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Faleiros CA, Nunes AT, Gonçalves OS, Alexandre PA, Poleti MD, Mattos EC, Perna-Junior F, Rodrigues PHM, Fukumasu H. Exploration of mobile genetic elements in the ruminal microbiome of Nellore cattle. Sci Rep 2024; 14:13056. [PMID: 38844487 PMCID: PMC11156634 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-63951-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2023] [Accepted: 06/04/2024] [Indexed: 06/09/2024] Open
Abstract
Metagenomics has made it feasible to elucidate the intricacies of the ruminal microbiome and its role in the differentiation of animal production phenotypes of significance. The search for mobile genetic elements (MGEs) has taken on great importance, as they play a critical role in the transfer of genetic material between organisms. Furthermore, these elements serve a dual purpose by controlling populations through lytic bacteriophages, thereby maintaining ecological equilibrium and driving the evolutionary progress of host microorganisms. In this study, we aimed to identify the association between ruminal bacteria and their MGEs in Nellore cattle using physical chromosomal links through the Hi-C method. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing and the proximity ligation method ProxiMeta were used to analyze DNA, getting 1,713,111,307 bp, which gave rise to 107 metagenome-assembled genomes from rumen samples of four Nellore cows maintained on pasture. Taxonomic analysis revealed that most of the bacterial genomes belonged to the families Lachnospiraceae, Bacteroidaceae, Ruminococcaceae, Saccharofermentanaceae, and Treponemataceae and mostly encoded pathways for central carbon and other carbohydrate metabolisms. A total of 31 associations between host bacteria and MGE were identified, including 17 links to viruses and 14 links to plasmids. Additionally, we found 12 antibiotic resistance genes. To our knowledge, this is the first study in Brazilian cattle that connect MGEs with their microbial hosts. It identifies MGEs present in the rumen of pasture-raised Nellore cattle, offering insights that could advance biotechnology for food digestion and improve ruminant performance in production systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Camila A Faleiros
- Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA), University of São Paulo, Pirassununga, SP, 13635-900, Brazil
| | - Alanne T Nunes
- Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA), University of São Paulo, Pirassununga, SP, 13635-900, Brazil
| | - Osiel S Gonçalves
- Department of Microbiology, Institute of Biotechnology Applied to Agriculture (BIOAGRO), Federal University of Viçosa, Viçosa, MG, 36570-000, Brazil
| | - Pâmela A Alexandre
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Agriculture and Food, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
| | - Mirele D Poleti
- Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA), University of São Paulo, Pirassununga, SP, 13635-900, Brazil
| | - Elisângela C Mattos
- Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA), University of São Paulo, Pirassununga, SP, 13635-900, Brazil
| | - Flavio Perna-Junior
- Department of Animal Nutrition and Production, School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of São Paulo (FMVZ-USP), Pirassununga, São Paulo, 13635-900, Brazil
| | - Paulo H Mazza Rodrigues
- Department of Animal Nutrition and Production, School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of São Paulo (FMVZ-USP), Pirassununga, São Paulo, 13635-900, Brazil
| | - Heidge Fukumasu
- Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA), University of São Paulo, Pirassununga, SP, 13635-900, Brazil.
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2
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Yu MK, Fogarty EC, Eren AM. Diverse plasmid systems and their ecology across human gut metagenomes revealed by PlasX and MobMess. Nat Microbiol 2024; 9:830-847. [PMID: 38443576 PMCID: PMC10914615 DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01610-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2022] [Accepted: 01/17/2024] [Indexed: 03/07/2024]
Abstract
Plasmids alter microbial evolution and lifestyles by mobilizing genes that often confer fitness in changing environments across clades. Yet our ecological and evolutionary understanding of naturally occurring plasmids is far from complete. Here we developed a machine-learning model, PlasX, which identified 68,350 non-redundant plasmids across human gut metagenomes and organized them into 1,169 evolutionarily cohesive 'plasmid systems' using our sequence containment-aware network-partitioning algorithm, MobMess. Individual plasmids were often country specific, yet most plasmid systems spanned across geographically distinct human populations. Cargo genes in plasmid systems included well-known determinants of fitness, such as antibiotic resistance, but also many others including enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of essential nutrients and modification of transfer RNAs, revealing a wide repertoire of likely fitness determinants in complex environments. Our study introduces computational tools to recognize and organize plasmids, and uncovers the ecological and evolutionary patterns of diverse plasmids in naturally occurring habitats through plasmid systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael K Yu
- Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
| | - Emily C Fogarty
- Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
- Committee On Microbiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - A Murat Eren
- Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, USA.
- Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
- Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany.
- Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Oldenburg, Germany.
- Marine 'Omics Group, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany.
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3
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Shetty BD, Pandey PK, Mai K. Microbial diversity in dairy manure environment under liquid-solid separation systems. ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY 2024:1-17. [PMID: 38310325 DOI: 10.1080/09593330.2024.2309481] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2023] [Accepted: 01/10/2024] [Indexed: 02/05/2024]
Abstract
In dairy manure, a wide array of microorganisms, including many pathogens, survive and grow under suitable conditions. This microbial community offers a tremendous opportunity for studying animal health, the transport of microbes into the soil, air, and water, and consequential impacts on public health. The aim of this study was to assess the impacts of manure management practices on the microbial community of manure. The key novelty of this work is to identify the impacts of various stages of manure management on microbes living in dairy manure. In general, the majority of dairy farms in California use a flush system to manage dairy manure, which involves liquid-solid separations. To separate liquid and solid in manure, Multi-stage Alternate Dairy Effluent Management Systems (ADEMS) that use mechanical separation systems (MSS) or weeping wall separation systems (WWSS) are used. Thus, this study was conducted to understand how these manure management systems affect the microbial community. We studied the microbial communities in the WWSS and MSS separation systems, as well as in the four stages of the ADEMS. The 16S rRNA gene from the extracted genomic DNA of dairy manure was amplified using the NovoSeq Illumina next-generation sequencing platform. The sequencing data were used to perform the analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) and multi-response permutation procedure (MRRP) statistical tests, and the results showed that microbial communities among WWSS and MSS were significantly different (p < 0.05). These findings have significant practical implications for the design and implementation of manure management practices in dairy farms.
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Affiliation(s)
- B Dharmaveer Shetty
- Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA
| | - Pramod K Pandey
- Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA
| | - Kelly Mai
- Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA
- Mechanisms of Disease and Translational Research, School of Medical Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
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4
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Xiong L, Yao X, Pei J, Wang X, Guo S, Cao M, Bao P, Wang H, Yan P, Guo X. Do microbial-gut-muscle mediated by SCFAs, microbial-gut-brain axis mediated by insulin simultaneously regulate yak IMF deposition? Int J Biol Macromol 2024; 257:128632. [PMID: 38061511 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.128632] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2023] [Revised: 11/25/2023] [Accepted: 12/03/2023] [Indexed: 01/26/2024]
Abstract
Ruminant rumen plays an important role in the digestibility of cellulose, hemicellulose, starch and fat. In this study, the yaks under graze and stall feeding were chosen as the models of different rumen bacteria and intramuscular fat (IMF). The characteristics of IMF deposition, serum indexes in yaks were detected; the bacteria, metabolites in rumen was explored by 16S rRNA sequencing technology, untargeted metabolomics based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer and gas chromatography, respectively; the transcriptome of longissimus thoracis was identified by RNA-Sequencing analysis. Based on above results, a hypothesis that yak IMF deposition is regulated by the combined action of microbiome-gut-brain and muscle axis was proposed. The short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and neurotransmitters precursors like acetylcholine produced in yak rumen promoted insulin secretion via central nervous system. These insulin resulted in the high expression of SREBF1 gene by gut-brain axis; SCFAs can directly arrive to muscular tissue via blood circulation system, then activated the expression of PPARγ gene by gut-muscle axis. The expression of lipogenesis gene SCD, FABP3, CPT1, FASN and ACC2 was accordingly up-regulated. This study firstly introduce the theory of microbiome-gut-brain/muscle axis into the study of ruminant, and comprehensively expounded the regulatory mechanism of yak IMF deposition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lin Xiong
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Xixi Yao
- State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, College of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Qinghai University, Xining, Qinghai, China
| | - Jie Pei
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Xingdong Wang
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Shaoke Guo
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Mengli Cao
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Pengjia Bao
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Hui Wang
- Department of Toxicology, School of Public Health, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Ping Yan
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China
| | - Xian Guo
- Animal Science Department, Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics and Breeding on Tibetan Plateau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Lanzhou, Gansu, China; Key Laboratory for Yak Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction Engineering of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, China.
