Publications by authors named "Soren J Sorensen"

Background: The gut microbiota has been implicated in adult obesity, but the causality is still unclear. It has been hypothesized that an obesity-prone gut microbiota can be established in infancy, but only few studies have examined the early-life gut microbiota in relation to obesity in childhood, and no consistent associations have been reported. Here, we examine the association between the early-life gut microbiota and body mass index (BMI) development and body composition throughout childhood.

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Fire blight, caused by Erwinia amylovora, is a destructive bacterial disease affecting pear and apple trees. The biocontrol ability of Pseudomonas fluorescens EK007 suppresses E. amylovora through competitive exclusion.

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Background: Infantile colic is a common condition with limited knowledge about later clinical manifestations. We evaluated the role of the early life gut microbiome in infantile colic and later development of atopic and gastrointestinal disorders.

Methods: Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood cohort was followed with 6 years of extensive clinical phenotyping.

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Plasmids are small DNA molecules that enable bacteria to share beneficial traits, influencing microbial communities. However, their role within the human gut microbiome remains largely unknown. In this study, we investigate the gut microbiomes of 34 mother-child cohorts, employing a plasmid analysis workflow to understand the impact of plasmids on the gut microbiome.

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Metagenomic sequencing has provided great advantages in the characterisation of microbiomes, but currently available analysis tools lack the ability to combine subspecies-level taxonomic resolution and accurate abundance estimation with functional profiling of assembled genomes. To define the microbiome and its associations with human health, improved tools are needed to enable comprehensive understanding of the microbial composition and elucidation of the phylogenetic and functional relationships between the microbes. Here, we present MAGinator, a freely available tool, tailored for profiling of shotgun metagenomics datasets.

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Plasmid-encoded type IV-A CRISPR-Cas systems lack an acquisition module, feature a DinG helicase instead of a nuclease, and form ribonucleoprotein complexes of unknown biological functions. Type IV-A3 systems are carried by conjugative plasmids that often harbor antibiotic-resistance genes and their CRISPR array contents suggest a role in mediating inter-plasmid conflicts, but this function remains unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that a plasmid-encoded type IV-A3 system co-opts the type I-E adaptation machinery from its host, Klebsiella pneumoniae (K.

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Background: In environmental bacteria, the selective advantage of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) can be increased through co-localization with genes such as other ARGs, biocide resistance genes, metal resistance genes, and virulence genes (VGs). The gut microbiome of infants has been shown to contain numerous ARGs, however, co-localization related to ARGs is unknown during early life despite frequent exposures to biocides and metals from an early age.

Results: We conducted a comprehensive analysis of genetic co-localization of resistance genes in a cohort of 662 Danish children and examined the association between such co-localization and environmental factors as well as gut microbial maturation.

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Shotgun metagenomics enables the reconstruction of complex microbial communities at a high level of detail. Such an approach can be conducted using both short-read and long-read sequencing data, as well as a combination of both. To assess the pros and cons of these different approaches, we used 22 fecal DNA extracts collected weekly for 11 weeks from two respective lab mice to study seven performance metrics over four combinations of sequencing depth and technology: (i) 20 Gbp of Illumina short-read data, (ii) 40 Gbp of short-read data, (iii) 20 Gbp of PacBio HiFi long-read data, and (iv) 40 Gbp of hybrid (20 Gbp of short-read +20 Gbp of long-read) data.

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Article Synopsis
  • Microorganisms form complex biofilm communities on plant roots, and this study focuses on a four-species model (SPMX) to explore their interactions and spatial organization.
  • The SPMX co-culture significantly enhances root growth and biomass in Arabidopsis, showing that these multispecies biofilms differ from those formed by individual species.
  • P. amylolyticus, initially a weak colonizer, becomes essential for biofilm structure and plant growth promotion, illustrating that weak species can thrive through cooperation in diverse microbial communities.
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Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are considered reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Given that plasmid-mediated horizontal gene transfer plays a critical role in disseminating ARGs in the environment, it is important to inspect the transfer potential of transmissible plasmids to have a better understanding of whether these mobile ARGs can be hosted by opportunistic pathogens and should be included in One Health's considerations. In this study, we used a fluorescent-reporter-gene based exogenous isolation approach to capture extended-spectrum beta-lactamases encoding mobile determinants from sewer microbiome samples that enter an urban water system (UWS) in Denmark.

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Microbiome-based solutions are regarded key for sustainable agroecosystems. However, it is unclear how agricultural practices affect the rhizosphere microbiome, plant-microorganism interactions and crop performance under field conditions. Therefore, we installed root observation windows in a winter wheat field cultivated either under long-term mouldboard plough (MP) or cultivator tillage (CT).

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Despite their crucial importance for human health, there is still relatively limited knowledge on how the gut resistome changes or responds to antibiotic treatment across ages, especially in the latter case. Here, we use fecal metagenomic data from 662 Danish infants and 217 young adults to fill this gap. The gut resistomes are characterized by a bimodal distribution driven by E.

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Importance: Antibiotic irrigation of breast implants is widely used internationally, but no clinical study has investigated the pharmacokinetics of antibiotic prophylaxis in the breast implant pocket.

