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Tired of AI-generated figures? I asked our talented scientific illustrator Manon Zuurmond to draw some of the instruments and lab equipment we missed in NIH's otherwise fantastic BioArt resource. First batch now available as CC BY. Free for everyone to use in publications: github.com/Center-for-P...

The 2026 Conference on Beneficial Microbes will be co-organized with the International Symbiosis Society from July 19th - July 23rd. Its not too late to register! #BeneficialMicrobes10 #BeneficialMicrobesMtg #ISS #SymbioSky

The conference responsible for the post below is not the meeting associated with this handle. Please re-direct. beneficialmicrobes.events/advisory-com...

Feldman Lab@WashU@feldmanlab.bsky.social · last yr.

@benmicrobesmtg.bsky.social the organizers if the beneficial microbes conferences uninvited a scientist from the conference just based on their nationality. This act of racism should not be tolerated. I am happy I am not attending this conference. Shame on the organizers!

Please note- This was not the @BenMicrobes Conference on Beneficial Microbes that this handle is associated with, but the European organized conferences shared below beneficialmicrobes.events/advisory-com.... Please correct in your posts.

Izabella Sall studies microbiota in opioid use, points out that prolonged opioid use causes gut microbiota dysbiosis. Butyrate important in opioid tolerance, detected via several methods. See the preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #BeneficialMicrobes

Gut dysbiosis was inevitable, but tolerance was not: temporal responses of the murine microbiota that maintain its capacity for butyrate production correlate with sustained antinociception to chronic ...

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

biorxiv.org

Matthew Ulgherait at UNC studies aging in Drosophila, has identified microbes and feed that can extend the life of the fruitflies. See this patent: patents.google.com/patent/US202... #BeneficialMicrobes

Angela Poole studies dietary fiber intake. Recommended dietary intake is MUCH higher than we typically take in. Did a study during the pandemic ( #overlyhonestmethods shared) with high fiber diets, described in this paper: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #BeneficialMicrobes

Gut microbial features and dietary fiber intake predict gut microbiota response to resistant starch supplementation

Resistant starch (RS) consumption can have beneficial effects on metabolic health, but the response, in terms of effects on the gut microbiota and host physiology, varies between individuals. Facto...

tandfonline.com

Daniel Y. Kim walks us through the potential mechanism of how 502A inhibits growth of MRSA in the nasal environment. I recognize him from a previous meeting and can't place which lab he was in. #BeneficialMicrobes

#BeneficialMicrobes Shruthi Magesh from the Handlesman lab (which I inferred when I saw Handlesman taking a photo of her student, such a great #ProudPI moment) tells us a fascinating story about multi-species biofilms. Love the name of the communities, zorbs, from: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Social motility of biofilm-like microcolonies in a gliding bacterium - Nature Communications

Bacterial biofilms are aggregates of surface-associated cells embedded in an extracellular polysaccharide (EPS) matrix. Here, the authors describe a unique mode of collective movement by self-propelle...

nature.com

Last day of #BeneficialMicrobes: Liz Johnson from Cornell studies the infant gut microbiome. Some of her data comes from a community project called diaper-project, in which parents donate samples and get a description of their babies microbiome in return. dashboard.diaper-project.com/signup

Our 2nd keynote speaker- Dr Jeff Gordon. Begins with a retrospective of key steps in his labs microbiome work that led them to current focus of the microbiome and interventions for childhood under nutrition.

Marienela Heredia is in the lab of my PI from grad school, Laura Knoll. Heredia studies Entamoeba and Tritrichomonas, which are often thought of as parasites, but have capacity to be symbionts. Love a good parasite/protist story. It's unpublished, looking forward to reading this #BeneficialMicrobes

Lauren Lucas: bile acids are turned into 100s or 1000s of smaller primary and secondary molecules by microbiota, which play huge role in host health. Lucas is first author on most cited article in mSystems in 2021 (did I hear that right??) journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #BeneficialMicrobes

Dominant Bacterial Phyla from the Human Gut Show Widespread Ability To Transform and Conjugate Bile Acids | mSystems

Our current knowledge regarding microbial bile acid transformations comes primarily from biochemical studies on a relatively small number of species or from bioinformatic predictions that rely on homo...

journals.asm.org

Laura Fricke in Lindsey lab characterizes the contribution of Wolbachia to embryogenesis in parasitic wasps. I've never thought about microbe contribution to asexual reproduction, will now bug my genetics colleague to look at this in their bug. academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... #BeneficialMicrobes

Identification of Parthenogenesis-Inducing Effector Proteins in Wolbachia

Abstract. Bacteria in the genus Wolbachia have evolved numerous strategies to manipulate arthropod sex, including the conversion of would-be male offspring

academic.oup.com

Andrea Boyd in the Lemon lab has developed a new system to study how nasal microbiome members interact with host cells and it is very cool. Definitely keep an eye out for that publication. #beneficialMicrobes