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5
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Goff JL, Lui LM, Nielsen TN, Poole FL, Smith HJ, Walker KF, Hazen TC, Fields MW, Arkin AP, Adams MWW. Mixed waste contamination selects for a mobile genetic element population enriched in multiple heavy metal resistance genes. ISME COMMUNICATIONS 2024; 4:ycae064. [PMID: 38800128 PMCID: PMC11128244 DOI: 10.1093/ismeco/ycae064] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2023] [Revised: 03/11/2024] [Indexed: 05/29/2024]
Abstract
Mobile genetic elements (MGEs) like plasmids, viruses, and transposable elements can provide fitness benefits to their hosts for survival in the presence of environmental stressors. Heavy metal resistance genes (HMRGs) are frequently observed on MGEs, suggesting that MGEs may be an important driver of adaptive evolution in environments contaminated with heavy metals. Here, we report the meta-mobilome of the heavy metal-contaminated regions of the Oak Ridge Reservation subsurface. This meta-mobilome was compared with one derived from samples collected from unimpacted regions of the Oak Ridge Reservation subsurface. We assembled 1615 unique circularized DNA elements that we propose to be MGEs. The circular elements from the highly contaminated subsurface were enriched in HMRG clusters relative to those from the nearby unimpacted regions. Additionally, we found that these HMRGs were associated with Gamma and Betaproteobacteria hosts in the contaminated subsurface and potentially facilitate the persistence and dominance of these taxa in this region. Finally, the HMRGs were associated with conjugative elements, suggesting their potential for future lateral transfer. We demonstrate how our understanding of MGE ecology, evolution, and function can be enhanced through the genomic context provided by completed MGE assemblies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer L Goff
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, United States
- Department of Chemistry, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY 13210, United States
| | - Lauren M Lui
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Torben N Nielsen
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Farris L Poole
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, United States
| | - Heidi J Smith
- Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, United States
- Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, United States
| | - Kathleen F Walker
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37916, United States
| | - Terry C Hazen
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37916, United States
- Genome Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, United States
| | - Matthew W Fields
- Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, United States
- Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, United States
| | - Adam P Arkin
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
- Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Michael W W Adams
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, United States
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6
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Moraïs S, Mazor M, Tovar-Herrera O, Zehavi T, Zorea A, Ifrach M, Bogumil D, Brandis A, Walter J, Elia N, Gur E, Mizrahi I. Plasmid-encoded toxin defence mediates mutualistic microbial interactions. Nat Microbiol 2024; 9:108-119. [PMID: 38151647 PMCID: PMC10769881 DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01521-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/18/2022] [Accepted: 10/11/2023] [Indexed: 12/29/2023]
Abstract
Gut environments harbour dense microbial ecosystems in which plasmids are widely distributed. Plasmids facilitate the exchange of genetic material among microorganisms while enabling the transfer of a diverse array of accessory functions. However, their precise impact on microbial community composition and function remains largely unexplored. Here we identify a prevalent bacterial toxin and a plasmid-encoded resistance mechanism that mediates the interaction between Lactobacilli and Enterococci. This plasmid is widespread across ecosystems, including the rumen and human gut microbiota. Biochemical characterization of the plasmid revealed a defence mechanism against reuterin, a toxin produced by various gut microbes, such as Limosilactobacillus reuteri. Using a targeted metabolomic approach, we find reuterin to be prevalent across rumen ecosystems with impacts on microbial community structure. Enterococcus strains carrying the protective plasmid were isolated and their interactions with L. reuteri, the toxin producer, were studied in vitro. Interestingly, we found that by conferring resistance against reuterin, the plasmid mediates metabolic exchange between the defending and the attacking microbial species, resulting in a beneficial relationship or mutualism. Hence, we reveal here an ecological role for a plasmid-coded defence system in mediating a beneficial interaction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Moraïs
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Michael Mazor
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Omar Tovar-Herrera
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Tamar Zehavi
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Alvah Zorea
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Morya Ifrach
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - David Bogumil
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Alexander Brandis
- Life Sciences Core Facilities, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
| | - Jens Walter
- Department of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
| | - Natalie Elia
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Eyal Gur
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
| | - Itzhak Mizrahi
- National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
- The Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
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7
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Diaz GR, Gaire TN, Ferm P, Case L, Caixeta LS, Goldsmith TJ, Armstrong J, Noyes NR. Effect of castration timing and weaning strategy on the taxonomic and functional profile of ruminal bacteria and archaea of beef calves. Anim Microbiome 2023; 5:61. [PMID: 38041127 PMCID: PMC10691087 DOI: 10.1186/s42523-023-00284-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2023] [Accepted: 11/28/2023] [Indexed: 12/03/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Beef cattle experience several management challenges across their lifecycle. Castration and weaning, two major interventions in the early life of beef cattle, can have a substantial impact on animal performance. Despite the key role of the rumen microbiome on productive traits of beef cattle, the effect of castration timing and weaning strategy on this microbial community has not been formally described. We assessed the effect of four castration time windows (at birth, turnout, pre-weaning and weaning) and two weaning strategies (fence-line and truck transportation) on the rumen microbiome in a randomized controlled study with 32 male calves across 3 collection days (i.e., time points). Ruminal fluid samples were submitted to shotgun metagenomic sequencing and changes in the taxonomic (microbiota) and functional profile (metagenome) of the rumen microbiome were described. RESULTS Using a comprehensive yet stringent taxonomic classification approach, we identified 10,238 unique taxa classified under 40 bacterial and 7 archaeal phyla across all samples. Castration timing had a limited long-term impact on the rumen microbiota and was not associated with changes in alpha and beta diversity. The interaction of collection day and weaning strategy was associated with changes in the rumen microbiota, which experienced a significant decrease in alpha diversity and shifts in beta diversity within 48 h post-weaning, especially in calves abruptly weaned by truck transportation. Calves weaned using a fence-line weaning strategy had lower relative abundance of Bacteroides, Lachnospira, Fibrobacter and Ruminococcus genera compared to calves weaned by truck transportation. Some genes involved in the hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis pathway (fwdB and fwdF) had higher relative abundance in fence-line-weaned calves post-weaning. The antimicrobial resistance gene tetW consistently represented more than 50% of the resistome across time, weaning and castration groups, without significant changes in relative abundance. CONCLUSIONS Within the context of this study, castration timing had limited long-term effects on the rumen microbiota, while weaning strategy had short-term effects on the rumen microbiota and methane-associated metagenome, but not on the rumen resistome.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gerardo R Diaz
- Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Tara N Gaire
- Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Peter Ferm
- Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Lacey Case
- North Central Research and Outreach Center, Department of Animal Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Luciano S Caixeta
- Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Timothy J Goldsmith
- Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Joe Armstrong
- Agricultural and Natural Resource Systems, University of Minnesota Extension, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA
| | - Noelle R Noyes
- Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA.
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8
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Gallardo-Becerra L, Cervantes-Echeverría M, Cornejo-Granados F, Vazquez-Morado LE, Ochoa-Leyva A. Perspectives in Searching Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs) Produced by the Microbiota. MICROBIAL ECOLOGY 2023; 87:8. [PMID: 38036921 PMCID: PMC10689560 DOI: 10.1007/s00248-023-02313-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2023] [Accepted: 10/24/2023] [Indexed: 12/02/2023]
Abstract
Changes in the structure and function of the microbiota are associated with various human diseases. These microbial changes can be mediated by antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), small peptides produced by the host and their microbiota, which play a crucial role in host-bacteria co-evolution. Thus, by studying AMPs produced by the microbiota (microbial AMPs), we can better understand the interactions between host and bacteria in microbiome homeostasis. Additionally, microbial AMPs are a new source of compounds against pathogenic and multi-resistant bacteria. Further, the growing accessibility to metagenomic and metatranscriptomic datasets presents an opportunity to discover new microbial AMPs. This review examines the structural properties of microbiota-derived AMPs, their molecular action mechanisms, genomic organization, and strategies for their identification in any microbiome data as well as experimental testing. Overall, we provided a comprehensive overview of this important topic from the microbial perspective.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luigui Gallardo-Becerra
- Departamento de Microbiologia Molecular, Instituto de Biotecnologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Avenida Universidad 2001, C.P. 62210, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
| | - Melany Cervantes-Echeverría
- Departamento de Microbiologia Molecular, Instituto de Biotecnologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Avenida Universidad 2001, C.P. 62210, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
| | - Fernanda Cornejo-Granados
- Departamento de Microbiologia Molecular, Instituto de Biotecnologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Avenida Universidad 2001, C.P. 62210, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
| | - Luis E Vazquez-Morado
- Departamento de Microbiologia Molecular, Instituto de Biotecnologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Avenida Universidad 2001, C.P. 62210, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
| | - Adrian Ochoa-Leyva
- Departamento de Microbiologia Molecular, Instituto de Biotecnologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Avenida Universidad 2001, C.P. 62210, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
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9
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Tang X, Shang J, Ji Y, Sun Y. PLASMe: a tool to identify PLASMid contigs from short-read assemblies using transformer. Nucleic Acids Res 2023; 51:e83. [PMID: 37427782 PMCID: PMC10450166 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkad578] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2022] [Revised: 06/19/2023] [Accepted: 06/26/2023] [Indexed: 07/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Plasmids are mobile genetic elements that carry important accessory genes. Cataloging plasmids is a fundamental step to elucidate their roles in promoting horizontal gene transfer between bacteria. Next generation sequencing (NGS) is the main source for discovering new plasmids today. However, NGS assembly programs tend to return contigs, making plasmid detection difficult. This problem is particularly grave for metagenomic assemblies, which contain short contigs of heterogeneous origins. Available tools for plasmid contig detection still suffer from some limitations. In particular, alignment-based tools tend to miss diverged plasmids while learning-based tools often have lower precision. In this work, we develop a plasmid detection tool PLASMe that capitalizes on the strength of alignment and learning-based methods. Closely related plasmids can be easily identified using the alignment component in PLASMe while diverged plasmids can be predicted using order-specific Transformer models. By encoding plasmid sequences as a language defined on the protein cluster-based token set, Transformer can learn the importance of proteins and their correlation through positionally token embedding and the attention mechanism. We compared PLASMe and other tools on detecting complete plasmids, plasmid contigs, and contigs assembled from CAMI2 simulated data. PLASMe achieved the highest F1-score. After validating PLASMe on data with known labels, we also tested it on real metagenomic and plasmidome data. The examination of some commonly used marker genes shows that PLASMe exhibits more reliable performance than other tools.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xubo Tang
- Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Jiayu Shang
- Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Yongxin Ji
- Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Yanni Sun
- Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
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10
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Androsiuk L, Shay T, Tal S. Characterization of the Environmental Plasmidome of the Red Sea. Microbiol Spectr 2023; 11:e0040023. [PMID: 37395658 PMCID: PMC10434023 DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.00400-23] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2023] [Accepted: 06/13/2023] [Indexed: 07/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Plasmids contribute to microbial diversity and adaptation, providing microorganisms with the ability to thrive in a wide range of conditions in extreme environments. However, while the number of marine microbiome studies is constantly increasing, very little is known about marine plasmids, and they are very poorly represented in public databases. To extend the repertoire of environmental marine plasmids, we established a pipeline for the de novo assembly of plasmids in the marine environment by analyzing available microbiome metagenomic sequencing data. By applying the pipeline to data from the Red Sea, we identified 362 plasmid candidates. We showed that the distribution of plasmids corresponds to environmental conditions, particularly, depth, temperature, and physical location. At least 7 of the 362 candidates are most probably real plasmids, based on a functional analysis of their open reading frames (ORFs). Only one of the seven has been described previously. Three plasmids were identified in other public marine metagenomic data from different locations all over the world; these plasmids contained different cassettes of functional genes at each location. Analysis of antibiotic and metal resistance genes revealed that the same positions that were enriched with genes encoding resistance to antibiotics were also enriched with resistance to metals, suggesting that plasmids contribute site-dependent phenotypic modules to their ecological niches. Finally, half of the ORFs (50.8%) could not be assigned to a function, emphasizing the untapped potential of the unique marine plasmids to provide proteins with multiple novel functions. IMPORTANCE Marine plasmids are understudied and hence underrepresented in databases. Plasmid functional annotation and characterization is complicated but, if successful, may provide a pool of novel genes and unknown functions. Newly discovered plasmids and their functional repertoire are potentially valuable tools for predicting the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance, providing vectors for molecular cloning and an understanding of plasmid-bacterial interactions in various environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucy Androsiuk
- Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research Ltd., National Center for Mariculture, Eilat, Israel
- Marine Biology and Biotechnology Program, Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Eilat, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
| | - Tal Shay
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
| | - Shay Tal
- Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research Ltd., National Center for Mariculture, Eilat, Israel
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11
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Stockdale SR, Hill C. Incorporating plasmid biology and metagenomics into a holistic model of the human gut microbiome. Curr Opin Microbiol 2023; 73:102307. [PMID: 37002975 DOI: 10.1016/j.mib.2023.102307] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2022] [Revised: 02/14/2023] [Accepted: 03/05/2023] [Indexed: 04/01/2023]
Abstract
The human gut microbiome is often described as the collection of bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, and viruses associated with an individual, with no acknowledgement of the plasmid constituents. However, like viruses, plasmids are autonomous intracellular replicating entities that can influence the genotype and phenotype of their host and mediate trans-kingdom interactions. Plasmids are frequently noted as vehicles for horizontal gene transfer and for spreading antibiotic resistance, yet their multifaceted contribution to mutualistic and antagonistic interactions within the human microbiome and impact on human health is overlooked. In this review, we highlight the importance of plasmids and their biological properties as overlooked components of microbiomes. Subsequent human microbiome studies should include dedicated analyses of plasmids, particularly as a holistic understanding of human-microbial interactions is required before effective and safe interventions can be implemented to improve human well-being.
