Monday, November 20, 2017

BacterioFiles 318 - Killers Controlling Coral Contamination

Predator attacking and killing prey
From: Welsh et al. 2017 PeerJ
CC-BY 4.0
This episode: Bacteria that prey on other bacteria could help keep corals healthy! Thanks to Rory Welsh for his contribution.

Download Episode (12.8 MB, 14 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Latino mammarenavirus

Journal Paper:
Welsh RM, Rosales SM, Zaneveld JR, Payet JP, McMinds R, Hubbs SL, Thurber RLV. 2017. Alien vs. predator: bacterial challenge alters coral microbiomes unless controlled by Halobacteriovorax predators. PeerJ 5:e3315.

Other interesting stories:
  • Using trees and their microbes to clean up pollution
  • Using bacteria to preserve/repair stone monuments and statues (paper)
  • Stable gut microbes could help defend against amoeba infection
  • Phage therapy treats very resistant infection in person
  • Probiotic + probiotic food could help prevent infant sepsis (paper)

  • Post questions or comments here or email to bacteriofiles@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

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    Episode outline:

    Monday, November 13, 2017

    BacterioFiles 317 - Mosquito Microbe Movement

    Aedes aegypti
    By Muhammad Mahdi Karim
    Own work, GFDL 1.2
    This episode: Studying how Wolbachia bacteria spread through a mosquito population helps efforts to use them to prevent the spread of Dengue! Thanks to Tom Schmidt for his contribution.

    Download Episode (11.3 MB, 12.4 minutes)

    Show notes:
    Microbe of the episode: Heterosigma akashiwo virus 01

    News item

    Journal Paper:
    Schmidt TL, Barton NH, Rašić G, Turley AP, Montgomery BL, Iturbe-Ormaetxe I, Cook PE, Ryan PA, Ritchie SA, Hoffmann AA, O’Neill SL, Turelli M. 2017. Local introduction and heterogeneous spatial spread of dengue-suppressing Wolbachia through an urban population of Aedes aegypti. PLOS Biol 15:e2001894.

    Other interesting stories:

  • Gut bacteria affect what foods and bacteria that fruit flies prefer to eat
  • Using mouth bacteria to estimate time of death
  • Huge bacterial protein attaches to ice and diatoms
  • Feeding friendly gut microbes helps prevent imbalance
  • Bacteria can sense and respond to touch

  • Post questions or comments here or email to bacteriofiles@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

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    Episode outline:

    Monday, November 6, 2017

    BacterioFiles 316 - Studying Sizeable Special Synthetases

    Beauvericin
    By Yu et al. 2017, Nat Commun
    CC-BY 4.0
    This episode: Scientists study how fungi make interesting peptides using large proteins instead of ribosomes.

    Download Episode (8.7 MB, 9.5 minutes)

    Show notes:
    Microbe of the episode: Nerine virus X

    News item

    Journal Paper:
    Yu D, Xu F, Zhang S, Zhan J. 2017. Decoding and reprogramming fungal iterative nonribosomal peptide synthetases. Nat Commun 8:ncomms15349.

    Other interesting stories:
  • Using CRISPR to encode a short movie into a bacterial genome (paper)
  • Virus that tolerates boiling acid could be model for super-tough nanomaterials
  • Avoiding microbiota disruption protects frogs from parasites
  • Soil microbe communities are also recovering in prairie restoration
  • Couples modify each other's microbe communities, though not much

  • Post questions or comments here or email to bacteriofiles@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

    Subscribe: iTunes, RSS, Google Play. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook.

    Episode outline: