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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2026

Cross-domain cooperation drives nutrient acquisition and metabolism in the bark beetle holobiont.

Microbial symbiosis underpins host adaptation, yet mechanisms of metabolic integration in holobionts remain unclear. Using metatranscriptomics, genomics, and metabolic assays, we investigated gut microbiome interactions in the European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus). We observed metabolic complementarity among symbionts and host, forming cross-domain networks that support nutrient acquisition. Nitrogen recycling revealed strong interdependence: no single partner possessed a complete uric acid degradation pathway, but combined evidence supports a distributed pathway spanning beetle, Bacteria, and fungi. Additionally, bacterial nitrate reduction to ammonia indicates a potential nitrogen influx, making otherwise inaccessible inorganic nitrogen available to the host. Shaped by microbial interactions, symbionts also likely supply specific amino acids, while vitamin metabolism showed cross-domain co-metabolism, with Bacteria as main producers of B vitamins, while host and fungi modulated interconversion. Carbohydrate degradation was highly partitioned; bacteria target xylan and pectin, while fungi contribute to glucan breakdown. Crucially, our data provide indirect evidence that the beetle may contribute to complete cellulose degradation, highlighting an underappreciated host role in lignocellulose processing. In terms of enzymatic functional diversity, the bacteriome emerged as the most important microbiome component-an observation that contrasts with the traditional focus on fungi and underscores the need to consider bacterial contributions in insect symbioses. Despite life-stage variation, core metabolic functions remained stable. Overall, metabolic interdependence, rather than microbial composition alone, structures holobiont function. These results highlight functional redundancy and ecological resilience, emphasizing the importance of microbial cooperation and host-microbe metabolic evolution.

Bark beetle↗
PubMed2026

Cross-Kingdom Siderophores: Biosynthesis, Ecology, and Biotechnological Applications.

Microbial siderophores are high-affinity iron-binding compounds which are produced by bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes to obtain iron and survive and interact with different species in an iron-deficient environment. While the conventional research on siderophore systems deals mainly with the study within the same taxa, modern researchers have increased their inclination toward cross-kingdom integration of siderophore behavior and their impact on host-associated environments. This can be largely attributed to differences in biosynthetic gene clusters, receptor systems, and regulatory networks, which produce distinct genotype-to-phenotype results determining microbial cooperation and competition. Current advancements in genomic research, together with omics studies like transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, have created newer insights into how siderophores function. However, the present literature evidences multiple major gaps in multi-omics data because the link between genomes and metabolomes remains weak due to inconsistent regulatory data sets and failure in identifying producer-consumer relationships in polymicrobial systems. Additionally, major constraints like molecular instability, delivery system limitations, host toxicity, limitations in upscaling, and regulatory issues delimit the use of siderophores in medical treatment, agricultural practices, and environmental biotechnology. This review aims to bridge the existing knowledge about siderophore biochemistry, biosynthesis, ecological functions, and genetic regulation across kingdoms while integrating multi-omics outlook with translational considerations. Thus, by connecting molecular mechanisms with evolutionary cross-talk, this study aims to provide a system-level framework in the world of siderophore-mediated iron uptake and therefore shapes future directions in emerging fields of microbial engineering, precision therapies, and sustainable biotechnology.

Fur regulation↗
PubMed2026

Carbon metabolic homogenization is linked to microbial competition and antimicrobial resistance in soils under forest-to-cropland conversion.

Global agricultural expansion by converting natural forests into croplands often leads to soil functional homogenization and antimicrobial resistance enhancement, threatening ecosystem services. However, the associations between microbial carbon metabolic homogenization and antimicrobial resistance remain largely unknown. Here, we collected 240 paired forest and cropland soil samples from the most intensively farmed Yangtze River Basin in China, and constructed a novel framework based on microbial functional traits to decipher the role of carbon metabolic homogenization on antimicrobial resistance via microbial competition for metabolites. Using genome-scale metabolic models, we found that carbon metabolic homogenization was associated with a shift in microbial interactions from cooperation toward competition, with a 45.6% increase in competitive interactions that coincided with a 35.6% higher antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) diversity. This shift was accompanied by smaller genome sizes and higher 16S rRNA copy numbers, indicating fast-growing, resource-acquisitive microbial strategies. Metabolic transfer analyses further revealed less cooperation relationships among microbial communities in cropland soils than in forest soils, indicating an intensified battle for communal metabolites and an attenuated exchange for complementary metabolites. Together, these findings provide a new framework to understand the association between carbon metabolic homogenization and soil antimicrobial resistance risks from the perspective of microbial traits and interactions under land use change.