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12
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Cai Z, Li P, Zhu W, Wei J, Lu J, Song X, Li K, Li S, Li M. Metagenomic analysis reveals gut plasmids as diagnosis markers for colorectal cancer. Front Microbiol 2023; 14:1130446. [PMID: 37283932 PMCID: PMC10239823 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1130446] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2022] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 06/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Background Colorectal cancer (CRC) is linked to distinct gut microbiome patterns. The efficacy of gut bacteria as diagnostic biomarkers for CRC has been confirmed. Despite the potential to influence microbiome physiology and evolution, the set of plasmids in the gut microbiome remains understudied. Methods We investigated the essential features of gut plasmid using metagenomic data of 1,242 samples from eight distinct geographic cohorts. We identified 198 plasmid-related sequences that differed in abundance between CRC patients and controls and screened 21 markers for the CRC diagnosis model. We utilize these plasmid markers combined with bacteria to construct a random forest classifier model to diagnose CRC. Results The plasmid markers were able to distinguish between the CRC patients and controls [mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC = 0.70)] and maintained accuracy in two independent cohorts. In comparison to the bacteria-only model, the performance of the composite panel created by combining plasmid and bacteria features was significantly improved in all training cohorts (mean AUCcomposite = 0.804 and mean AUCbacteria = 0.787) and maintained high accuracy in all independent cohorts (mean AUCcomposite = 0.839 and mean AUCbacteria = 0.821). In comparison to controls, we found that the bacteria-plasmid correlation strength was weaker in CRC patients. Additionally, the KEGG orthology (KO) genes in plasmids that are independent of bacteria or plasmids significantly correlated with CRC. Conclusion We identified plasmid features associated with CRC and showed how plasmid and bacterial markers could be combined to further enhance CRC diagnosis accuracy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhiyuan Cai
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Ping Li
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Wen Zhu
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Jingyue Wei
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Jieyu Lu
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Xiaoyi Song
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Kunwei Li
- Radiology Department, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Sikai Li
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Man Li
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China
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13
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Plasmid-Encoded Traits Vary across Environments. mBio 2023; 14:e0319122. [PMID: 36629415 PMCID: PMC9973032 DOI: 10.1128/mbio.03191-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Plasmids are key mobile genetic elements in bacterial evolution and ecology as they allow the rapid adaptation of bacteria under selective environmental changes. However, the genetic information associated with plasmids is usually considered separately from information about their environmental origin. To broadly understand what kinds of traits may become mobilized by plasmids in different environments, we analyzed the properties and accessory traits of 9,725 unique plasmid sequences from a publicly available database with known bacterial hosts and isolation sources. Although most plasmid research focuses on resistance traits, such genes made up <1% of the total genetic information carried by plasmids. Similar to traits encoded on the bacterial chromosome, plasmid accessory trait compositions (including general Clusters of Orthologous Genes [COG] functions, resistance genes, and carbon and nitrogen genes) varied across seven broadly defined environment types (human, animal, wastewater, plant, soil, marine, and freshwater). Despite their potential for horizontal gene transfer, plasmid traits strongly varied with their host's taxonomic assignment. However, the trait differences across environments of broad COG categories could not be entirely explained by plasmid host taxonomy, suggesting that environmental selection acts on the plasmid traits themselves. Finally, some plasmid traits and environments (e.g., resistance genes in human-related environments) were more often associated with mobilizable plasmids (those having at least one detected relaxase) than others. Overall, these findings underscore the high level of diversity of traits encoded by plasmids and provide a baseline to investigate the potential of plasmids to serve as reservoirs of adaptive traits for microbial communities. IMPORTANCE Plasmids are well known for their role in the transmission of antibiotic resistance-conferring genes. Beyond human and clinical settings, however, they disseminate many other types of genes, including those that contribute to microbially driven ecosystem processes. In this study, we identified the distribution of traits genetically encoded by plasmids isolated from seven broadly categorized environments. We find that plasmid trait content varied with both bacterial host taxonomy and environment and that, on average, half of the plasmids were potentially mobilizable. As anthropogenic activities impact ecosystems and the climate, investigating and identifying the mechanisms of how microbial communities can adapt will be imperative for predicting the impacts on ecosystem functioning.
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14
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Multilayer networks of plasmid genetic similarity reveal potential pathways of gene transmission. THE ISME JOURNAL 2023; 17:649-659. [PMID: 36759552 PMCID: PMC10119158 DOI: 10.1038/s41396-023-01373-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2022] [Revised: 01/11/2023] [Accepted: 01/16/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Abstract
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant threat to public health. Plasmids are principal vectors of AMR genes, significantly contributing to their spread and mobility across hosts. Nevertheless, little is known about the dynamics of plasmid genetic exchange across animal hosts. Here, we use theory and methodology from network and disease ecology to investigate the potential of gene transmission between plasmids using a data set of 21 plasmidomes from a single dairy cow population. We constructed a multilayer network based on pairwise plasmid genetic similarity. Genetic similarity is a signature of past genetic exchange that can aid in identifying potential routes and mechanisms of gene transmission within and between cows. Links between cows dominated the transmission network, and plasmids containing mobility genes were more connected. Modularity analysis revealed a network cluster where all plasmids contained a mobM gene, and one where all plasmids contained a beta-lactamase gene. Cows that contain both clusters also share transmission pathways with many other cows, making them candidates for super-spreading. In support, we found signatures of gene super-spreading in which a few plasmids and cows are responsible for most gene exchange. An agent-based transmission model showed that a new gene invading the cow population will likely reach all cows. Finally, we showed that edge weights contain a non-random signature for the mechanisms of gene transmission, allowing us to differentiate between dispersal and genetic exchange. These results provide insights into how genes, including those providing AMR, spread across animal hosts.
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15
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Comparative Genomic Analysis of Carbofuran-Degrading Sphingomonads Reveals the Carbofuran Catabolism Mechanism in
Sphingobium
sp. Strain CFD-1. Appl Environ Microbiol 2022; 88:e0102422. [PMID: 36314801 PMCID: PMC9680625 DOI: 10.1128/aem.01024-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Owing to the extensive use of carbofuran over the past 50 years, bacteria have evolved catabolic pathways to mineralize this insecticide, which plays an important role in eliminating carbofuran residue in the environment. In this study, the
cfd
gene cluster, responsible for the catabolism of carbofuran phenol, was predicted by comparing sphingomonad genomes.
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16
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Global Distribution and Diversity of Prevalent Sewage Water Plasmidomes. mSystems 2022; 7:e0019122. [PMID: 36069451 PMCID: PMC9600348 DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00191-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Sewage water from around the world contains an abundance of short plasmids, several of which harbor antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs). The global dynamics of plasmid-derived antimicrobial resistance and functions are only starting to be unveiled. Here, we utilized a previously created data set of 159,332 assumed small plasmids from 24 different global sewage samples. The detailed phylogeny, as well as the interplay between their protein domains, ARGs, and predicted bacterial host genera, were investigated to understand sewage plasmidome dynamics globally. A total of 58,429 circular elements carried genes encoding plasmid-related features, and MASH distance analyses showed a high degree of diversity. A single (yet diverse) cluster of 520 predicted Acinetobacter plasmids was predominant among the European sewage water. Our results suggested a prevalence of plasmid-backbone gene combinations over others. This could be related to selected bacterial genera that act as bacterial hosts. These combinations also mirrored the geographical locations of the sewage samples. Our functional domain network analysis identified three groups of plasmids. However, these backbone domains were not exclusive to any given group, and Acinetobacter was the dominant host genus among the theta-replicating plasmids, which contained a reservoir of the macrolide resistance gene pair msr(E) and mph(E). Macrolide resistance genes were the most common in the sewage plasmidomes and were found in the largest number of unique plasmids. While msr(E) and mph(E) were limited to Acinetobacter, erm(B) was disseminated among a range of Firmicutes plasmids, including Staphylococcus and Streptococcus, highlighting a potential reservoir of antibiotic resistance for these pathogens from around the globe. IMPORTANCE Antimicrobial resistance is a global threat to human health, as it inhibits our ability to treat infectious diseases. This study utilizes sewage water plasmidomes to identify plasmid-derived features and highlights antimicrobial resistance genes, particularly macrolide resistance genes, as abundant in sewage water plasmidomes in Firmicutes and Acinetobacter hosts. The emergence of macrolide resistance in these bacteria suggests that macrolide selective pressure exists in sewage water and that the resident bacteria can readily acquire macrolide resistance via small plasmids.
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17
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Ma T, Zaheer R, McAllister TA, Guo W, Li F, Tu Y, Diao Q, Guan LL. Expressions of resistome is linked to the key functions and stability of active rumen microbiome. Anim Microbiome 2022; 4:38. [PMID: 35659381 PMCID: PMC9167530 DOI: 10.1186/s42523-022-00189-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2021] [Accepted: 05/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The resistome describes the array of antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) present within a microbial community. Recent research has documented the resistome in the rumen of ruminants and revealed that the type and abundance of ARGs could be affected by diet and/or antibiotic treatment. However, most of these studies only assessed ARGs using metagenomics, and expression of the resistome and its biological function within the microbiome remains largely unexplored. RESULTS We characterized the pools of ARGs (resistome) and their activities in the rumen of 48 beef cattle belonging to three breeds (Angus, Charolais, Kinsella composite hybrid), using shotgun metagenomics and metatranscriptomics. Sixty (including 20 plasmid-associated) ARGs were expressed which accounted for about 30% of the total number of ARGs (187) identified in metagenomic datasets, with tetW and mefA exhibiting the highest level of expression. In addition, the bacterial hosts of 17 expressed ARGs were identified. The active resistome was less diverse in Kinsella composite hybrid than Angus, however, expression of ARGs did not differ among breeds. Although not associated with feed efficiency, the total abundance of expressed ARGs was positively correlated with metabolic pathways and 'attenuation values' (a measurement of stability) of the active rumen microbiome, suggesting that ARGs expression influences the stability and functionality of the rumen microbiome. Moreover, Ruminococcus spp., Prevotella ruminicola, Muribaculaceae spp. and Collinsella aerofaciens were all identified as hosts of expressed ARGs, possibly promoting the dominance of these carbohydrate degraders within the rumen microbiome. CONCLUSIONS Findings from this study provide new insight into the active rumen resistome in vivo, which may inform strategies to limit the spread of ubiquitously found ARGs from the rumen to the broader environment without negatively impacting the key functional outcomes of the rumen microbiome.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tao Ma
- Key Laboratory of Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Institute of Feed Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.,4-16F, Agriculture/Forestry Center, Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2P5, Canada
| | - Rahat Zaheer
- Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, AB, T1J 4P4, Canada
| | - Tim A McAllister
- Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, AB, T1J 4P4, Canada
| | - Wei Guo
- 4-16F, Agriculture/Forestry Center, Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2P5, Canada.,State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, International Centre of Tibetan Plateau Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China
| | - Fuyong Li
- 4-16F, Agriculture/Forestry Center, Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2P5, Canada
| | - Yan Tu
- Key Laboratory of Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Institute of Feed Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Qiyu Diao
- Key Laboratory of Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Institute of Feed Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Le Luo Guan
- 4-16F, Agriculture/Forestry Center, Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2P5, Canada.
