This Week in Microbiology

• 366: Our Vanishing Ancient Gut Microbes

  TWiM explains a bacterial antiviral defense system that uses a noncoding RNA template to build tandem-repeat DNA through a mechanism that parallels how eukaryotic telomerase extends telomeres, and genome sequencing of the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Hadza of Tanzania which reveals over a thousand gut bacterial species shared between the two populations, many now vanishing from industrialized humans, suggesting they co-migrated with our ancestors out of Africa and into the Americas.

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  Links for this episode:

   

  • Antiviral immunity via telomerase-like reverse transcription in bacteria (Nature)

  • Prehistoric global migration of vanishing gut microbes with humans (Nature)
    

  Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.

  Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

   

• 365: Bacteria Inside a Fungus Sabotage Plant Defenses

  TWiM explains how bacterial endosymbionts enhance fungal virulence by disrupting the protective rhizobiome, and the development of rationally engineered Salmonella typhimurium strains with enhanced safety and antitumor efficacy. 

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  Links for this episode:
  
  

  • Plant, fungus, endosymbiont, and rhizobiome (PNAS)

  • Engineering S. typhimurium to kill tumors (mBio)
    
    

  Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.

  Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

   

• 364: DNA Damage as Defense Against Bee Pathogens

  TWiM wonders why archaea are not pathogenic, and reveals how a colibactin produced by a honeybee gut symbiont defends against pathogens.

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  Links for this episode:
  
  

  • Why are archaea not pathogenic? (mBio)

  • Archaeal viruses (Archaea)

  • Colibactin made in honeybee gut (Nat Micro)
    
    

  Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.

  Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

   

• 363: Why Vegetables Are Good for Your Heart

  TWiM explains the finding that Bunsen burners do not decrease deposition of microbe-containing particles, and how gut microbiota generate dinitrosyl iron complexes with cardiometabolic benefits.

  Hosts:  Vincent Racaniello and Michael Schmidt

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  Links for this episode:
  
  

  • Bunsen burners don’t do what you thought they did (Micro Spectrum)

  • How does air circulate in passenger planes? | AFP

  • How germs travel on planes | Raymond Wang

  • Gut bacteria and cardiometabolic health (Cell)
    

   

  Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.

  Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

• 362: When Gut Bacteria Share Chromosomes

  TWiM explains how movement of DNA among gut bacteria drive large-scale genome mosaicism, and validation of a method for detection of Cyclospora cayetanensis in outbreak-linked fresh produce.

  Hosts:  Vincent Racaniello, Michael Schmidt, Michele Swanson, and Petra Levin

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  Links for this episode:

   

  • Natural DNA transformation in the gut (ISME J)

  • The transformation factor (J Exp Med)

  • Validating cyclospora assay (J Food Prot)

  • Cyclosporiasis (CDC)

   

  Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.

  Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv