Background: The evolution of antimicrobial resistance has dramatically reduced the efficacy of the first-choice and last-resort antibiotics used to treat infections. Thus, searching for novel therapeutics to treat and control the emergence of antibiotic resistance is urgent. Therefore, this study aimed to illustrate the lytic effect of phages against carbapenem-resistant pathogenic .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFspp. are causative agents of healthcare-associated infections in patients who are immunocompromised and use medical devices. The antibiotic resistance crisis has led to an increase in infections caused by these bacteria, which can develop into potentially life-threatening illnesses if not treated swiftly and effectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoil viruses can moderate the roles that their host microbes play in global carbon cycling. However, given that most studies investigate the surface layer (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: is a clinically relevant opportunistic pathogen belonging to the family. It is in the top three bacteria associated with antimicrobial resistance deaths globally, and one of the most dangerous bacteria causing nosocomial infections. Phage therapy offers a potential option for the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStable-isotope probing (SIP) enables researchers to target active populations within complex microbial communities, which is achieved by providing growth substrates enriched in heavy isotopes, usually in the form of C, O, or N. After growth on the substrate and subsequent extraction of microbial biomarkers, typically nucleic acids or proteins, the SIP technique is used for the recovery and analysis of isotope-labelled biomarkers from active microbial populations. In the years following the initial development of DNA- and RNA-based SIP, it was common practice to characterize labelled populations by targeted gene analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The rhizosphere is a hotspot for microbial activity and contributes to ecosystem services including plant health and biogeochemical cycling. The activity of microbial viruses, and their influence on plant-microbe interactions in the rhizosphere, remains undetermined. Given the impact of viruses on the ecology and evolution of their host communities, determining how soil viruses influence microbiome dynamics is crucial to build a holistic understanding of rhizosphere functions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Infect Microbiol
July 2021
The investigation of the microbial populations of the human body, known as the microbiome, has led to a revolutionary field of science, and understanding of its impacts on human development and health. The majority of microbiome research to date has focussed on bacteria and other kingdoms of life, such as fungi. Trailing behind these is the interrogation of the gut viruses, specifically the phageome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to evolve as a major threat to human health, and new strategies are required for the treatment of AMR infections. Bacteriophages (phages) that kill bacterial pathogens are being identified for use in phage therapies, with the intention to apply these bactericidal viruses directly into the infection sites in bespoke phage cocktails. Despite the great unsampled phage diversity for this purpose, an issue hampering the roll out of phage therapy is the poor quality annotation of many of the phage genomes, particularly for those from infrequently sampled environmental sources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFis a clinically important pathogen causing a variety of antimicrobial resistant infections in both community and nosocomial settings, particularly pneumonia, urinary tract infection, and sepsis. Bacteriophage (phage) therapy is being considered a primary option for the treatment of drug-resistant infections of these types. We report the successful isolation and characterization of 30 novel, genetically diverse phages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFinfections, including catheter associated urinary tract infections, are a considerable burden on health care systems. This is due to their difficulty to treat, caused by antimicrobial resistance and their ability to form biofilms. In this study, we investigated the use of a phage cocktail to reduce biofilm viability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobial metabolism of carnitine to trimethylamine (TMA) in the gut can accelerate atherosclerosis and heart disease, and these TMA-producing enzymes are therefore important drug targets. Here, we report the first structures of the carnitine oxygenase CntA, an enzyme of the Rieske oxygenase family. CntA exists in a head-to-tail α trimeric structure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Coastal environments are dynamic and rapidly changing. Living organisms in coastal environments are known to synthesise large quantities of organic osmolytes, which they use to cope with osmotic stresses. The organic osmolyte glycine betaine (GBT) is ubiquitously found in marine biota from prokaryotic Bacteria and Archaea to coastal plants, marine protozoa, and mammals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacteriophages infecting Escherichia coli (coliphages) have been used as a proxy for faecal matter and water quality from a variety of environments. However, the diversity of coliphages that is present in seawater remains largely unknown, with previous studies largely focusing on morphological diversity. Here, we isolated and characterized coliphages from three coastal locations in the United Kingdom and Poland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoastal saltmarsh sediments represent an important source of