge to perform in lower microbial biomass samples with high human DNA content such as sputum or vacuumed dust. Here we systematically evaluate the impact of four different extraction methods (phenol:choloroform, and three high-throughput kit…

Profiling of Protein Degraders in Cultures of Human Gut Microbiota

2019

Unabsorbed proteins reach the colon and are fermented by the microbiota, yielding a variety of harmful metabolites. In the present study, a 16S rRNA gene survey identified the bacterial taxa flourishing in 11 batch fermentations with proteins and peptones as the sole fermentable substrates, inoculated with the feces of six healthy adults. Organic acids, ammonia, and indole resulting from protein breakdown and fermentation accumulated in all of the cultures. Analysis of differential abundances among time-points identified Enterobacteriaceae, Burkholderiaceae, and Desulfovibrionaceae (including Esherichia-Shigella, Sutterella, Parasutterella, and Bilophila) among the bacteria that especially …

Past, Present, and Future of Gastrointestinal Microbiota Research in Cats

2020

The relationship between microbial community and host has profound effects on the health of animals. A balanced gastrointestinal (GI) microbial population provides nutritional and metabolic benefits to its host, regulates the immune system and various signaling molecules, protects the intestine from pathogen invasion, and promotes a healthy intestinal structure and an optimal intestinal function. With the fast development of next-generation sequencing, molecular techniques have become standard tools for microbiota research, having been used to demonstrate the complex intestinal ecosystem. Similarly to other mammals, the vast majority of GI microbiota in cats (over 99%) is composed of the pr…