Tag Archives: microbiome

Microbiomes of a small conference

The conference season is almost over. There are still a few gems out there worth attending before school starts. I just came back from the Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomics Conference which took place at a UCLA resort in the mountains. … Continue reading

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Metabarcoding for every body, every habitat, every time

The immediate reason why I wanted to write about Boosting DNA metabarcoding for biomonitoring with phylogenetic estimation of operational taxonomic units’ ecological profiles is its usefulness for the scientific community and the effort of the authors to make their study reproducible. … Continue reading

Posted in bioinformatics, community, community ecology, DNA barcoding, fieldwork, metagenomics, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, R | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Signal Boosting a Comprehensive Review of eDNA and Metabarcoding Studies

Everything is meta these days – metabarcoding, metagenomics, and now meta blog posts that are reviews of reviews. Much like every ecologist at least dabbles in the molecular world, so most of those predisposed to molecular ecology and population genetics … Continue reading

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Missing symbionts: do some animals lack resident gut microbiomes?

It seems like the field of “gut microbiomics” is having major breakthroughs almost every month these days. It’s very exciting to follow what is being discovered and gut microbes have now been linked with an array of important host traits, … Continue reading

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Genomes are coming: Sequence libraries from the honey bee reflect associated microbial diversity

One of the coolest of reasons that cheap sequencing is nifty, in my opinion, is that it has allowed researchers to study individual eukaryotic organisms, and their associated microbes (their microbiome). Let’s be real, we are in the midst of … Continue reading

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The importance of culturing the uncultured, delving into the microbial consortia in the human gut

The molecular side of ecology has grown by leaps and bounds in recent decades. The review we covered not too long ago, did a nice job of summarizing many key aspects highlighting the importance of this relatively new molecular view … Continue reading

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Of microbes and men: Testing the neutral theory with the human microbiome

There is no doubt that one of the hottest current topics in microbiology revolves around the human microbiome. There have been a suite of recent studies we’ve highlighted, on organisms ranging from bees and mice, to humans. A quick google scholar search identifies … Continue reading

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Understanding the pieces of all those meeces: characterizing mice gut microbiota

In an age where a tremendous amount of data is generated, this week has seen some moves towards providing open access to extensive data sets. These attempts have been in the realm of chemistry as well as microbiology, where in a … Continue reading

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How urbanization might affect the five-second rule

At this point, we know that microbes are everywhere and make up complex communities found all over the place ranging from oceanic hydrothermal vents to lakes, soils, and, yes of course, all over you. It has also become apparent that … Continue reading

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Algae bring life to the world – species, microbiomes and biodiversity

The first European Phycological Congress was held in Cologne, Germany in 1996. In the last 20-odd years, the meeting has been held every four years from Italy, to Northern Ireland, to Spain and Greece. This year the meeting was held … Continue reading

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