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Gut May 2024The remodelling of gut mycobiome (ie, fungi) during pregnancy and its potential influence on host metabolism and pregnancy health remains largely unexplored. Here, we...
OBJECTIVE
The remodelling of gut mycobiome (ie, fungi) during pregnancy and its potential influence on host metabolism and pregnancy health remains largely unexplored. Here, we aim to examine the characteristics of gut fungi in pregnant women, and reveal the associations between gut mycobiome, host metabolome and pregnancy health.
DESIGN
Based on a prospective birth cohort in central China (2017 to 2020): Tongji-Huaxi-Shuangliu Birth Cohort, we included 4800 participants who had available ITS2 sequencing data, dietary information and clinical records during their pregnancy. Additionally, we established a subcohort of 1059 participants, which included 514 women who gave birth to preterm, low birthweight or macrosomia infants, as well as 545 randomly selected controls. In this subcohort, a total of 750, 748 and 709 participants had ITS2 sequencing data, 16S sequencing data and serum metabolome data available, respectively, across all trimesters.
RESULTS
The composition of gut fungi changes dramatically from early to late pregnancy, exhibiting a greater degree of variability and individuality compared with changes observed in gut bacteria. The multiomics data provide a landscape of the networks among gut mycobiome, biological functionality, serum metabolites and pregnancy health, pinpointing the link between and adverse pregnancy outcomes. The prepregnancy overweight status is a key factor influencing both gut mycobiome compositional alteration and the pattern of metabolic remodelling during pregnancy.
CONCLUSION
This study provides a landscape of gut mycobiome dynamics during pregnancy and its relationship with host metabolism and pregnancy health, which lays the foundation of the future gut mycobiome investigation for healthy pregnancy.
PubMed: 38724219
DOI: 10.1136/gutjnl-2024-332260 -
Frontiers in Cellular and Infection... 2024Although the existence of species in the respiratory tract is often considered commensal, it is crucial to recognize the significance of colonization in...
INTRODUCTION
Although the existence of species in the respiratory tract is often considered commensal, it is crucial to recognize the significance of colonization in immunocompromised or COVID-19 patients. The emergence of as an emerging pathogen further emphasizes the importance of monitoring yeast infection/colonization, particularly in COVID-19 patients.
METHODS
In this study, respiratory samples mainly from COVID-19 patients, primarily those suspected of having a fungal infection, were cultured on Sabouraud dextrose agar plates and the yeast colonies were identified using a two-step multiplex PCR method. The samples suspected of underwent specific nested PCR followed by sequence analysis.
RESULTS
A total of 199 respiratory samples were collected from 73 women and 126 men, ranging in age from 1.6 to 88 years. Among the patients, 141 had COVID-19, 32 had cancer, 5 were hospitalized in ICU, 2 had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)COPD(, and others were patients with combination diseases. From these samples, a total of 334 yeast strains were identified. (n=132, 39.52%) was the most common species, followed by (n=67, 20%), (n=56, 16.76%), (n=18, 5.4%), (n=17, 5.08%), (n=10, 3%), (n=9, 2.6%), (n=7, 2.1%), (n=5, 1.5%), (n=3, 0.9%), (n=2, 0.6%), (n=1, 0.3%), (n=1, 0.3%), and spp. (n=1, 0.3%). was detected in a patient in ICU and two COVID-19 patients. While its presence was confirmed through sequence analysis, our extensive efforts to isolate were unsuccessful.
CONCLUSION
While colonization remains prevalent, our study found no evidence of lung infection. Since the role of colonization in airway secretions remains ambiguous due to limited research, further studies are imperative to shed light on this matter.
Topics: Humans; COVID-19; Aged; Middle Aged; Female; Male; Aged, 80 and over; Adult; Child, Preschool; Candidiasis; Child; Adolescent; Young Adult; SARS-CoV-2; Infant; Candida auris; Candida; Respiratory System; Multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction
PubMed: 38707510
DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2024.1295841 -
Scientific Reports May 2024The Himalayas provide unique opportunities for the extension of shrubs beyond the upper limit of the tree. However, little is known about the limitation of the biotic...