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18
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Stockdale SR, Harrington RS, Shkoporov AN, Khokhlova EV, Daly KM, McDonnell SA, O'Reagan O, Nolan JA, Sheehan D, Lavelle A, Draper LA, Shanahan F, Ross RP, Hill C. Metagenomic assembled plasmids of the human microbiome vary across disease cohorts. Sci Rep 2022; 12:9212. [PMID: 35654877 PMCID: PMC9163076 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13313-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2021] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
We compiled a human metagenome assembled plasmid (MAP) database and interrogated differences across multiple studies that were originally designed to investigate the composition of the human microbiome across various lifestyles, life stages and events. This was performed as plasmids enable bacteria to rapidly expand their functional capacity through mobilisation, yet their contribution to human health and disease is poorly understood. We observed that inter-sample β-diversity differences of plasmid content (plasmidome) could distinguish cohorts across a multitude of conditions. We also show that reduced intra-sample plasmidome α-diversity is consistent amongst patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Clostridioides difficile infections. We also show that faecal microbiota transplants can restore plasmidome diversity. Overall plasmidome diversity, specific plasmids, and plasmid-encoded functions can all potentially act as biomarkers of IBD or its severity. The human plasmidome is an overlooked facet of the microbiome and should be integrated into investigations regarding the role of the microbiome in promoting health or disease. Including MAP databases in analyses will enable a greater understanding of the roles of plasmid-encoded functions within the gut microbiome and will inform future human metagenome analyses.
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Affiliation(s)
- S R Stockdale
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland.
| | - R S Harrington
- School of Microbiology, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - A N Shkoporov
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - E V Khokhlova
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - K M Daly
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - S A McDonnell
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - O O'Reagan
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - J A Nolan
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - D Sheehan
- Department of Medicine, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - A Lavelle
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
- Department of Medicine, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - L A Draper
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - F Shanahan
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
- Department of Medicine, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - R P Ross
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
| | - C Hill
- APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland.
- School of Microbiology, University College Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland.
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19
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Karami Fath M, Karimfar N, Fazlollahpour Naghibi A, Shafa S, Ghasemi Shiran M, Ataei M, Dehghanzadeh H, Nabi Afjadi M, Ghadiri T, Payandeh Z, Tarhriz V. Revisiting characteristics of oncogenic extrachromosomal DNA as mobile enhancers on neuroblastoma and glioma cancers. Cancer Cell Int 2022; 22:200. [PMID: 35614494 PMCID: PMC9131661 DOI: 10.1186/s12935-022-02617-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2022] [Accepted: 05/18/2022] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Cancer can be induced by a variety of possible causes, including tumor suppressor gene failure and proto-oncogene hyperactivation. Tumor-associated extrachromosomal circular DNA has been proposed to endanger human health and speed up the progression of cancer. The amplification of ecDNA has raised the oncogene copy number in numerous malignancies according to whole-genome sequencing on distinct cancer types. The unusual structure and function of ecDNA, and its potential role in understanding current cancer genome maps, make it a hotspot to study tumor pathogenesis and evolution. The discovery of the basic mechanisms of ecDNA in the emergence and growth of malignancies could lead researchers to develop new cancer therapies. Despite recent progress, different aspects of ecDNA require more investigation. We focused on the features, and analyzed the bio-genesis, and origin of ecDNA in this review, as well as its functions in neuroblastoma and glioma cancers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mohsen Karami Fath
- Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Nastaran Karimfar
- Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch, Tabriz, Iran
| | | | - Shahriyar Shafa
- School of Medicine, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran
| | - Melika Ghasemi Shiran
- Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mehran Ataei
- Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Shahid Chamran University, Ahvaz, Iran
| | | | - Mohsen Nabi Afjadi
- Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biological Science, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
| | - Tahereh Ghadiri
- Department of Neuroscience and Cognition, Faculty of Advanced Medical Sciences, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran. .,Shefa Neuroscience Research Center, Khatam Alanbia Hospital, Tehran, Iran. .,Neurosiences Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
| | - Zahra Payandeh
- Department Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Division Medical Inflammation Research, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
| | - Vahideh Tarhriz
- Molecular Medicine Research Center, Biomedicine Institute, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
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20
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Meng M, Li Y, Yao H. Plasmid-Mediated Transfer of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Soil. Antibiotics (Basel) 2022; 11:antibiotics11040525. [PMID: 35453275 PMCID: PMC9024699 DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics11040525] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2022] [Revised: 04/09/2022] [Accepted: 04/13/2022] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Due to selective pressure from the widespread use of antibiotics, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are found in human hosts, plants, and animals and virtually all natural environments. Their migration and transmission in different environmental media are often more harmful than antibiotics themselves. ARGs mainly move between different microorganisms through a variety of mobile genetic elements (MGEs), such as plasmids and phages. The soil environment is regarded as the most microbially active biosphere on the Earth’s surface and is closely related to human activities. With the increase in human activity, soils are becoming increasingly contaminated with antibiotics and ARGs. Soil plasmids play an important role in this process. This paper reviews the current scenario of plasmid-mediated migration and transmission of ARGs in natural environments and under different antibiotic selection pressures, summarizes the current methods of plasmid extraction and analysis, and briefly introduces the mechanism of plasmid splice transfer using the F factor as an example. However, as the global spread of drug-resistant bacteria has increased and the knowledge of MGEs improves, the contribution of soil plasmids to resistance gene transmission needs to be further investigated. The prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacteria has also made the effective prevention of the transmission of resistance genes through the plasmid-bacteria pathway a major research priority.
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Affiliation(s)
- Miaoling Meng
- Research Center for Environmental Ecology and Engineering, School of Environmental Ecology and Biological Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430073, China;
| | - Yaying Li
- Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health, Ningbo Observation and Research Station, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China;
- Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Urban Environmental Processes and Pollution Control, CAS Haixi Industrial Technology Innovation Center in Beilun, Ningbo 315830, China
| | - Huaiying Yao
- Research Center for Environmental Ecology and Engineering, School of Environmental Ecology and Biological Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430073, China;
- Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health, Ningbo Observation and Research Station, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China;
- Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Urban Environmental Processes and Pollution Control, CAS Haixi Industrial Technology Innovation Center in Beilun, Ningbo 315830, China
- Correspondence: ; Tel.: +86-0574-8678-4812
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21
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Sengupta K, Hivarkar SS, Palevich N, Chaudhary PP, Dhakephalkar PK, Dagar SS. Genomic architecture of three newly isolated unclassified Butyrivibrio species elucidate their potential role in the rumen ecosystem. Genomics 2022; 114:110281. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2022.110281] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/30/2021] [Accepted: 01/31/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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22
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Ma T, McAllister TA, Guan LL. A review of the resistome within the digestive tract of livestock. J Anim Sci Biotechnol 2021; 12:121. [PMID: 34763729 PMCID: PMC8588621 DOI: 10.1186/s40104-021-00643-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2021] [Accepted: 10/07/2021] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Antimicrobials have been widely used to prevent and treat infectious diseases and promote growth in food-production animals. However, the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance poses a huge threat to public and animal health, especially in less developed countries where food-producing animals often intermingle with humans. To limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance from food-production animals to humans and the environment, it is essential to have a comprehensive knowledge of the role of the resistome in antimicrobial resistance (AMR), The resistome refers to the collection of all antimicrobial resistance genes associated with microbiota in a given environment. The dense microbiota in the digestive tract is known to harbour one of the most diverse resistomes in nature. Studies of the resistome in the digestive tract of humans and animals are increasing exponentially as a result of advancements in next-generation sequencing and the expansion of bioinformatic resources/tools to identify and describe the resistome. In this review, we outline the various tools/bioinformatic pipelines currently available to characterize and understand the nature of the intestinal resistome of swine, poultry, and ruminants. We then propose future research directions including analysis of resistome using long-read sequencing, investigation in the role of mobile genetic elements in the expression, function and transmission of AMR. This review outlines the current knowledge and approaches to studying the resistome in food-producing animals and sheds light on future strategies to reduce antimicrobial usage and control the spread of AMR both within and from livestock production systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tao Ma
- Key laboratory of Feed Biotechnology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Feed Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.,Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, T6G2P5, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Tim A McAllister
- Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, Lethbridge, AB, T1J 4P4, Canada
| | - Le Luo Guan
- Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, T6G2P5, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
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23
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Perez MF, Saona LA, Farías ME, Poehlein A, Meinhardt F, Daniel R, Dib JR. Assessment of the plasmidome of an extremophilic microbial community from the Diamante Lake, Argentina. Sci Rep 2021; 11:21459. [PMID: 34728656 PMCID: PMC8563766 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-00753-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/21/2021] [Accepted: 10/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Diamante Lake located at 4589 m.a.s.l. in the Andean Puna constitutes an extreme environment. It is exposed to multiple extreme conditions such as an unusually high concentration of arsenic (over 300 mg L-1) and low oxygen pressure. Microorganisms thriving in the lake display specific genotypes that facilitate survival, which include at least a multitude of plasmid-encoded resistance traits. Hence, the genetic information provided by the plasmids essentially contributes to understand adaptation to different stressors. Though plasmids from cultivable organisms have already been analyzed to the sequence level, the impact of the entire plasmid-borne genetic information on such microbial ecosystem is not known. This study aims at assessing the plasmidome from Diamante Lake, which facilitates the identification of potential hosts and prediction of gene functions as well as the ecological impact of mobile genetic elements. The deep-sequencing analysis revealed a large fraction of previously unknown DNA sequences of which the majority encoded putative proteins of unknown function. Remarkably, functions related to the oxidative stress response, DNA repair, as well as arsenic- and antibiotic resistances were annotated. Additionally, all necessary capacities related to plasmid replication, mobilization and maintenance were detected. Sequences characteristic for megaplasmids and other already known plasmid-associated genes were identified as well. The study highlights the potential of the deep-sequencing approach specifically targeting plasmid populations as it allows to evaluate the ecological impact of plasmids from (cultivable and non-cultivable) microorganisms, thereby contributing to the understanding of the distribution of resistance factors within an extremophilic microbial community.
