Host control of the microbiome: Mechanisms, evolution, and disease.

Many species, including humans, host communities of symbiotic microbes. There is a vast literature on the ways these microbiomes affect hosts, but here we argue for an increased focus on how hosts affect their microbiomes. Hosts exert control over their symbionts through diverse mechanisms, including immunity, barrier function, physiological homeostasis, and transit.

isolateR: an R package for generating microbial libraries from Sanger sequencing data.

Motivation: Sanger sequencing of taxonomic marker genes (e.g. 16S/18S/ITS/rpoB/cpn60) represents the leading method for identifying a wide range of microorganisms including bacteria, archaea, and fungi.

Assessing phage-host population dynamics by reintroducing virulent viruses to synthetic microbiomes.

Microbiomes feature complex interactions between diverse bacteria and bacteriophages. Synthetic microbiomes offer a powerful way to study these interactions; however, a major challenge is obtaining a representative bacteriophage population during the bacterial isolation process. We demonstrate that colony isolation reliably excludes virulent viruses from sample sources with low virion-to-bacteria ratios such as feces, creating "virulent virus-free" controls.

The Robogut: A Bioreactor Model of the Human Colon for Evaluation of Gut Microbial Community Ecology and Function.

The human colon is inhabited by a complex community of microbes. These microbes are integral to host health and physiology. Understanding how and when the microbiome causally influences host health will require microbiome models that can be tightly controlled and manipulated.

Characterizing prophages in the genus Fusobacterium.

Objectives: We set out to identify and characterize prophages within genomes of published Fusobacterium strains, and to develop qPCR-based methods to characterize intra- and extra-cellular induction of prophage replication in a variety of environmental contexts.

Methods: Various in silico tools were used to predict prophage presence across 105 Fusobacterium spp. Genomes.

Bacteriophage-Mediated Perturbation of Defined Bacterial Communities in an Model of the Human Gut.

The study of bacteriophage communities reproducing in the gastrointestinal tract is limited by the quality of model systems supporting experimental manipulation . Traditionally, studies aiming to experimentally address phage-bacteria dynamics have utilized gnotobiotic mice inoculated with defined bacterial communities. While mouse models simulate complex interactions between microbes and their host, they also forestall the study of phage-bacteria dynamics in isolation of host factors.

Culturing Human Gut Microbiomes in the Laboratory.

The human gut microbiota is a complex community of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes and viral particles that is increasingly associated with many aspects of host physiology and health. However, the classical microbiology approach of axenic culture cannot provide a complete picture of the complex interactions between microbes and their hosts in vivo. As such, recently there has been much interest in the culture of gut microbial ecosystems in the laboratory as a strategy to better understand their compositions and functions.