Sergio López-Madrigal also studies Wolbachia and is characterizing microbe-host interactions. This work is unpublished as well, but I took notes for a mentee about a potential assay to use in our system. #beneficialMicrobes

Sneha Agrawal from the Broderick lab focuses on Drosophila microbiome. This work builds off earlier work from Barron et al 2024: www.cell.com/cell-reports... #BeneficialMicrobes

Microbiome-derived acidity protects against microbial invasion in Drosophila

Barron et al. demonstrate that interactions between members of the Drosophila microbiome influence the pH of the fly environment. Acidification by the microbiome, primarily through production of lacti...

cell.com

Mische Holland was sequencing genomes of amoeba and accidentally identified endosymbionts! I was going to go into much greater detail because I thought it was published, then doubled checked the paper I found and it isn't published. #BeneficialMicrobes

Victoria Glynn from Rowan Barrett's lab compared the coral in two systems that experience very different climate exposures. This project built on Glynn's previous study on how sea temperatures affect the microbiome of bleached corals onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #BeneficialMicrobes

Environmental and geographical factors structure cauliflower coral's algal symbioses across the Indo‐Pacific

Aim The symbioses between corals and endosymbiotic dinoflagellates have been described as a flexible relationship whose dynamics could serve as a source of resilience for coral reef ecosystems. Howe...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Kayla Cross from Zakee Sabree's lab studies the microbiome metabolic function in cockroaches given different diets. Turns out redundancies are important in maintaining the function of the microbiome, and that just looking at taxa doesn't give the full picture of the microbiome. #BeneficialMicrobes

Katherine Xue (starting own lab in 2025 at UC Irvine and looking for mentees) asked whether antibiotic disruption leads to increased colonization with new microbes. Found that subset of subjects saw new colonization, but only after delay. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles... #BeneficialMicrobes

Prolonged delays in human microbiota transmission after a controlled antibiotic perturbation

Humans constantly encounter new microbes, but few become long-term residents of the adult gut microbiome. Classical theories predict that colonization is determined by the availability of open niches,...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Alecia Septer studies the role of Type 6 secretion systems in colonization of Vibrio in squid. Most assume that the energy cost of a gene and system drives whether a gene is retained in a symbiont. Septer tested this and found it's more complicated than simple loss/retention. #BeneficialMicrobe

Luella Allen-Walker in the Barott lab asked how corals respond to heat stress, with a focus on acid/base regulation of the host and symbionts. I really liked this view and interdisciplinary focus of this project. #BenficialMIcrobes journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Comparative physiology reveals heat stress disrupts acid–base homeostasis independent of symbiotic state in the model cnidarian Exaiptasia diaphana

Summary: Warming oceans threaten marine invertebrates. Heat disrupts acid–base homeostasis in a model symbiotic sea anemone regardless of symbiont presence or function, highlighting bleaching-independ...

journals.biologists.com

#BeneficialMicrobes day 3 starts with Elizabeth Mallott discussing human gut microbiome. Mallot has a background in sociology and looks outside of race/ethnicity for variables that alter the gut microbiome. Love this shift in microbiome research. Cites this paper: journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....

Chasing Ghosts: Race, Racism, and the Future of Microbiome Research | mSystems

In this article, we argue that a careful examination of human microbiome science’s relationship with race and racism is necessary to foster equitable social and ecological relations in the field. We p...

journals.asm.org

#BeneficialMicrobes last afternoon session starts with Mark Mandel walking us through work in squid-Vibrio, with a focus on biofilm formation and Vibrio colonization via phosphorylation signals through rscS and binK. See: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26977108/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34031036/

Mark Heggen in the Van Pijkeren Lab tells us an unpublished story about how the small molecule (p)ppGpp contributes to resistance of microbiota members against antimicrobials. He had an interesting screen that he used to identified genes of interest that I need to ask about. #BeneficialMicrobes

Uyen Thy Nguyen tells us about a skin microbe that is about to inhibit fungal growth, both in vitro and in vivo, via a small molecule it produces (unpublished work). #BeneficialMicrobes I really like the fact that a lot of the talks include unpublished work, but it makes it harder to post about!

Yulin Song from the Moran lab studies honeybee microbiomes. Tells an interesting story about a gut microbiota member that can be a pathogen or symbiont, and the gene that helps that microbe act as both (unpublished) #BeneficialMicrobes

Sadie Schaus gives an interesting, well presented talk showing that Ruminococcus digestion of mucin (specifically MUC2) releases nutrients that support B. Theta growth. This is important because mucin can contain over 100 types of molecules! journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #BeneficialMicrobes

Ruminococcus torques is a keystone degrader of intestinal mucin glycoprotein, releasing oligosaccharides used by Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron | mBio

An important facet of maintaining healthy symbiosis between host and intestinal microbes is the mucus layer, the first defense protecting the epithelium from lumenal bacteria. Some gut bacteria degrad...

journals.asm.org