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Affiliation(s)
- María Florencia Perez
- grid.423606.50000 0001 1945 2152Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán Argentina
| | - Luis Alberto Saona
- grid.423606.50000 0001 1945 2152Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán Argentina
| | - María Eugenia Farías
- grid.423606.50000 0001 1945 2152Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán Argentina
| | - Anja Poehlein
- grid.7450.60000 0001 2364 4210Genomic and Applied Microbiology and Göttingen Genomics Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Grisebachstr. 8, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Friedhelm Meinhardt
- grid.5949.10000 0001 2172 9288Institut für Molekulare Mikrobiologie und Biotechnologie, Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
| | - Rolf Daniel
- grid.7450.60000 0001 2364 4210Genomic and Applied Microbiology and Göttingen Genomics Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Grisebachstr. 8, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Julián Rafael Dib
- grid.423606.50000 0001 1945 2152Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán Argentina ,grid.108162.c0000000121496664Instituto de Microbiología, Facultad de Bioquímica, Química y Farmacia, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán Argentina
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24
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Mizrahi I, Wallace RJ, Moraïs S. The rumen microbiome: balancing food security and environmental impacts. Nat Rev Microbiol 2021; 19:553-566. [PMID: 33981031 DOI: 10.1038/s41579-021-00543-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 133] [Impact Index Per Article: 44.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/09/2021] [Indexed: 02/03/2023]
Abstract
Ruminants produce edible products and contribute to food security. They house a complex rumen microbial community that enables the host to digest their plant feed through microbial-mediated fermentation. However, the rumen microbiome is also responsible for the production of one of the most potent greenhouse gases, methane, and contributes about 18% of its total anthropogenic emissions. Conventional methods to lower methane production by ruminants have proved successful, but to a limited and often temporary extent. An increased understanding of the host-microbiome interactions has led to the development of new mitigation strategies. In this Review we describe the composition, ecology and metabolism of the rumen microbiome, and the impact on host physiology and the environment. We also discuss the most pertinent methane mitigation strategies that emerged to balance food security and environmental impacts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Itzhak Mizrahi
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, Marcus Family Campus, Be'er-Sheva, Israel.
| | - R John Wallace
- The Rowett Institute, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
| | - Sarah Moraïs
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, Marcus Family Campus, Be'er-Sheva, Israel
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25
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Wang T, Weiss A, Ha Y, You L. Predicting plasmid persistence in microbial communities by coarse-grained modeling. Bioessays 2021; 43:e2100084. [PMID: 34278591 DOI: 10.1002/bies.202100084] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/23/2021] [Revised: 06/15/2021] [Accepted: 06/17/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Plasmids are a major type of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) that mediate horizontal gene transfer. The stable maintenance of plasmids plays a critical role in the functions and survival for microbial populations. However, predicting and controlling plasmid persistence and abundance in complex microbial communities remain challenging. Computationally, this challenge arises from the combinatorial explosion associated with the conventional modeling framework. Recently, a plasmid-centric framework (PCF) has been developed to overcome this computational bottleneck. This framework enables the derivation of a simple metric, the persistence potential, to predict plasmid persistence and abundance. Here, we discuss how PCF can be extended to account for plasmid interactions. We also discuss how such model-guided predictions of plasmid fates can benefit from the development of new experimental tools and data-driven computational methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Teng Wang
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Andrea Weiss
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Yuanchi Ha
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Lingchong You
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.,Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.,Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, USA
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26
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Abstract
Bacteria acquire novel DNA through horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a process that enables an organism to rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions, provides a competitive edge and potentially alters its relationship with its host. Although the HGT process is routinely exploited in laboratories, there is a surprising disconnect between what we know from laboratory experiments and what we know from natural environments, such as the human gut microbiome. Owing to a suite of newly available computational algorithms and experimental approaches, we have a broader understanding of the genes that are being transferred and are starting to understand the ecology of HGT in natural microbial communities. This Review focuses on these new technologies, the questions they can address and their limitations. As these methods are applied more broadly, we are beginning to recognize the full extent of HGT possible within a microbiome and the punctuated dynamics of HGT, specifically in response to external stimuli. Furthermore, we are better characterizing the complex selective pressures on mobile genetic elements and the mechanisms by which they interact with the bacterial host genome.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilana Lauren Brito
- Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
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27
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Kothari A, Roux S, Zhang H, Prieto A, Soneja D, Chandonia JM, Spencer S, Wu X, Altenburg S, Fields MW, Deutschbauer AM, Arkin AP, Alm EJ, Chakraborty R, Mukhopadhyay A. Ecogenomics of Groundwater Phages Suggests Niche Differentiation Linked to Specific Environmental Tolerance. mSystems 2021; 6:e0053721. [PMID: 34184913 PMCID: PMC8269241 DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00537-21] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2021] [Accepted: 05/26/2021] [Indexed: 01/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Viruses are ubiquitous microbiome components, shaping ecosystems via strain-specific predation, horizontal gene transfer and redistribution of nutrients through host lysis. Viral impacts are important in groundwater ecosystems, where microbes drive many nutrient fluxes and metabolic processes; however, little is known about the diversity of viruses in these environments. We analyzed four groundwater plasmidomes (the entire plasmid content of an environment) and identified 200 viral sequences, which clustered into 41 genus-level viral clusters (approximately equivalent to viral genera) including 9 known and 32 putative new genera. We used publicly available bacterial whole-genome sequences (WGS) and WGS from 261 bacterial isolates from this groundwater environment to identify potential viral hosts. We linked 76 of the 200 viral sequences to a range of bacterial phyla, the majority associated with Proteobacteria, followed by Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria. The publicly available WGS enabled mapping bacterial hosts to several viral sequences. The WGS of groundwater isolates increased the depth of host prediction by allowing host identification at the strain level. The latter included 4 viruses that were almost entirely (>99% query coverage, >99% identity) identified as integrated in the genomes of Pseudomonas, Acidovorax, and Castellaniella strains, resulting in high-confidence host assignments. Lastly, 21 of these viruses carried putative auxiliary metabolite genes for metal and antibiotic resistance, which might drive their infection cycles and/or provide selective advantage to infected hosts. Exploring the groundwater virome provides a necessary foundation for integration of viruses into ecosystem models where they are key players in microbial adaption to environmental stress. IMPORTANCE To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify the bacteriophage distribution in a groundwater ecosystem shedding light on their prevalence and distribution across metal-contaminated and background sites. Our study is uniquely based on selective sequencing of solely the extrachromosomal elements of a microbiome followed by analysis for viral signatures, thus establishing a more focused approach for phage identifications. Using this method, we detected several novel phage genera along with those previously established. Our approach of using the whole-genome sequences of hundreds of bacterial isolates from the same site enabled us to make host assignments with high confidence, several at strain levels. Certain phage genes suggest that they provide an environment-specific selective advantage to their bacterial hosts. Our study lays the foundation for future research on directed phage isolations using specific bacterial host strains to further characterize groundwater phages, their life cycles, and their effects on groundwater microbiome and biogeochemistry.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ankita Kothari
- Biological Systems and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Simon Roux
- Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Hanqiao Zhang
- Biological Systems and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Anatori Prieto
- Biological Systems and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Drishti Soneja
- Biological Systems and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - John-Marc Chandonia
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Sarah Spencer
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Xiaoqin Wu
- Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Sara Altenburg
- Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA
| | - Matthew W. Fields
- Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA
- Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA
| | - Adam M. Deutschbauer
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
- Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Adam P. Arkin
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
- Energy Biosciences Institute, Berkeley, California, USA
- Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Eric J. Alm
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Broad Institute of MIT Cambridge, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Romy Chakraborty
- Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Aindrila Mukhopadhyay
- Biological Systems and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
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28
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Wang T, Zhang H, Zhou Y, Shi J. Extrachromosomal circular DNA: a new potential role in cancer progression. J Transl Med 2021; 19:257. [PMID: 34112178 PMCID: PMC8194206 DOI: 10.1186/s12967-021-02927-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2021] [Accepted: 06/04/2021] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) is considered a circular DNA molecule that exists widely in nature and is independent of conventional chromosomes. eccDNA can be divided into small polydispersed circular DNA (spcDNA), telomeric circles (t-circles), microDNA, and extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) according to its size and sequence. Multiple studies have shown that eccDNA is the product of genomic instability, has rich and important biological functions, and is involved in the occurrence of many diseases, including cancer. In this review, we focus on the discovery history, formation process, characteristics, and physiological functions of eccDNAs; the potential functions of various eccDNAs in human cancer; and the research methods employed to study eccDNA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tianyi Wang
- Nantong Key Laboratory of Translational Medicine in Cardiothoracic Diseases, and Research Institution of Translational Medicine in Cardiothoracic Diseases, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20, Xisi Road, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China.,Department of Thoracic Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20, Xisi Road, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China
| | - Haijian Zhang
- Research Center of Clinical Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20, Xisi Road, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China
| | - Youlang Zhou
- Research Center of Clinical Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20, Xisi Road, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China
| | - Jiahai Shi
- Nantong Key Laboratory of Translational Medicine in Cardiothoracic Diseases, and Research Institution of Translational Medicine in Cardiothoracic Diseases, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20, Xisi Road, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China. .,Department of Thoracic Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20, Xisi Road, Nantong, 226001, Jiangsu, China.
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29
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Abstract
Plasmids can provide a selective advantage for microorganisms to survive and adapt to new environmental conditions. Plasmid-encoded traits, such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) or virulence, impact the ecology and evolution of bacteria and can significantly influence the burden of infectious diseases. Insight about the identity and functions encoded on plasmids on the global scale are largely lacking. Here, we investigate the plasmidome of 24 samples (22 countries, 5 continents) from the global sewage surveillance project. We obtained 105-Gbp Oxford Nanopore and 167-Gbp Illumina NextSeq DNA sequences from plasmid DNA preparations and assembled 165,302 contigs (159,322 circular). Of these, 58,429 carried genes encoding for plasmid-related and 11,222 for virus/phage-related proteins. About 90% of the circular DNA elements did not have any similarity to known plasmids. Those that exhibited similarity had similarity to plasmids whose hosts were previously detected in these sewage samples (e.g., Acinetobacter, Escherichia, Moraxella, Enterobacter, Bacteroides, and Klebsiella). Some AMR classes were detected at a higher abundance in plasmidomes (e.g., macrolide-lincosamide-streptogramin B, macrolide, and quinolone) compared to the respective complex sewage samples. In addition to AMR genes, a range of functions were encoded on the candidate plasmids, including plasmid replication and maintenance, mobilization, and conjugation. In summary, we describe a laboratory and bioinformatics workflow for the recovery of plasmids and other potential extrachromosomal DNA elements from complex microbiomes. Moreover, the obtained data could provide further valuable insight into the ecology and evolution of microbiomes, knowledge about AMR transmission, and the discovery of novel functions. IMPORTANCE This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to investigate plasmidomes at a global scale using long read sequencing from complex untreated domestic sewage. Previous metagenomic surveys have detected AMR genes in a variety of environments, including sewage. However, it is unknown whether the AMR genes were present on the microbial chromosome or located on extrachromosomal elements, such as plasmids. Using our approach, we recovered a large number of plasmids, of which most appear novel. We identified distinct AMR genes that were preferentially located on plasmids, potentially contributing to their transmissibility. Overall, plasmids are of great importance for the biology of microorganisms in their natural environments (free-living and host-associated), as well as for molecular biology and biotechnology. Plasmidome collections may therefore be valuable resources for the discovery of fundamental biological mechanisms and novel functions useful in a variety of contexts.
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30
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Duedu KO, Mends JQ, Ayivor-Djanie R, Essandoh PE, Nattah EM, Gyamfi J, Kpeli GS. Plasmidome AMR screening (PAMRS) workflow: a rapid screening workflow for phenotypic characterization of antibiotic resistance in plasmidomes. AAS Open Res 2021. [DOI: 10.12688/aasopenres.13111.1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Background: Phenotypic characterization of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria has remained the gold standard for investigation and monitoring of what resistance is present in an organism. However, the process is laborious and not attractive for screening multiple plasmids from a microbial community (plasmidomes). Instead, genomic tools are used, but a major bottle neck that presence of genes does not always translate into phenotypes. Methods: We designed the plasmidome AMR screening (PAMRS) workflow to investigate the presence of antibiotic resistant phenotypes in a plasmidome using Escherichia coli as a host organism. Plasmidomes were extracted from the faecal matter of chicken, cattle and humans using commercial plasmid extraction kits. Competent E. coli cells were transformed and evaluated using disk diffusion. Thirteen antibiotic resistant phenotypes were screened. Results: Here, we show that multiple antibiotic resistant phenotypes encoded by plasmids can be rapidly screened simultaneously using the PAMRS workflow. E. coli was able to pick up to 7, 5 or 8 resistant phenotypes from a single plasmidome from chicken, cattle or humans, respectively. Resistance to ceftazidime was the most frequently picked up phenotype in humans (52.6%) and cattle (90.5%), whereas in chickens, the most picked up resistant phenotype was resistance to co-trimoxazole, ceftriaxone and ampicillin (18.4% each). Conclusions: This workflow is a novel tool that could facilitate studies to evaluate the occurrence and expression of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance in microbial communities and their associated plasmid-host ranges. It could find application in the screening of plasmid-encoded virulence genes.
