Ovarian cycling and reproductive state shape the vaginal microbiota in wild baboons.

Background: The vaginal microbiome is an important site of bacterial-mammalian symbiosis. This symbiosis is currently best characterized for humans, where lactobacilli dominate the microbial community and may help defend women against infectious disease. However, lactobacilli do not dominate the vaginal microbiota of any other mammal studied to date, raising key questions about the forces that shape the vaginal microbiome in non-human mammals.

Abundance and activity of vinyl chloride (VC)-oxidizing bacteria in a dilute groundwater VC plume biostimulated with oxygen and ethene.

Clean-up of vinyl chloride (VC)-contaminated groundwater could be enhanced by stimulating aerobic VC-oxidizing bacterial populations (e.g., methanotrophs) with amendments such as molecular oxygen.

Local-global overlap in diversity informs mechanisms of bacterial biogeography.

Spatial variation in environmental conditions and barriers to organism movement are thought to be important factors for generating endemic species, thus enhancing global diversity. Recent microbial ecology research suggested that the entire diversity of bacteria in the global oceans could be recovered at a single site, thus inferring a lack of bacterial endemism. We argue this is not the case in the global ocean, but might be in other bacterial ecosystems with higher dispersal rates and lower global diversity, like the human gut.

Freshwater bacterial lifestyles inferred from comparative genomics.

While micro-organisms actively mediate and participate in freshwater ecosystem services, we know little about freshwater microbial genetic diversity. Genome sequences are available for many bacteria from the human microbiome and the ocean (over 800 and 200, respectively), but only two freshwater genomes are currently available: the streamlined genomes of Polynucleobacter necessarius ssp. asymbioticus and the Actinobacterium AcI-B1.

Diversity of the chlorite dismutase gene in low and high organic carbon rhizosphere soil colonized by perchlorate-reducing bacteria.

Chlorite dismutase (cld) is an essential enzyme in the biodegradation of perchlorate. The objective of this study was to determine the change in sequence diversity of the cld gene, and universal bacterial 16S rRNA genes, in soil samples under varying conditions of organic carbon, bioaugmentation, and plant influence. The cld gene diversity was not different between high organic carbon (HOC) and low organic carbon (LOC) soil.

Microbial community dynamics during acetate biostimulation of RDX-contaminated groundwater.

Biostimulation of groundwater microbial communities (e.g., with carbon sources) is a common approach to achieving in situ bioremediation of organic pollutants (e.

Phylogenetic detection of novel Cryptomycota in an Iowa (United States) aquifer and from previously collected marine and freshwater targeted high-throughput sequencing sets.

Fungi are everywhere and interact with humans in countless ways, but a large group of fungi called 'Cryptomycota' has escaped detection until very recently. Still, the extent of diversity and ecological habits of this group remain largely unknown. We interrogated publically available 18S rRNA gene datasets, obtained via high-throughput sequencing from marine and freshwater samples, for Cryptomycota sequences.