The Himalayas provide unique opportunities for the extension of shrubs beyond the upper limit of the tree. However, little is known about the limitation of the biotic factors belowground of shrub growth at these cruising altitudes. To fill this gap, the present study deals with the documentation of root-associated microbiota with their predicted functional profiles and interactions in the host Rhododendron campanulatum, a krummholz species. While processing 12 root samples of R. campanulatum from the sites using Omics we could identify 134 root-associated fungal species belonging to 104 genera, 74 families, 39 orders, 17 classes, and 5 phyla. The root-associated microbiota members of Ascomycota were unambiguously dominant followed by Basidiomycota. Using FUNGuild, we reported that symbiotroph and pathotroph as abundant trophic modes. Furthermore, FUNGuild revealed the dominant prevalence of the saptroptroph guild followed by plant pathogens and wood saprotrophs. Alpha diversity was significantly different at the sites. The heatmap dendrogram showed the correlation between various soil nutrients and some fungal species. The study paves the way for a more in-depth exploration of unidentified root fungal symbionts, their interactions and their probable functional roles, which may serve as an important factor for the growth and conservation of these high-altitude ericaceous plants.
Topics: Rhododendron; Plant Roots; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Fungi; Mycobiome; Soil Microbiology; Symbiosis; Phylogeny
PubMed: 38704448
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-61120-4 -
EBioMedicine May 2024Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a prevalent cardiovascular condition, and numerous studies have linked gut bacterial imbalance to CAD. However, the relationship of gut...
BACKGROUND
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a prevalent cardiovascular condition, and numerous studies have linked gut bacterial imbalance to CAD. However, the relationship of gut fungi, another essential component of the intestinal microbiota, with CAD remains poorly understood.
METHODS
In this cross-sectional study, we analyzed fecal samples from 132 participants, split into 31 healthy controls and 101 CAD patients, further categorized into stable CAD (38), unstable angina (41), and acute myocardial infarction (22) groups. We conducted internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) and 16S sequencing to examine gut fungal and bacterial communities.
FINDINGS
Based on ITS1 analyses, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were the dominant fungal phyla in all the groups. The α diversity of gut mycobiome remained unaltered among the control group and CAD subgroups; however, the structure and composition of the mycobiota differed significantly with the progression of CAD. The abundances of 15 taxa gradually changed with the occurrence and progression of the disease and were significantly correlated with major CAD risk factor indicators. The mycobiome changes were closely linked to gut microbiome dysbiosis in patients with CAD. Furthermore, disease classifiers based on gut fungi effectively identified subgroups with different degrees of CAD. Finally, the FUNGuild analysis further categorized these fungi into distinct ecological guilds.
INTERPRETATION
In conclusion, the structure and composition of the gut fungal community differed from healthy controls to various subtypes of CAD, revealing key fungi taxa alterations linked to the onset and progression of CAD. Our study highlights the potential role of gut fungi in CAD and may facilitate the development of novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for CAD.
FUNDING
This work was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82170302, 92168117, 82370432), National clinical key specialty construction project- Cardiovascular Surgery, the Reform and Development Program of Beijing Institute of Respiratory Medicine (No. Ggyfz202417, Ggyfz202308), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 7222068); and the Clinical Research Incubation Program of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University (No. CYFH202209).
Topics: Humans; Gastrointestinal Microbiome; Coronary Artery Disease; Male; Female; Middle Aged; Mycobiome; Aged; Cross-Sectional Studies; Feces; Metagenomics; Fungi; Severity of Illness Index; Dysbiosis; Case-Control Studies; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; Adult
PubMed: 38703606
DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2024.105137 -
Microbial Ecology May 2024Despite the importance of wood-inhabiting fungi on nutrient cycling and ecosystem functions, their ecology, especially related to their community assembly, is still...
