Effects of moderate, voluntary ethanol consumption on the rat and human gut microbiome.

Many alcohol-induced health complications are directly attributable to the toxicity of alcohol or its metabolites, but another potential health impact of alcohol may be on the microbial communities of the human gut. Clear distinctions between healthy and diseased-state gut microbiota have been observed in subjects with metabolic diseases, and recent studies suggest that chronic alcoholism is linked to gut microbiome dysbiosis. Here, we investigated the effects of moderate levels of alcohol consumption on the gut microbiome in both rats and humans.

A multi-tool recipe to identify regions of protein-DNA binding and their influence on associated gene expression.

One commonly performed bioinformatics task is to infer functional regulation of transcription factors by observing differential expression under a knockout, and integrating DNA binding information of that transcription factor.   However, until now, this task has required dedicated bioinformatics support to perform the necessary data integration. GenomeSpace provides a protocol, or "recipe", and a user interface with inter-operating software tools to identify protein occupancies along the genome from a ChIP-seq experiment and associated differentially regulated genes from a RNA-Seq experiment.