This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Could doctors one day prescribe electrical stimulation to fight a bacterial infection? Work by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at AIMES suggests that might be possible. In line with the Goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda, researchers at AIMES are dedicated to promoting “Good Health and Well-Being” by achieving a better understanding of bacterial infections and the body’s defenses against them. Some of their latest findings reveal a new aspect of host–pathogen interactions. In addition to the cascade of chemical signals that are activated when bacteria invade, the body might also conduct electrical signals across nerves—enabling the infected organ to call distant parts of the body to action. The team uncovered this form of “biological telecommunication” by studying rats with kidney infections caused by strains of E. coli. Within as little as 4 hours of infection, they could detect an immune response all the way in the spleen..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotics are known to impact the bacteria in our gut microbiome, but their impact on gut fungi has been understudied. It is thought that antibiotics increase the fungal population by decreasing the competition from bacteria for nutrients. But a recent study found that the antibiotic amoxicillin-clavulanic acid has the opposite effect. By examining samples from mice and a small number of human infants, researchers found that this treatment triggered a decrease in intestinal fungi. The treatment also led to a total remodel of the fungal and bacterial population structures in the mouse gut microbiomes. Specifically, the fungal community gained a higher proportion of Aspergillus, Cladosporium, and Valsa groups, and the bacterial community had an increase in bacteria belonging to Enterobacteriaceae. Many Enterobacteriaceae reduce the fungal growth but among them E. hormaechei was particularly active in vitro and in vivo..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Learn about the challenging research work of several of the outstanding fellowship students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Explore topics such as antibiotics from the sea, the declining health of our oceans, mapping the seafloor, and factors affecting climate change. (57 minutes)

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A recent study published in the British Journal of Nutrition suggests that enterolactone, an estrogen-like compound formed by the breakdown of whole grains and other plant-based foods by gut bacteria, could protect against the risk of death due to colorectal cancer—at least, for women. For men, just the opposite could be true: high concentrations of the compound might actually increase that risk. The findings, published as part of a special issue on nutrition and cancer, point to a potentially significant link between diet and survival after colorectal cancer that warrants a much closer look by researchers. The authors of the study reached those conclusions by examining data from the “Diet, Cancer and Health” study, an ongoing cohort study of older men and women in Denmark. Specifically, they compared the death outcomes of people with varying levels of enterolactone in their blood plasma, before being diagnosed with colorectal cancer..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is the transplantation of donor derived stem cells and treats a variety of hematologic and non-hematologic disorders. Allo-HSCT patients exhibit changes in their gut microbiota and experience a range of complications post-treatment, including acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD). The potential roles or timing of gut microbiota reestablishment and immunological homeostasis after allo-HSCT are not known. It is also not yet known if the microbiota at other body sites plays a role. Recently, researchers ran an integrated host-microbiota analysis of the gut, oral, and nasal microbiota in children undergoing allo-HSCT. The bacterial diversity decreased in all three sites during the first month. Certain microbial taxa were already different in allo-HSCT patients before transplantation compared to healthy children. Onset of acute GvHD after treatment could be predicted from the pre-treatment microbiota composition at all three body sites..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Babies born before 37 weeks often need antibiotics to stave off infection. Antibiotic exposure like this can increase the amount of antibiotic resistance genes carried by the microbes in their gut. But giving them a probiotic of beneficial bacteria may help. To test this, researchers examined the microbiome antibiotic resistance genes in three groups of infants: preterm infants with probiotic supplementation, preterm infants without probiotic supplementation, and full-term infants. The samples were collected from the preterm infants near their predicted due date and from the full-term infants when they were 10 days old. Overall, the number of antibiotic resistance genes didn’t differ between groups, but the types and resistance mechanisms did. The preterm infants not given probiotics had over 80 antibiotic resistance genes unique to their group and had more genes associated with antibiotic inactivation mechanisms than the other groups..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"People often take probiotics to supplement the community of microbes living in their gut and maintain their digestive health. But can gut microbes also have an important effect on the brain? New evidence indicates that they can, with possible key roles in neurologic disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). While treatment with antibiotics to manipulate the gut microbiota has been shown to improve neurologic symptoms, it can worsen them in SOD1 mice, which are often used to study ALS. To better understand the role of gut microbes in ALS, scientists either depleted the gut microbiota of SOD1 mice with antibiotics or augmented it by housing SOD1 with non-SOD1 mice to encourage microbial transfer. The antibiotic treatment decreased motor function and survival in the SOD1 mice, while cohabitation with non-SOD1 mice had no effect..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a type of bacteria that is resistant to several antibiotics.