natural methane emissions, much of which originates from quaternary and methylated amines, such as choline and trimethylamine. In this study, we combine DNA stable isotope probing with high throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes and C-choline enriched metagenomes, followed by metagenome data assembly, to identify the key microbes responsible for methanogenesis from choline. Microcosm incubation with C-choline leads to the formation of trimethylamine and subsequent methane production, suggesting that choline-dependent methanogenesis is a two-step process involving trimethylamine as the key intermediate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe bacterial formation of trimethylamine (TMA) has been linked to cardiovascular disease. This review focuses on the methods employed to investigate the identity of the bacteria responsible for the formation of TMA from dietary choline and carnitine in the human gut. Recent studies have revealed the metabolic pathways responsible for bacterial TMA production, primarily the anaerobic glycyl radical-containing, choline-TMA lyase, CutC and the aerobic carnitine monooxygenase, CntA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExisting metagenome datasets from many different environments contain untapped potential for understanding metabolic pathways and their biological impact. Our interest lies in the formation of trimethylamine (TMA), a key metabolite in both human health and climate change. Here, we focus on bacterial degradation pathways for choline, carnitine, glycine betaine and trimethylamine -oxide (TMAO) to TMA in human gut and marine metagenomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStable-isotope probing (SIP) enables researchers to target active populations within complex microbial communities, which is achieved by providing growth substrates enriched in heavy isotopes, usually in the form of C, O, or N. After growth on the substrate and subsequent extraction of microbial biomarkers, typically nucleic acids or proteins, the SIP technique is used for the recovery and analysis of isotope-labeled biomarkers from active microbial populations. In the years following the initial development of DNA- and RNA-based SIP, it was common practice to characterize labeled populations by targeted gene analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGammaproteobacteria are important gut microbes but only persist at low levels in the healthy gut. The ecology of Gammaproteobacteria in the gut environment is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that choline is an important growth substrate for representatives of Gammaproteobacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMethylocella silvestris, an alphaproteobacterium isolated from a forest soil, can grow on trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) as a sole nitrogen source; however, the molecular and biochemical mechanisms underpinning its growth remain unknown. Marker-exchange mutagenesis enabled the identification of several genes involved in TMAO metabolism, including Msil_3606, a permease of the amino acids-polyamine (APC) superfamily, and Msil_3603, consisting of an N-terminal domain of unknown function (DUF1989) and a C-terminal tetrahydrofolate-binding domain. Null mutants of Msil_3603 and Msil_3606 can no longer grow on TMAO.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDietary intake of L-carnitine can promote cardiovascular diseases in humans through microbial production of trimethylamine (TMA) and its subsequent oxidation to trimethylamine N-oxide by hepatic flavin-containing monooxygenases. Although our microbiota are responsible for TMA formation from carnitine, the underpinning molecular and biochemical mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, using bioinformatics approaches, we first identified a two-component Rieske-type oxygenase/reductase (CntAB) and associated gene cluster proposed to be involved in carnitine metabolism in representative genomes of the human microbiota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFViruses that infect the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus have the potential to impact the growth, productivity, diversity and abundance of their hosts. In this study, changes in the microdiversity of cyanomyoviruses were investigated in 10 environmental samples taken along a North-South Atlantic Ocean transect using a myoviral-specific PCR-sequencing approach. Phylogenetic analyses of 630 viral g20 clones from this study, with 786 published g20 sequences, revealed that myoviral populations in the Atlantic Ocean had higher diversity than previously reported, with several novel putative g20 clades.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study investigated whether active distraction reduces participants' experience of pain more than passive distraction during a cold pressor task. In the first experiment, 60 participants were asked to submerge their hand in cold (2°C) water for as long as they could tolerate. They did this with no distraction, and then with active (electronic gaming system) and passive (television) distraction, in randomly assigned order.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn order to understand how environmental factors shape the diversity of Prochlorococcus in the Atlantic Ocean, we have elucidated the microdiversity along a north-south transect. The polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the genetic diversity of rpoC1 gene fragments of Prochlorococcus at 12 sampling sites revealed a latitudinal pattern in Prochlorococcus RFLP-type diversity in the samples collected from two depths. At the depth to which 14% of surface irradiance penetrated, HLII clones dominated the stations closest to the equator.
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