Soil Microbiology↗
PubMed1977

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli diarrhea of travelers: a prospective study of American Peace Corps volunteers.

Travelers' diarrhea was studied prospectively in a group of 39 American Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) during their first five weeks in Kenya. Twenty-seven developed diarrheal disease and 12 remained well. Multiple episodes were documented in 11 of the symptomatic volunteers. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli of many serotypes producing heat-labile and/or heat-stable enterotoxin were isolated from 17 of the 27 volunteers with diarrhea and from 1 of the 12 well volunteers. The enterotoxigenic E. coli were more likely to be antibiotic sensitive than the non-enterotoxigenic E. coli. A serum antibody rise to the heat-labile toxin (LT) was detected in six symptomatic volunteers, five of whom had a positive culture for LT-producing E. coli, and from one asymptomatic, culture negative volunteer. Salmonella cubana was isolated from two volunteers, and three volunteers had serologic evidence of infection with human reovirus-like (rotavirus) agent. This study confirms the role of enterotoxigenic E. coli as a major cause of travelers' diarrhea and suggests that the disease is similar in widely separated geographic areas.

Adult↗
PubMed2025

Health-associated key gut microbiota drives the variation in community metabolic interactions in non-human primates.

Gut microbiota often undergo metabolic cross-feeding and resource competition. However, our understanding of global variations in these interactions and their implications for host health remain elusive. By analyzing a microbial genome catalog from 841 fecal metagenomes across 53 primate species worldwide, we identified key microbiota assigned to two taxa, i.e., Bacillota_A and Pseudomonadota, which well predicted the trade-off of community-level interaction types between metabolic competition and cooperation. Specifically, Bacillota_A species were inherently competitive and amino acid auxotrophic and typically found in anaerobic habitats. In contrast, members of Pseudomonadota were inherently cooperative, siderophore producers, and more abundant in aerobic conditions. Random forest models successfully distinguished unhealthy gut samples from healthy samples through the key competitive and cooperative microbiota, suggesting potential links between community metabolic interactions and host health. Together, this study enhances our mechanistic understanding of microbial interaction dynamism within complex gut ecosystems, offering new targets for understanding host health.

Animals↗
PubMed2026

Cooperative anaerobic catabolism of chlorinated organic compounds: implications for sustainable bioremediation.

Biodegradation research historically followed a reductionist approach focused on axenic (pure) cultures capable of catabolizing the specific contaminant(s) of interest. While this approach has substantially advanced our understanding of the microbiology, physiology, biochemistry, and genetics of contaminant degradation under laboratory conditions, it does not capture the complexity of natural and engineered environments. During in situ bioremediation, microbiomes are exposed to mixtures of contaminants, and microbial interactions profoundly influence contaminant transformation and fate. In anoxic environments, degradation of chlorinated compounds is often sustained by metabolic cooperation among taxonomically and physiologically distinct microorganisms. Through the exchange of metabolites such as hydrogen, formate, acetate, and other nutrients, microbial populations establish interdependent networks that overcome thermodynamic and physiological constraints, enabling self-sustaining systems of contaminant transformations that would be inefficient or impossible with individual organisms. We highlight examples of microbial interactions that underpin anaerobic catabolism of chlorinated contaminants, including systems resulting in self-sustained anaerobic bioremediation.

Biodegradation, Environmental↗
PubMed2026

Genome-resolved analysis reveals disruption of gut microbial vitamin B and K2 biosynthesis during Toxoplasma gondii infection in mice.