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31
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Garoña A, Dagan T. Darwinian individuality of extrachromosomal genetic elements calls for population genetics tinkering. ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY REPORTS 2021; 13:22-26. [PMID: 33034073 DOI: 10.1111/1758-2229.12894] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2020] [Accepted: 10/06/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Plasmids are extrachromosomal genetic elements commonly found in prokaryotic (and sometime eukaryotic) cells. Small plasmids are often considered cryptic and their effect on the host is elusive, while large plasmids may encode functions that are essential for the host lifestyle and attain a secondary chromosome status. Plasmids are thus an important source of raw material for microbial genome evolution outside the mainstream of bacterial chromosomes. The discovery of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance led to extensive research on the contribution of plasmids to the environmental dimensions of antibiotic resistance and the evolution of plasmid-host interactions following the acquisition of plasmids encoding for antibiotic resistance. Recent experimental studies revealed the importance of intracellular plasmid diversity for plasmid-host interactions. Here we describe the evolutionary forces at play during plasmid evolution in a top-down approach: this includes the effect of processes at the level of the host population and the consideration of plasmids as Darwinian individuals within the host cell.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Garoña
- Institute of General Microbiology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
| | - Tal Dagan
- Institute of General Microbiology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
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32
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Isolation and Visualization of Plasmids from Gram-Positive Bacteria of Interest in Public Health. Methods Mol Biol 2021. [PMID: 31584152 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9877-7_2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/29/2023]
Abstract
This chapter describes the methods to extract and characterize plasmids of Gram-positive bacterial species of interest in public health (biomedicine, veterinary, and food safety) as Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Enterococcus, Listeria, and Clostridium and lactic acid bacteria. References for detailed plasmid classification are given in order to provide a comprehensive landscape in the interpretation of their plasmidomes.
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33
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Abstract
Conjugative plasmids can mediate the spread and maintenance of diverse traits and functions in microbial communities. This role depends on the plasmid's ability to persist in a population. However, for a community consisting of multiple populations transferring multiple plasmids, the conditions underlying plasmid persistence are poorly understood. Here, we describe a plasmid-centric framework that makes it computationally feasible to analyze gene flow in complex communities. Using this framework, we derive the 'persistence potential': a general, heuristic metric that predicts the persistence and abundance of any plasmids. We validate the metric with engineered microbial consortia transferring mobilizable plasmids and with quantitative data available in the literature. We believe that our framework and the resulting metric will facilitate a quantitative understanding of natural microbial communities and the engineering of microbial consortia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Teng Wang
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA
| | - Lingchong You
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA.
- Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA.
- Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, 27708, USA.
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34
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Fang Z, Zhou H. Identification of the conjugative and mobilizable plasmid fragments in the plasmidome using sequence signatures. Microb Genom 2020; 6:mgen000459. [PMID: 33074084 PMCID: PMC7725325 DOI: 10.1099/mgen.0.000459] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2020] [Accepted: 10/03/2020] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Plasmids are the key element in horizontal gene transfer in the microbial community. Recently, a large number of experimental and computational methods have been developed to obtain the plasmidomes of microbial communities. Distinguishing transmissible plasmid sequences, which are derived from conjugative or at least mobilizable plasmids, from non-transmissible plasmid sequences in the plasmidome is essential for understanding the diversity of plasmids and how they regulate the microbial community. Unfortunately, due to the highly fragmented characteristics of DNA sequences in the plasmidome, effective identification methods are lacking. In this work, we used information entropy from information theory to assess the randomness of synonymous codon usage over 4424 plasmid genomes. The results showed that for all amino acids, the choice of a synonymous codon in conjugative and mobilizable plasmids is more random than that in non-transmissible plasmids, indicating that transmissible plasmids have different sequence signatures from non-transmissible plasmids. Inspired by this phenomenon, we further developed a novel algorithm named PlasTrans. PlasTrans takes the triplet code sequences and base sequences of plasmid DNA fragments as input and uses the convolutional neural network of the deep learning technique to further extract the more complex signatures of the plasmid sequences and identify the conjugative and mobilizable DNA fragments. Tests showed that PlasTrans could achieve an AUC of as high as 84-91%, even though the fragments only contained hundreds of base pairs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantitative analysis of the difference in sequence signatures between transmissible and non-transmissible plasmids, and we developed the first tool to perform transferability annotation for DNA fragments in the plasmidome. We expect that PlasTrans will be a useful tool for researchers who analyse the properties of novel plasmids in the microbial community and horizontal gene transfer, especially the spread of resistance genes and virulence factors associated with plasmids. PlasTrans is freely available via https://github.com/zhenchengfang/PlasTrans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhencheng Fang
- Microbiome Medicine Center, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510280, PR China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No. 5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, PR China
| | - Hongwei Zhou
- Microbiome Medicine Center, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510280, PR China
- State Key Laboratory of Organ Failure Research, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, PR China
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35
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Systematic Analysis of Escherichia coli Isolates from Sheep and Cattle Suggests Adaption to the Rumen Niche. Appl Environ Microbiol 2020; 86:AEM.01417-20. [PMID: 32801187 DOI: 10.1128/aem.01417-20] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2020] [Accepted: 08/03/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
The commonly used laboratory bacterium Escherichia coli normally does not produce and secrete cellulases due to its complex bilayer membrane structure and poor secretory apparatus. In our previous study, the cellulolytic E. coli strain ZH-4 with extracellular cellulase activity was found in the bovine rumen. In this study, we demonstrate that the secretion of cellulase is a common feature of E. coli isolates from the rumen of animals such as sheep and cattle. Physiological phenotype characterization of these E. coli isolates, together with genome, transcriptome, and comparative genomics analysis, suggests their adaption to the rumen niche. The higher growth rate of the isolated strains under aerobic conditions meets the competitive requirements of the strains in rumen microecosystem, while anaerobic accumulation of reduced H2 and succinate is hypothesized to be the results of adaptation to the rumen environment. Cellulase secretion increased significantly when the molecular chaperone genes ibpA and ibpB were overexpressed. This was also revealed by the transcriptomic data. A possible mechanism for cellulase secretion by E. coli isolates was proposed based on the transcriptomic data and molecular experiments.IMPORTANCE As an important intestinal microorganism, E. coli is present in the intestinal tract of animals and in many other environments. However, it normally does not produce and secret cellulases due to its complex bilayer membrane structure and poor secretory apparatus. Here, we proved that E. coli is widely present in the rumen of sheep and cattle. Systematic analysis of the isolates indicated that they have adapted to the rumen niche, with phenotypes that include secretion of cellulase and fermentative accumulation of succinate and H2 The finding that overexpression of small heat shock protein genes ibpA and ibpB could facilitate cellulase BcsZ secretion, which provides a possible insight into the protein secretion mechanism of rumen-colonizing E. coli.
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Saak CC, Dinh CB, Dutton RJ. Experimental approaches to tracking mobile genetic elements in microbial communities. FEMS Microbiol Rev 2020; 44:606-630. [PMID: 32672812 PMCID: PMC7476777 DOI: 10.1093/femsre/fuaa025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2020] [Accepted: 06/29/2020] [Indexed: 12/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Horizontal gene transfer is an important mechanism of microbial evolution and is often driven by the movement of mobile genetic elements between cells. Due to the fact that microbes live within communities, various mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer and types of mobile elements can co-occur. However, the ways in which horizontal gene transfer impacts and is impacted by communities containing diverse mobile elements has been challenging to address. Thus, the field would benefit from incorporating community-level information and novel approaches alongside existing methods. Emerging technologies for tracking mobile elements and assigning them to host organisms provide promise for understanding the web of potential DNA transfers in diverse microbial communities more comprehensively. Compared to existing experimental approaches, chromosome conformation capture and methylome analyses have the potential to simultaneously study various types of mobile elements and their associated hosts. We also briefly discuss how fermented food microbiomes, given their experimental tractability and moderate species complexity, make ideal models to which to apply the techniques discussed herein and how they can be used to address outstanding questions in the field of horizontal gene transfer in microbial communities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christina C Saak
- Division of Biological Sciences, Section of Molecular Biology, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
| | - Cong B Dinh
- Division of Biological Sciences, Section of Molecular Biology, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
| | - Rachel J Dutton
- Division of Biological Sciences, Section of Molecular Biology, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
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Perez MF, Kurth D, Farías ME, Soria MN, Castillo Villamizar GA, Poehlein A, Daniel R, Dib JR. First Report on the Plasmidome From a High-Altitude Lake of the Andean Puna. Front Microbiol 2020; 11:1343. [PMID: 32655530 PMCID: PMC7324554 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.01343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2020] [Accepted: 05/26/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Mobile genetic elements, including plasmids, drive the evolution of prokaryotic genomes through the horizontal transfer of genes allowing genetic exchange between bacteria. Moreover, plasmids carry accessory genes, which encode functions that may offer an advantage to the host. Thus, it is expected that in a certain ecological niche, plasmids are enriched in accessory functions, which are important for their hosts to proliferate in that niche. Puquio de Campo Naranja is a high-altitude lake from the Andean Puna exposed to multiple extreme conditions, including high UV radiation, alkalinity, high concentrations of arsenic, heavy metals, dissolved salts, high thermal amplitude and low O2 pressure. Microorganisms living in this lake need to develop efficient mechanisms and strategies to cope under these conditions. The aim of this study was to characterize the plasmidome of microbialites from Puquio de Campo Naranja, and identify potential hosts and encoded functions using a deep-sequencing approach. The potential ecological impact of the plasmidome, including plasmids from cultivable and non-cultivable microorganisms, is described for the first time in a lake representing an extreme environment of the Puna. This study showed that the recovered genetic information for the plasmidome was novel in comparison to the metagenome derived from the same environment. The study of the total plasmid population allowed the identification of genetic features typically encoded by plasmids, such as resistance and virulence factors. The resistance genes comprised resistances to heavy metals, antibiotics and stress factors. These results highlight the key role of plasmids for their hosts and impact of extrachromosomal elements to thrive in a certain ecological niche.