Objectives: To evaluate how long locally applied gentamicin, cefazolin, and vancomycin concentrations in the implant pocket remain above the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for the most common bacterial infections and to measure systemic uptake.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective cohort study was performed at the Department of Plastic Surgery and Burns Treatment, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark, between October 25, 2021, and September 22, 2022, among 40 patients undergoing implant-based breast reconstruction who were part of the ongoing BREAST-AB trial (Prophylactic Treatment of Breast Implants With a Solution of Gentamicin, Vancomycin and Cefazolin Antibiotics for Women Undergoing Breast Reconstructive Surgery: a Randomized Controlled Trial).

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Bacteriophage (also known as phage) communities that inhabit the gut have a major effect on the structure and functioning of bacterial populations, but their roles and association with health and disease in early life remain unknown. Here, we analyze the gut virome of 647 children aged 1 year from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) mother-child cohort, all deeply phenotyped from birth and with longitudinally assessed asthma diagnoses. Specific temperate gut phage taxa were found to be associated with later development of asthma.

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Plasmids have been a concern in the dissemination and evolution of antibiotic resistance in the environment. In this study, we investigated the total pool of plasmids (plasmidome) and its derived antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in different compartments of urban water systems (UWSs) in three European countries representing different antibiotic usage regimes. We applied a direct plasmidome approach using wet-lab methods to enrich circular DNA in the samples, followed by shotgun sequencing and in silico contig circularisation.

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We report here seven draft genomes of bacterial strains from two Danish wastewater facilities, two of which might be characterized as a new group within the and genera, respectively. These genomes will provide useful references for understanding bacterial interactions and horizontal gene transfer within bacterial communities.

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Culture techniques have associated colonization with pathogenic bacteria in the airways of neonates with later risk of childhood asthma, whereas more recent studies utilizing sequencing techniques have shown the same phenomenon with specific anaerobic taxa. Here, we analyze nasopharyngeal swabs from 1 month neonates in the COPSAC prospective birth cohort by 16S rRNA gene sequencing of the V3-V4 region in relation to asthma risk throughout childhood. Results are compared with previous culture results from hypopharyngeal aspirates from the same cohort and with hypopharyngeal sequencing data from the later COPSAC cohort.

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Many bacteria use CRISPR-Cas systems to combat mobile genetic elements, such as bacteriophages and plasmids. In turn, these invasive elements have evolved anti-CRISPR proteins to block host immunity. Here we unveil a distinct type of CRISPR-Cas Inhibition strategy that is based on small non-coding RNA anti-CRISPRs (Racrs).

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Article Synopsis
  • Rural children experience lower rates of asthma and atopic diseases compared to urban children, raising questions about the protective role of indoor microbiota in non-farming rural homes.
  • A study analyzed the fungi and bacteria in the beds of 514 six-month-old infants to determine their association with the later development of conditions like asthma, allergic rhinitis, and eczema by age six.
  • Results indicated that infants from higher-risk groups (developing asthma and allergic rhinitis) had lower microbial diversity in their beds, while those developing eczema had higher fungal diversity, suggesting that bed dust microbes may play a significant role in influencing the risk of airway- and skin-related diseases based on living environments.
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Background: In nature, beneficial bacteria triggering induced systemic resistance (ISR) may protect plants from potential diseases, reducing yield losses caused by diverse pathogens. However, little is known about how the host plant initially responds to different beneficial bacteria. To reveal the impact of different bacteria on barley (Hordeum vulgare), bacterial colonization patterns, gene expression, and composition of seed endophytes were explored.

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The role of microbial interactions and the underlying mechanisms that shape complex biofilm communities are poorly understood. Here we employ a microfluidic chip to represent porous subsurface environments and show that cooperative microbial interactions between free-living and biofilm-forming bacteria trigger active spatial segregation to promote their respective dominance in segregated microhabitats. During initial colonization, free-living and biofilm-forming microbes are segregated from the mixed planktonic inoculum to occupy the ambient fluid and grain surface.

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Motivation: Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) harbor a dense and diverse microbial community. They constantly receive antimicrobial residues and resistant strains, and therefore provide conditions for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) determinants. This facilitates the transmission of clinically important genes between, e.

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Background: Antibiotic implant irrigation is increasingly used to prevent deep infection after implant-based breast reconstruction. However, there is limited evidence of the clinical effect. In this study, the authors compare the risk of a deep infection in a Danish population of women who received antibiotic implant irrigation with either gentamicin or vancomycin, or no irrigation.

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Plant microbiomes are pivotal for healthy plant physiological development. Microbes live in complex co-association with plant hosts, and interactions within these microbial communities vary with plant genotype, plant compartment, phenological stage, and soil properties, among others. Plant microbiomes also harbor a substantial and diverse pool of mobile genes encoded on plasmids.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study explores the gut virome of centenarians, revealing that they possess a more diverse range of viruses compared to younger and older adults.
  • It identifies new viral genera linked to Clostridia and shows a shift towards increased lytic viral activity in centenarians.
  • Additionally, the research suggests that enhanced phage-encoded functions in centenarians may aid in essential metabolic pathways, potentially improving gut health and immune resistance.
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