Microbiome

Microbiome Assembly across Multiple Body Sites in Low-Birthweight Infants
Complications of premature birth are the most common cause of neonatal mortality. Colonization by the indigenous microbiota, which begins at delivery, may predispose some high-risk newborns to invasive infection or necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and protect others, yet neonatal microbiome dynamics are poorly understood. Here, we present the first cultivation-independent time series tracking microbiota assembly across multiple body sites in a synchronous cohort of hospitalized low-birthweight (LBW) neonates. We take advantage of archived samples and publically available sequence data and compare our LBW infant findings to those from normal-birthweight (NBW) infants and healthy adults. Our results suggest potential windows of opportunity for the dispersal of microbes within and between hosts and support recent findings of substantial baseline spatiotemporal variation in microbiota composition among high-risk newborns. Costello EK, Carlisle EM, Bik EM, Morowitz MJ, Relman DA. MBio. 2013 Oct 29;4(6). PMID: 24169577

The role of lactobacilli and probiotics in maintaining vaginal health
The administration of probiotics that colonize the vaginal tract can be important in maintaining a normal urogenital health and also to prevent or treat infections. Borges S, Silva J, Teixeira P. Arch Gynecol Obstet. 2013 Oct 30. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24170161

Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in infants during the six months of life
In this work, we compared the fecal microbiota of breast-fed (BF), formula-fed (FF) and mixed-fed (MF) infants from Hebei province, China. By using high-throughput 16S rDNA sequencing analyses, we found some differences in gut microbiota in the three groups. Fan W, Huo G, Li X, Yang L, Duan C. J Microbiol Biotechnol. 2013 Oct 30. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24169452