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Affiliation(s)
- María Florencia Perez
- Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
| | - Daniel Kurth
- Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
| | - María Eugenia Farías
- Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
| | - Mariana Noelia Soria
- Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
| | - Genis Andrés Castillo Villamizar
- Genomic and Applied Microbiology & Göttingen Genomics Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.,Línea Tecnológica Biocorrosión, Corporación para la Investigación de la Corrosión C.I.C., Piedecuesta, Colombia
| | - Anja Poehlein
- Genomic and Applied Microbiology & Göttingen Genomics Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Rolf Daniel
- Genomic and Applied Microbiology & Göttingen Genomics Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Julián Rafael Dib
- Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina.,Facultad de Bioquímica, Química y Farmacia, Instituto de Microbiología, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
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Ricker N, Trachsel J, Colgan P, Jones J, Choi J, Lee J, Coetzee JF, Howe A, Brockmeier SL, Loving CL, Allen HK. Toward Antibiotic Stewardship: Route of Antibiotic Administration Impacts the Microbiota and Resistance Gene Diversity in Swine Feces. Front Vet Sci 2020; 7:255. [PMID: 32509805 PMCID: PMC7249142 DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2020.00255] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2020] [Accepted: 04/17/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Oral antibiotics are a critical tool for fighting bacterial infections, yet their use can have negative consequences, such as the disturbance of healthy gut bacterial communities and the dissemination of antibiotic residues in feces. Altering antibiotic administration route may limit negative impacts on intestinal microbiota and reduce selective pressure for antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG) persistence and mobility. Thus, a study was performed in pigs to evaluate route of therapeutic oxytetracycline (oxytet) administration, an antibiotic commonly used in the U.S. swine industry, on intestinal microbial diversity and ARG abundance. Given that oral antibiotics would be in direct contact with intestinal bacteria, we hypothesized that oral administration would cause a major shift in intestinal bacterial community structure when compared to injected antibiotic. We further postulated that the impact would extend to the diversity and abundance of ARG in swine feces. At approximately 3 weeks-of-age, piglets were separated into three groups (n = 21–22 per group) with two groups receiving oxytet (one via injection and the second via feed) and a third non-medicated group. Oxytet levels in the plasma indicated injected antibiotic resulted in a spike 1 day after administration, which decreased over time, though oxytet was still detected in plasma 14 days after injection. Conversely, in-feed oxytet delivery resulted in lower but less variable oxytet levels in circulation and high concentrations in feces. Similar trends were observed in microbial community changes regardless of route of oxytet administration; however, the impact on the microbial community was more pronounced at all time points and in all samples with in-feed administration. Fecal ARG abundance was increased with in-feed administration over injected, with genes for tetracycline and aminoglycoside resistance enriched specifically in the feces of the in-feed group. Sequencing of plasmid-enriched samples revealed multiple genetic contexts for the resistance genes detected and highlighted the potential role of small plasmids in the movement of antibiotic resistance genes. The findings are informative for disease management in food animals, but also manure management and antibiotic therapy in human medicine for improved antibiotic stewardship.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicole Ricker
- Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit, ARS-USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA, United States.,Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Julian Trachsel
- Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit, ARS-USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Phillip Colgan
- Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Jennifer Jones
- Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit, ARS-USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Jinlyung Choi
- Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Jaejin Lee
- Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Johann F Coetzee
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, United States
| | - Adina Howe
- Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Susan L Brockmeier
- Virus and Prion Research Unit, ARS-USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Crystal L Loving
- Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit, ARS-USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA, United States
| | - Heather K Allen
- Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit, ARS-USDA National Animal Disease Center, Ames, IA, United States
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Hilpert C, Bricheux G, Debroas D. Reconstruction of plasmids by shotgun sequencing from environmental DNA: which bioinformatic workflow? Brief Bioinform 2020; 22:5838452. [PMID: 32427283 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbaa059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2019] [Revised: 03/24/2020] [Accepted: 03/25/2020] [Indexed: 12/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Plasmids play important roles in microbial evolution and also in the spread of antibiotic resistance. Plasmid sequences are extensively studied from clinical isolates but rarely from the environment with a metagenomic approach focused on the plasmid fraction referred to as the plasmidome. A clear challenge in this context is to define a workflow for discriminating plasmids from chromosomal contaminants existing in the plasmidome. For this purpose, we benchmarked existing tools from assembly to detection of the plasmids by reference-free methods (cBar and PlasFlow) and database-guided approaches. Our simulations took into account short-reads alone or combined with moderate long-reads like those actually generated in environmental genomics experiments. This benchmark allowed us to select the best tools for limiting false-positives associated to plasmid prediction tools and a combination of reference-guided methods based on plasmid and bacterial databases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cécile Hilpert
- Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, Laboratoire Microorganismes: Genome et Environnement, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France
| | - Geneviève Bricheux
- Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, Laboratoire Microorganismes: Genome et Environnement, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France
| | - Didier Debroas
- Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, Laboratoire Microorganismes: Genome et Environnement, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France
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40
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Browne PD, Kot W, Jørgensen TS, Hansen LH. The Mobilome: Metagenomic Analysis of Circular Plasmids, Viruses, and Other Extrachromosomal Elements. Methods Mol Biol 2020; 2075:253-264. [PMID: 31584168 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9877-7_18] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/24/2023]
Abstract
Isolation, sequencing, and analysis of circular genetic elements bring new insights to mobile genetic elements related to microbial ecology. One method used to study circular plasmids, viruses, and other elements is called the mobilome method. The mobilome method presented here is an unamplified mobilome approach allowing fast isolation of circular DNA elements from a variety of samples followed by directly building unamplified Illumina-compatible sequencing libraries using enzymatic tagging and fragmentation. Several methods for bioinformatic analysis of mobilome data are also suggested.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick Denis Browne
- Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark
- Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark
| | - Witold Kot
- Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark
- Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark
| | - Tue Sparholt Jørgensen
- Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark
- Department of Science and Environment, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
- DTU BIOSUSTAIN, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
| | - Lars Hestbjerg Hansen
- Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark.
- Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark.
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41
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Tracking microbial evolution in the human gut using Hi-C reveals extensive horizontal gene transfer, persistence and adaptation. Nat Microbiol 2019; 5:343-353. [PMID: 31873203 PMCID: PMC6992475 DOI: 10.1038/s41564-019-0625-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 80] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2019] [Accepted: 10/30/2019] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Despite the importance of horizontal gene transfer for rapid bacterial evolution, reliable assignment of mobile genetic elements to their microbial hosts in natural communities such as the human gut microbiota is lacking. We used high-throughput chromosomal conformation capture coupled with probabilistic modelling of experimental noise to resolve 88 strain-level metagenome-assembled genomes of distal gut bacteria from two participants, including 12,251 accessory elements. Comparisons of two samples collected 10 years apart for each of the participants revealed extensive in situ exchange of accessory elements as well as evidence of adaptive evolution in core genomes. Accessory elements were predominantly promiscuous and prevalent in the distal gut metagenomes of 218 adult individuals. This research provides a foundation and approach for studying microbial evolution in natural environments.
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Brown Kav A, Rozov R, Bogumil D, Sørensen SJ, Hansen LH, Benhar I, Halperin E, Shamir R, Mizrahi I. Unravelling plasmidome distribution and interaction with its hosting microbiome. Environ Microbiol 2019; 22:32-44. [DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.14813] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2019] [Revised: 09/24/2019] [Accepted: 09/28/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Aya Brown Kav
- Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, The National Institute for Biotechnology in the NegevBen‐Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653 Beer‐Sheva, Building 41, Room 228 Beer‐Sheva Israel
- School of Molecular Cell Biology and BiotechnologyTel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel
| | - Roye Rozov
- Blavatnik School of Computer ScienceTel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel
| | - David Bogumil
- Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, The National Institute for Biotechnology in the NegevBen‐Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653 Beer‐Sheva, Building 41, Room 228 Beer‐Sheva Israel
| | | | - Lars Hestbjerg Hansen
- Department of Plant and Environmental SciencesUniversity of Copenhagen Frederiksberg Denmark
| | - Itai Benhar
- School of Molecular Cell Biology and BiotechnologyTel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel
| | - Eran Halperin
- School of Molecular Cell Biology and BiotechnologyTel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel
- Blavatnik School of Computer ScienceTel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel
- Departments of Computer Science, Computational MedicineHuman Genetics, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, University of California Los Angeles California
| | - Ron Shamir
- Blavatnik School of Computer ScienceTel Aviv University Tel Aviv Israel
| | - Itzhak Mizrahi
- Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, The National Institute for Biotechnology in the NegevBen‐Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653 Beer‐Sheva, Building 41, Room 228 Beer‐Sheva Israel
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Comparative Genomics of Rumen Butyrivibrio spp. Uncovers a Continuum of Polysaccharide-Degrading Capabilities. Appl Environ Microbiol 2019; 86:AEM.01993-19. [PMID: 31653790 PMCID: PMC6912079 DOI: 10.1128/aem.01993-19] [Citation(s) in RCA: 50] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/03/2019] [Accepted: 10/16/2019] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Feeding a global population of 8 billion people and climate change are the primary challenges facing agriculture today. Ruminant livestock are important food-producing animals, and maximizing their productivity requires an understanding of their digestive systems and the roles played by rumen microbes in plant polysaccharide degradation. Members of the genera Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio are a phylogenetically diverse group of bacteria and are commonly found in the rumen, where they are a substantial source of polysaccharide-degrading enzymes for the depolymerization of lignocellulosic material. Our findings have highlighted the immense enzymatic machinery of Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio species for the degradation of plant fiber, suggesting that these bacteria occupy similar niches but apply different degradation strategies in order to coexist in the competitive rumen environment. Plant polysaccharide breakdown by microbes in the rumen is fundamental to digestion in ruminant livestock. Bacterial species belonging to the rumen genera Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio are important degraders and utilizers of lignocellulosic plant material. These bacteria degrade polysaccharides and ferment the released monosaccharides to yield short-chain fatty acids that are used by the ruminant for growth and the production of meat, milk, and fiber products. Although rumen Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio species are regarded as common rumen inhabitants, their polysaccharide-degrading and carbohydrate-utilizing enzymes are not well understood. In this study, we analyzed the genomes of 40 Butyrivibrio and 6 Pseudobutyrivibrio strains isolated from the plant-adherent fraction of New Zealand dairy cows to explore the polysaccharide-degrading potential of these important rumen bacteria. Comparative genome analyses combined with phylogenetic analysis of their 16S rRNA genes and short-chain fatty acid production patterns provide insight into the genomic diversity and physiology of these bacteria and divide Butyrivibrio into 3 species clusters. Rumen Butyrivibrio bacteria were found to encode a large and diverse spectrum of degradative carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) and binding proteins. In total, 4,421 glycoside hydrolases (GHs), 1,283 carbohydrate esterases (CEs), 110 polysaccharide lyases (PLs), 3,605 glycosyltransferases (GTs), and 1,706 carbohydrate-binding protein modules (CBM) with predicted activities involved in the depolymerization and transport of the insoluble plant polysaccharides were identified. Butyrivibrio genomes had similar patterns of CAZyme families but varied greatly in the number of genes within each category in the Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes database (CAZy), suggesting some level of functional redundancy. These results suggest that rumen Butyrivibrio species occupy similar niches but apply different degradation strategies to be able to coexist in the rumen. IMPORTANCE Feeding a global population of 8 billion people and climate change are the primary challenges facing agriculture today. Ruminant livestock are important food-producing animals, and maximizing their productivity requires an understanding of their digestive systems and the roles played by rumen microbes in plant polysaccharide degradation. Members of the genera Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio are a phylogenetically diverse group of bacteria and are commonly found in the rumen, where they are a substantial source of polysaccharide-degrading enzymes for the depolymerization of lignocellulosic material. Our findings have highlighted the immense enzymatic machinery of Butyrivibrio and Pseudobutyrivibrio species for the degradation of plant fiber, suggesting that these bacteria occupy similar niches but apply different degradation strategies in order to coexist in the competitive rumen environment.