Despite the importance of wood-inhabiting fungi on nutrient cycling and ecosystem functions, their ecology, especially related to their community assembly, is still highly unexplored. In this study, we analyzed the wood-inhabiting fungal richness, community composition, and phylogenetics using PacBio sequencing. Opposite to what has been expected that deterministic processes especially environmental filtering through wood-physicochemical properties controls the community assembly of wood-inhabiting fungal communities, here we showed that both deterministic and stochastic processes can highly contribute to the community assembly processes of wood-inhabiting fungi in this tropical forest. We demonstrated that the dynamics of stochastic and deterministic processes varied with wood decomposition stages. The initial stage was mainly governed by a deterministic process (homogenous selection), whereas the early and later decomposition stages were governed by the stochastic processes (ecological drift). Deterministic processes were highly contributed by wood physicochemical properties (especially macronutrients and hemicellulose) rather than soil physicochemical factors. We elucidated that fine-scale fungal-fungal interactions, especially the network topology, modularity, and keystone taxa of wood-inhabiting fungal communities, strongly differed in an initial and decomposing deadwood. This current study contributes to a better understanding of the ecological processes of wood-inhabiting fungi in tropical regions where the knowledge of wood-inhabiting fungi is highly limited.
Topics: Mycobiome; Wood; Fungi; Forests; Tropical Climate; Phylogeny; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Biodiversity
PubMed: 38700528
DOI: 10.1007/s00248-024-02372-5 -
One Health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Jun 2024Today, over 300 million individuals worldwide are afflicted by severe fungal infections, many of whom will perish. Fungi, as a result of their plastic genomes have the... (Review)
Review
Today, over 300 million individuals worldwide are afflicted by severe fungal infections, many of whom will perish. Fungi, as a result of their plastic genomes have the ability to adapt to new environments and extreme conditions as a consequence of globalization, including urbanization, agricultural intensification, and, notably, climate change. Soils and the impact of these anthropogenic environmental factors can be the source of pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi and subsequent fungal threats to public health. This underscores the growing understanding that not only is fungal diversity in the soil mycobiome a critical component of a functioning ecosystem, but also that soil microbial communities can significantly contribute to plant, animal, and human health, as underscored by the One Health concept. Collectively, this stresses the importance of investigating the soil microbiome in order to gain a deeper understanding of soil fungal ecology and its interplay with the rhizosphere microbiome, which carries significant implications for human health, animal health and environmental health.
PubMed: 38699438
DOI: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2024.100720 -
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Apr 2024The plant microbes are an integral part of the host and play fundamental roles in plant growth and health. There is evidence indicating that plants have the ability to...
The plant microbes are an integral part of the host and play fundamental roles in plant growth and health. There is evidence indicating that plants have the ability to attract beneficial microorganisms through their roots in order to defend against pathogens. However, the mechanisms of plant microbial community assembly from below- to aboveground compartments under pathogen infection remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the bacterial and fungal communities in bulk soil, rhizosphere soil, root, stem, and leaf of both healthy and infected (Potato virus Y disease, PVY) plants. The results indicated that bacterial and fungal communities showed different recruitment strategies in plant organs. The number and abundance of shared bacterial ASVs between bulk and rhizosphere soils decreased with ascending migration from below- to aboveground compartments, while the number and abundance of fungal ASVs showed no obvious changes. Field type, plant compartments, and PVY infection all affected the diversity and structures of microbial community, with stronger effects observed in the bacterial community than the fungal community. Furthermore, PVY infection, rhizosphere soil pH, and water content (WC) contributed more to the assembly of the bacterial community than the fungal community. The analysis of microbial networks revealed that the bacterial communities were more sensitive to PVY infection than the fungal communities, as evidenced by the lower network stability of the bacterial community, which was characterized by a higher proportion of positive edges. PVY infection further increased the bacterial network stability and decreased the fungal network stability. These findings advance our understanding of how microbes respond to pathogen infections and provide a rationale and theoretical basis for biocontrol technology in promoting sustainable agriculture. KEY POINTS: • Different recruitment strategies between plant bacterial and fungal communities. • Bacterial community was more sensitive to PVY infection than fungal community. • pH and WC drove the microbial community assembly under PVY infection.