UNLABELLED: Toxoplasma gondii infection remodels the gut microbiome, yet its impact on microbial vitamin biosynthetic potential and host redox metabolism remains unclear. Here, we integrated mouse gut metagenomes with publicly available metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) to construct a genome-resolved atlas of B-vitamin and vitamin K2 biosynthesis. From 45,697 MAGs, we curated 4,771 representative genomes, of which 2,682 met high-quality criteria (completeness &#x2265;90%, contamination <5%). Functional annotation identified 229,717 vitamin-related genes corresponding to 177 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) orthologs across de novo pathways for eight B vitamins, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenate (B5), pyridoxine (B6), biotin (B7), folate (B9), cobalamin (B12), and vitamin K2. Among the high-quality genomes, 1,665 encoded complete de novo pathways for at least one vitamin, highlighting functional specialization and community-level complementarity. Transcripts per million-normalized metagenomic read counts revealed significant differences in KEGG ortholog abundances across six of the nine vitamin pathways. Reanalysis of metagenomic data from infected mice (acute, chronic, and control; n = 10 per group) revealed a stage-dependent reduction in &#x3b1;-diversity of vitamin biosynthesis pathways during acute infection, and a clear &#x3b2;-diversity separation from chronic and control groups. Core niacin biosynthesis genes (nadB, nadA, nadC) displayed phylum-specific redistribution, indicating selective remodeling of microbial NAD+ precursor production under infection-induced metabolic stress. These results suggest that T. gondii infection disrupts cooperative vitamin biosynthetic networks while specifically modulating niacin pathways linked to host NAD+ metabolism. IMPORTANCE: Gut microbes can synthesize essential vitamins, but how infection alters this function is poorly understood. By integrating mouse gut metagenomes with genome-resolved microbial data, we show that Toxoplasma gondii infection reshapes the vitamin biosynthetic potential of the gut microbiome in a stage-dependent manner. Acute infection reduces the diversity of vitamin biosynthesis pathways and shifts the taxonomic distribution of key niacin biosynthesis genes involved in microbial NAD+ precursor production. These findings identify vitamin metabolism, especially niacin-related pathways, as a sensitive functional axis of microbiome remodeling during infection. Our work links microbial taxonomic changes to functional metabolic consequences and suggests that microbiome-mediated regulation of NAD+-related metabolism may contribute to host redox adaptation during T. gondii infection.

B vitamins↗
PubMed2025

Competition and cooperation: The plasticity of bacterial interactions across environments.

Bacteria live in diverse communities, forming complex networks of interacting species. A central question in bacterial ecology is whether species engage in cooperative or competitive interactions. But this question often neglects the role of the environment. Here, we use genome-scale metabolic networks from two different open-access collections (AGORA and CarveMe) to assess pairwise interactions of different microbes in varying environmental conditions (provision of different environmental compounds). By computationally simulating thousands of environments for 10,000 pairs of bacteria from each collection, we found that most pairs were able to both compete and cooperate depending on the availability of environmental resources. This modeling approach allowed us to determine commonalities between environments that could facilitate the potential for cooperation or competition between a pair of species. Namely, cooperative interactions, especially obligate, were most common in less diverse environments. Further, as compounds were removed from the environment, we found interactions tended to degrade towards obligacy. However, we also found that on average at least one compound could be removed from an environment to switch the interaction from competition to facultative cooperation or vice versa. Together our approach indicates a high degree of plasticity in microbial interactions in response to the availability of environmental resources.

Microbial Interactions↗
PubMed1977

Streptococcus pneumoniae resistant to penicillin and chloramphenicol.

Three cases of meningitis and two of septicaemia were caused by pneumococci resistant to the penicillins/cephalosporins and chloramphenicol. No beta-lactamase was demonstrated in any of the organisms. All three patients with meningitis died, but the patients with septicaemia recovered after being given appropriate antibiotic therapy.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
PubMed1975

Attempts to extend the genetic map of poliovirus temperature-sensitive mutants.

Eighteen new ts mutants of poliovirus have been isolated after a variety of mutagenic treatments, and their loci identified in relation to the previous genetic map. The map was only extended by 25%, and the physiological characters of the new isolates corresponded in all aspects tested with those of the previous isolates. Apparently single mutants at the extreme left of the map were defective in synthesis of both double- and single-stranded RNA, functions that do not co-vary in other mutants. Two procedures respectively predicted to induce mutations preferentially in the 5' and 3' regions of the genome gave isolates which all indicated that the structural protein region was nearest the 5' end. The loci fro resistance to dextran sulphate and to ethyl-2-methylthio-4-methyl-5-pyrimidine carboxylate both lie in the structural protein region.

Chromosome Mapping↗
PubMed1979

[Therapy of tuberculosis].

The accomplishment of the principles for the prevention of a germ resistance and the development of new principles of treatment and highly effective antituberculotics has led to the fact that nowadays actually each case of tuberculosis may be treated and cured purely internally. This progress in the individual treatment were achieved by recommendations of therapy which are actualized from time to time. The modern treatment consists of a daily application of three effective antituberculotics for two to three months, fellowed by an intermittent application twice a week. The duration of the initial intensive period and the whole time of therapy is determined by the clinical and social state before the beginning and by the combination of drugs. INH, rifampizine, streptomycin and ethambutol form the components of the therapy combinations which at present are to be used no longer than twelve months. The redetection of the special microbiological qualities of the pyrazineamide and their importance for the prevention of relapses introduces the last phase of the development of the therapy of tuberculosis. By its means it is possible to shorten the duration of the treatment to 9 months and less and thus to increase the acceptability and cooperation, to decrease the toxicity and costs.

Alanine Transaminase↗