Publications by authors named "Kaja Milanowska-Zabel"

Recent studies revealed a significant role of the gut fungal community in human health. Here, we investigated the content and variation of gut mycobiota among subjects from the European population. We explored the interplay between gut fungi and various host-related sociodemographic, lifestyle, health, and dietary factors.

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The intestinal microbiota is a complex and diverse ecological community that fulfills multiple functions and substantially impacts human health. Despite its plasticity, unfavorable conditions can cause perturbations leading to so-called dysbiosis, which have been connected to multiple diseases. Unfortunately, understanding the mechanisms underlying the crosstalk between those microorganisms and their host is proving to be difficult.

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Understanding the function of microbial proteins is essential to reveal the clinical potential of the microbiome. The application of high-throughput sequencing technologies allows for fast and increasingly cheaper acquisition of data from microbial communities. However, many of the inferred protein sequences are novel and not catalogued, hence the possibility of predicting their function through conventional homology-based approaches is limited, which indicates the need for further research on alignment-free methods.

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Article Synopsis
  • There has been a significant increase in metagenomic studies, but challenges arise from the complex and variable nature of microbiome communities, making reliable profiling difficult.
  • Despite efforts to standardize methods in metagenomic research, variations in procedures still lead to inconsistent results, highlighting the need for uniform practices to ensure biologically relevant differences in microbiome composition.
  • Our analysis indicates that factors such as homogenization time and the choice of library preparation kits notably influence the diversity and accuracy of microbiome profiling, with a recommended homogenization time of 10 minutes for optimal results.
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