4/ 🌿🧠 #laCaixaFoundFellow @mireiavallesc.bsky.social (@upf.edu, @irsicaixa.es) is researching the link between gut microbiota and disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Her goal is to identify biomarkers that could improve the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses.

La @mireiavallesc.bsky.social (investigadora de @melisupf.bsky.social) explica la relació entre la salut mental i la microbiota.

➡️ www.elperiodico.com/es/sanidad/2...

TLDR:
🧬 Unknown microbes
🦠 Social transmission
🌳 Potential conservation relevance

Shoutout to all co-authors!

We didn’t find evidence for microbiome acquisition through geophagy, but following the approach we developed for humans, we were excited to see very clear strain sharing patterns within social groups, which mirrored territory occupancy and interaction networks!

Consistent with their diet, the indri microbiome is enriched in fiber degradation pathways, and social group emerged as the main driver.

Indeed, Indris have a proportionally large core microbiome, and their microbiomes cluster far from any other primate. But after incorporating the assembled MAGs into release Jan23 of ChocoPhlAN and profiling with MetaPhlAn 4, we highly improved the mappability.

Our collaborators collected fecal samples from indris in 6 different social groups, together with soil samples (as indris engage in geophagy, i.e. they eat soil). We did metagenomic sequencing and found their microbiomes are virtually uncharacterised: E. coli is the only one cultivated member!

The Indri indri is Madagascar’s largest living lemur. It’s critically endangered, with no successful captive breeding to date. Could its gut microbiome hold clues for conservation?

Session 5 at #BCNMicrobiome offered fascinating insights into the #microbiome at the population level. 👏 Thanks to @sashazhernakova.bsky.social for the Dutch Microbiome Project highlights and @mireiavallesc.bsky.social for a brilliant talk on microbiome epidemiology.

It was a pleasure having you there, Nicolae! Thanks for your sharing your insightful questions