Topics: Fungi; Soil Microbiology; Bacteria; Rhizosphere; Plant Diseases; Plant Roots; Microbiota; Plant Leaves; Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; Mycobiome; Plants
PubMed: 38689185
DOI: 10.1007/s00253-024-13150-1 -
Microbiology Spectrum Jun 2024Bacterial communities are often concomitantly present with numerous microorganisms in the human body and other natural environments. Amplicon-based microbiome studies...
UNLABELLED
Bacterial communities are often concomitantly present with numerous microorganisms in the human body and other natural environments. Amplicon-based microbiome studies have generally paid skewed attention, that too at a rather shallow genus level resolution, to the highly abundant bacteriome, with interest now forking toward the other microorganisms, particularly fungi. Given the generally sparse abundance of other microbes in the total microbiome, simultaneous sequencing of amplicons targeting multiple microbial kingdoms could be possible even with full multiplexing. Guiding studies are currently needed for performing and monitoring multi-kingdom-amplicon sequencing and data capture at scale. Aiming to address these gaps, amplification of full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene and entire fungal internal-transcribed spacer (ITS) region was performed for human saliva samples ( = 96, including negative and positive controls). Combined amplicon DNA libraries were prepared for nanopore sequencing using a major fraction of 16S molecules and a minor fraction of ITS amplicons. Sequencing was performed in a single run of an R10.4.1 flow cell employing the latest V14 chemistry. An approach for real-time monitoring of the species saturation using dynamic rarefaction was designed as a guiding determinant of optimal run time. Real-time saturation monitoring for both bacterial and fungal species enabled the completion of sequencing within 30 hours, utilizing less than 60% of the total nanopores. Approximately 5 million high quality (HQ) taxonomically assigned reads were generated (~4.2 million bacterial and 0.7 million fungal), providing a wider (beyond bacteriome) snapshot of human oral microbiota at species-level resolution. Among the more than 400 bacterial and 240 fungal species identified in the studied samples, the species of (e.g., and ) and (e.g., and ) were observed to be the dominating microbes in the oral cavity, respectively. This conformed well with the previous reports of the human oral microbiota. EnsembleSeq provides a proof-of-concept toward the identification of both fungal and bacterial species simultaneously in a single fully multiplexed nanopore sequencing run in a time- and resource-effective manner. Details of this workflow, along with the associated codebase, are provided to enable large-scale application for a holistic species-level microbiome study.
IMPORTANCE
Human microbiome is a sum total of a variety of microbial genomes (including bacteria, fungi, protists, viruses, etc.) present in and on the human body. Yet, a majority of amplicon-based microbiome studies have largely remained skewed toward bacteriome as an assumed proxy of the total microbiome, primarily at a shallow genus level. Cost, time, effort, data quality/management, and importantly lack of guiding studies often limit progress in the direction of moving beyond bacteriome. Here, EnsembleSeq presents a proof-of-concept toward concomitantly capturing multiple-kingdoms of microorganisms (bacteriome and mycobiome) in a fully multiplexed (96-sample) single run of long-read amplicon sequencing. In addition, the workflow captures dynamic tracking of species-level saturation in a time- and resource-effective manner.
Topics: Humans; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; Microbiota; Bacteria; Saliva; Fungi; Workflow; DNA, Bacterial; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Sequence Analysis, DNA; DNA, Fungal
PubMed: 38687072
DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.04150-23 -
Scientific Reports Apr 2024Ridomil Gold SL (45.3% a.i. mefenoxam) is a widely used chemical fungicide for the control of oomycetes. However, its impact on fungal communities remains unexplored....