This month, the World Health Organization announced that tuberculosis cases are on the decline for the first time in at least 20 years. We seem finally to be winning what has been a very long battle. Tuberculosis bacteria have been attacking us since modern humans began to migrate out of Africa around 40,000 years ago. If you enjoy classic literature, you'll be familiar with the cough, fever, and weight loss of consumption (the old-fashioned term for tuberculosis), which used to be a near certain death sentence. That changed when the aminoglycoside antibiotic streptomycin was discovered in 1943.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The microbial colonization of a newborn’s intestine is a critical step in their development. and environmental factors during and after birth dramatically shape that colonization. Little is known about microbial colonization of infants born at home, outside the highly sanitized hospital environment. and the rate of home births is rapidly increasing in the United States but is still rare in Europe. New research examined the microbiomes of healthy infants born at home or in a hospital. Infants born in a hospital (CS and VAG) had greater microbial richness, or number of species, than infants born at home (HB). Infants born in the hospital via c-section (CS) had decreased Bacteroidetes and Bifidobacterium, along with a higher BMI and W/L during the first 18 months of life than the other groups. Different microbial profiles also had distinct effects on in vitro intestinal and immunological models..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotic use can increase the abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) within microbial communities. This occurs in many settings, including in agricultural fields and within the digestive tract of livestock. These two settings interact when manure is used as fertilizer, carrying ARGs from the livestock gut to soil. Earthworms — and their gut microbiomes — play key roles in soil nutrient cycling and are often used as bioindicators in environmental risk assessment. However, the impact of common agricultural antimicrobials or the addition of manure on ARGs in the gut microbiome of earthworms is rarely examined. A recent study found that exposure to the fungicide carbendazim altered their gut microbial community and increased the abundance of ARGs. Specifically, earthworms dwelling in the manure-amended soil had more abundant ARGs in their gut microbiome and exposure to carbendazim enhanced this effect..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotic-resistant bacteria like carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) pose a serious threat to human health. Some resistant pathogens can exist alongside our commensal microbiota at undetectable levels. Antibiotic use can lead to outgrowth of these subclinically colonized bacteria. A recent study sought to better understand the interaction between the gut microbiota and CRE during subclinical colonization and outgrowth. First, researchers exposed wild-type mice to the CRE _K. pneumoniae_. While the levels of _K. pneumoniae_ were not detectable after exposure, the post-exposure microbiome was disrupted. Then, administration of an antibiotic cocktail, ampicillin, vancomycin, or azithromycin induced _K. pneumoniae_ outgrowth while reducing overall microbial diversity. Vancomycin only induced outgrowth in a subset of mice. The researchers found these outgrowth-susceptible mice had differences in mRNA stability pathways and xylose abundance..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Our gut microbes keep us healthy, regulating metabolism and immunity, but at the end of life, the gut microbiota is fragile, enhancing our susceptibility to diseases like C. difficile. One method of enhancing intestinal health is to incorporate prebiotics like galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) into the diet. A recent study evaluated the impact of GOS diets on hallmarks of gut aging, including dysbiosis, inflammation and increased intestinal permeability. Using a mouse model, researchers found that older animals had increased ratios of bacteria that don’t process sugars (non-saccharolytic) to those that do (saccharolytic). GOS also reduced age-associated intestinal permeability and increased mucus thickness in older mice..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.