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Krawczyk PS, Lipinski L, Dziembowski A. PlasFlow: predicting plasmid sequences in metagenomic data using genome signatures. Nucleic Acids Res 2019; 46:e35. [PMID: 29346586 PMCID: PMC5887522 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkx1321] [Citation(s) in RCA: 286] [Impact Index Per Article: 57.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2017] [Accepted: 12/28/2017] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Plasmids are mobile genetics elements that play an important role in the environmental adaptation of microorganisms. Although plasmids are usually analyzed in cultured microorganisms, there is a need for methods that allow for the analysis of pools of plasmids (plasmidomes) in environmental samples. To that end, several molecular biology and bioinformatics methods have been developed; however, they are limited to environments with low diversity and cannot recover large plasmids. Here, we present PlasFlow, a novel tool based on genomic signatures that employs a neural network approach for identification of bacterial plasmid sequences in environmental samples. PlasFlow can recover plasmid sequences from assembled metagenomes without any prior knowledge of the taxonomical or functional composition of samples with an accuracy up to 96%. It can also recover sequences of both circular and linear plasmids and can perform initial taxonomical classification of sequences. Compared to other currently available tools, PlasFlow demonstrated significantly better performance on test datasets. Analysis of two samples from heavy metal-contaminated microbial mats revealed that plasmids may constitute an important fraction of their metagenomes and carry genes involved in heavy-metal homeostasis, proving the pivotal role of plasmids in microorganism adaptation to environmental conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pawel S Krawczyk
- Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Pawinskiego 5a, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.,Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, Pawinskiego 5a, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland
| | - Leszek Lipinski
- Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Pawinskiego 5a, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland
| | - Andrzej Dziembowski
- Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Pawinskiego 5a, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.,Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, Pawinskiego 5a, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland
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Fang Z, Tan J, Wu S, Li M, Xu C, Xie Z, Zhu H. PPR-Meta: a tool for identifying phages and plasmids from metagenomic fragments using deep learning. Gigascience 2019; 8:giz066. [PMID: 31220250 PMCID: PMC6586199 DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giz066] [Citation(s) in RCA: 88] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2018] [Revised: 03/26/2019] [Accepted: 05/14/2019] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Phages and plasmids are the major components of mobile genetic elements, and fragments from such elements generally co-exist with chromosome-derived fragments in sequenced metagenomic data. However, there is a lack of efficient methods that can simultaneously identify phages and plasmids in metagenomic data, and the existing tools identifying either phages or plasmids have not yet presented satisfactory performance. FINDINGS We present PPR-Meta, a 3-class classifier that allows simultaneous identification of both phage and plasmid fragments from metagenomic assemblies. PPR-Meta consists of several modules for predicting sequences of different lengths. Using deep learning, a novel network architecture, referred to as the Bi-path Convolutional Neural Network, is designed to improve the performance for short fragments. PPR-Meta demonstrates much better performance than currently available similar tools individually for phage or plasmid identification, while testing on both artificial contigs and real metagenomic data. PPR-Meta is freely available via http://cqb.pku.edu.cn/ZhuLab/PPR_Meta or https://github.com/zhenchengfang/PPR-Meta. CONCLUSIONS To the best of our knowledge, PPR-Meta is the first tool that can simultaneously identify phage and plasmid fragments efficiently and reliably. The software is optimized and can be easily run on a local PC by non-computer professionals. We developed PPR-Meta to promote the research on mobile genetic elements and horizontal gene transfer.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhencheng Fang
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Jie Tan
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Shufang Wu
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Mo Li
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Peking University-Tsinghua University - National Institute of Biological Sciences (PTN) joint PhD program, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Congmin Xu
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, 631 Cherry St, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, GA, USA
| | - Zhongjie Xie
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Huaiqiu Zhu
- State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems and Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
- Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, No.5 Yiheyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
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46
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Liu K, Han J, Li S, Liu L, Lin W, Luo J. Insight into the diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in the intestinal bacteria of shrimp Penaeus vannamei by culture-dependent and independent approaches. ECOTOXICOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY 2019; 172:451-459. [PMID: 30735978 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2019.01.109] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/24/2018] [Revised: 01/28/2019] [Accepted: 01/30/2019] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) that distributed in antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARBs) are widespread in aquaculture and have great threats to the aquatic organism as well as to human. However, our understanding about the risk of ARGs to the health of aquatic organism is still limited. In the present study, we got a deep insight into the diversity of ARGs in the intestinal bacteria of shrimp by culture-dependent and independent approaches. Results of the PCR-based detection and culture-dependent analysis indicated that the tetracycline, sulfadiazine, quinolone and erythromycin resistance genes were prevalent in the commercial shrimps that bought from aquatic markets or supermarket. The culture-independent plasmid metagenomic analysis identified 62 different ARGs, which were classified into 21 types, with abundances ranging from 13 to 1418 ppm. The analysis suggested that most of the ARGs come from the plasmids originating from Vibrio (accounted for 2.8-51%) and Aeromonas (accounted for 16-55%), and the Vibrio group was concluded to be the main bacterial pathogen that probably resulted in the shrimp disease. Accordingly, the plasmid metagenomic that focuses on the mobile genetic elements has great potential on the identification of ARGs in complex environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kexin Liu
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China
| | - Jiamin Han
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China
| | - Surong Li
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China
| | - Liangting Liu
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China
| | - Weitie Lin
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China.
| | - Jianfei Luo
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, PR China.
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Asakura H, Sakata J, Nakamura H, Yamamoto S, Murakami S. Phylogenetic Diversity and Antimicrobial Resistance of Campylobacter coli from Humans and Animals in Japan. Microbes Environ 2019; 34:146-154. [PMID: 30905895 PMCID: PMC6594732 DOI: 10.1264/jsme2.me18115] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/03/2023] Open
Abstract
The phylogenetic diversity and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of Campylobacter coli from humans and animals in Japan between 2008 and 2014 were investigated. A total of 338 foodborne campylobacterioses were reported in Osaka, and C. coli was isolated from 38 cases (11.2%). In the present study, 119 C. coli strains (42 from humans, 25 each from poultry, cattle, and swine, and 2 from wild mallard) were examined by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). MLST assigned 36 sequence types (STs), including 14 novel STs; all human strains and 91% of animal strains (70/77) were assigned to the ST-828 clonal complex. The predominant human ST was ST-860 (18/42, 43%), followed by ST-1068 (8/42, 19%); these STs were also predominant in poultry (ST-860, 9/25, 36%) and cattle (ST-1068, 18/25, 72%). ST-1562 was only predominant in swine (11/25, 44.0%). Swine strains showed the greatest resistance to erythromycin (EM; 92.0%), while EM resistance was only found in 2 out of the 42 human strains examined (4.8%). All EM-resistant swine strains (n=15) exhibited a common point mutation in the 23S rRNA sequence (A2085G), and the tetO gene was detected in 22 out of the 23 TET-resistant swine strains. A whole genome sequencing analysis of four representative swine ST-1562 strains revealed abundant AMR-associated gene clusters in their genomes, suggesting horizontal gene transfer events during host adaptation. This is the first study to demonstrate the phylogenetic diversity and AMR profiles of C. coli in Japan. The present results suggest that poultry and cattle are major reservoirs, improving our knowledge on the epidemiological and ecological traits of this pathogen.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hiroshi Asakura
- Division of Biomedical Food Research, National Institute of Health Sciences
| | - Junko Sakata
- Laboratory of Bacteriology, Department of Microbiology, Osaka Institute of Public Health
| | - Hiromi Nakamura
- Laboratory of Microbiology, Department of Microbiology, Osaka Institute of Public Health
| | - Shiori Yamamoto
- Division of Biomedical Food Research, National Institute of Health Sciences
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Large Circular Plasmids from Groundwater Plasmidomes Span Multiple Incompatibility Groups and Are Enriched in Multimetal Resistance Genes. mBio 2019; 10:mBio.02899-18. [PMID: 30808697 PMCID: PMC6391923 DOI: 10.1128/mbio.02899-18] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Naturally occurring plasmids constitute a major category of mobile genetic elements responsible for harboring and transferring genes important in survival and fitness. A targeted evaluation of plasmidomes can reveal unique adaptations required by microbial communities. We developed a model system to optimize plasmid DNA isolation procedures targeted to groundwater samples which are typically characterized by low cell density (and likely variations in the plasmid size and copy numbers). The optimized method resulted in successful identification of several hundred circular plasmids, including some large plasmids (11 plasmids more than 50 kb in size, with the largest being 1.7 Mb in size). Several interesting observations were made from the analysis of plasmid DNA isolated in this study. The plasmid pool (plasmidome) was more conserved than the corresponding microbiome distribution (16S rRNA based). The circular plasmids were diverse as represented by the presence of seven plasmid incompatibility groups. The genes carried on these groundwater plasmids were highly enriched in metal resistance. Results from this study confirmed that traits such as metal, antibiotic, and phage resistance along with toxin-antitoxin systems are encoded on abundant circular plasmids, all of which could confer novel and advantageous traits to their hosts. This study confirms the ecological role of the plasmidome in maintaining the latent capacity of a microbiome, enabling rapid adaptation to environmental stresses.IMPORTANCE Plasmidomes have been typically studied in environments abundant in bacteria, and this is the first study to explore plasmids from an environment characterized by low cell density. We specifically target groundwater, a significant source of water for human/agriculture use. We used samples from a well-studied site and identified hundreds of circular plasmids, including one of the largest sizes reported in plasmidome studies. The striking similarity of the plasmid-borne ORFs in terms of taxonomical and functional classifications across several samples suggests a conserved plasmid pool, in contrast to the observed variability in the 16S rRNA-based microbiome distribution. Additionally, the stress response to environmental factors has stronger conservation via plasmid-borne genes as marked by abundance of metal resistance genes. Last, identification of novel and diverse plasmids enriches the existing plasmid database(s) and serves as a paradigm to increase the repertoire of biological parts that are available for modifying novel environmental strains.
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Fan Y, Xiao Y, Momeni B, Liu YY. Horizontal gene transfer can help maintain the equilibrium of microbial communities. J Theor Biol 2018; 454:53-59. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2018.05.036] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/06/2018] [Revised: 05/23/2018] [Accepted: 05/29/2018] [Indexed: 01/15/2023]
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Khatami F, Larijani B, Tavangar SM. The presence of tumor extrachomosomal circular DNA (ecDNA) as a component of liquid biopsy in blood. Med Hypotheses 2018; 114:5-7. [PMID: 29602465 DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2018.02.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2017] [Accepted: 02/19/2018] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
In molecular biology covalently closed circular DNAs are able to passthrough double layer of eukaryotic cellular membrane. Very recently the presence of circular extra chromosomal DNA (ecDNA) has been shown which are different in seventeen different types of cancers. In fact, ecDNA are the tricky way of oncogenes to increase their copy number. We hypothesis the presence of ecDNA in the blood of cancer patients as a subpopulation of liquid biopsy. On the occasion of their presence in blood they will be very beneficial to cover the small amount of cell frees DNA (cfDNA). Isolation and characterization of ecDNA will be possible by a sensitive method entitled Circle-Seq. The origin of tumor more than its prognosis and diagnosis will be possible in the easiest way by using ecDNA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fatemeh Khatami
- Chronic Diseases Research Center, Endocrinology and Metabolism Population Sciences Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Bagher Larijani
- Endocrinology and Metabolism Research Center, Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinical Sciences Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Seyed Mohammad Tavangar
- Chronic Diseases Research Center, Endocrinology and Metabolism Population Sciences Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; Department of Pathology, Doctor Shariati Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
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