Ridomil Gold SL (45.3% a.i. mefenoxam) is a widely used chemical fungicide for the control of oomycetes. However, its impact on fungal communities remains unexplored. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the effects of mefenoxam on the temporal dynamics of fungal taxonomic and functional diversities during carrot cultivation under four treatment groups: mefenoxam application with and without Pythium inoculation, and untreated control groups with and without Pythium inoculation. Our in vitro sensitivity assay showed that the maximum recommended concentration of mefenoxam, 0.24 ppm, did not suppress the mycelial growth of P. irregulare. At 100 ppm, mycelial growth was only reduced by 11.4%, indicating that the isolate was resistant to mefenoxam. MiSeq sequencing data revealed transient taxonomic variations among treatments 2 weeks post-treatment. Mortierella dominated the fungal community in the mefenoxam-Pythium combination treatment, as confirmed through PCR using our newly designed Mortierella-specific primers. Conversely, mefenoxam-Pythium combination had adverse effects on Penicillium, Trichoderma, and Fusarium, and decrease the overall alpha diversity. However, these compositional changes gradually reverted to those observed in the control by the 12th week. The predicted ecological functions of fungal communities in all Pythium and mefenoxam treatments shifted, leading to a decrease in symbiotrophs and plant pathogen functional groups. Moreover, the community-level physiological profiling approach, utilizing 96-well Biolog FF microplates, showed discernible variations in the utilization of 95 diverse carbon sources among the treatments. Notably, arbutin, L-arabinose, Tween 80, and succinamic acid demonstrated a strong positive association with Mortierella. Our findings demonstrate that a single application of mefenoxam at its recommended rate triggers substantial taxonomic and functional shifts in the soil fungal community. Considering this impact, the conventional agricultural practice of repeated mefenoxam application is likely to exert considerable shifts on the soil ecosystem that may affect agricultural sustainability.
Topics: Daucus carota; Pythium; Fungi; Fungicides, Industrial; Soil Microbiology; Mycobiome; Mortierella; Alanine
PubMed: 38684826
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-59587-2 -
Frontiers in Microbiology 2024infection (CDI) is responsible for around 300,000 hospitalizations yearly in the United States, with the associated monetary cost being billions of dollars. Gut...
infection (CDI) is responsible for around 300,000 hospitalizations yearly in the United States, with the associated monetary cost being billions of dollars. Gut microbiome dysbiosis is known to be important to CDI. To the best of our knowledge, metatranscriptomics (MT) has only been used to characterize gut microbiome composition and function in one prior study involving CDI patients. Therefore, we utilized MT to investigate differences in active community diversity and composition between CDI+ ( = 20) and CDI- ( = 19) samples with respect to microbial taxa and expressed genes. No significant (Kruskal-Wallis, > 0.05) differences were detected for richness or evenness based on CDI status. However, clustering based on CDI status was significant for both active microbial taxa and expressed genes datasets (PERMANOVA, ≤ 0.05). Furthermore, differential feature analysis revealed greater expression of the opportunistic pathogens and in CDI+ compared to CDI- samples. When only fungal sequences were considered, the family Saccharomycetaceae expressed more genes in CDI-, while 31 other fungal taxa were identified as significantly (Kruskal-Wallis ≤ 0.05, log(LDA) ≥ 2) associated with CDI+. We also detected a variety of genes and pathways that differed significantly (Kruskal-Wallis ≤ 0.05, log(LDA) ≥ 2) based on CDI status. Notably, differential genes associated with biofilm formation were expressed by . This provides evidence of another possible contributor to 's resistance to antibiotics and frequent recurrence . Furthermore, the greater number of CDI+ associated fungal taxa constitute additional evidence that the mycobiome is important to CDI pathogenesis. Future work will focus on establishing if is actively producing biofilms during infection and if any specific fungal taxa are particularly influential in CDI.
PubMed: 38680911
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1398018