This work stems from the “Theory of Microbial Symbiosis” workshop held last year at HIMB (Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology), supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation @moorefound.bsky.social. Grateful to Joan Roughgarden and Lisa McManus for organizing such a fantastic workshop!

We discuss the limits of current theoretical host-microbe models and outline 3 key areas for future work:

1) Modelling the nested structure of holobionts
2) Capturing microbial transmission dynamics in #holobiont populations
3) Understanding symbiont-driven host evolution and speciation

Last week @richabdill.com and @samanthagraham.bsky.social's paper was featured on the cover of Cell!

The cover, portraying microbes on shelves shaped like a world map, was possible thanks to the amazing team of illustrators at SciStories ✏️🦠

Intense and very productive week attending #cshlmbiome! I particularly loved the amount of novel results presented at talks and posters, and the very collaborative environment...this should be the norm! 👆 Kudos to the organizers for this fantastic meeting!
#microbiome

We found extensive carriage of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in breastmilk, as well as in the infant gut, and that samples dominated by bifidobacteria were characterised by a significantly lower carriage of ARGs.
7/n

We identified cases of strain sharing between the breastmilk and the infant gut, and we found that unrelated infants born at the same hospital were sharing a higher number of strains than infants born in different hospitals. 🏥 
6/n

The prevalence of bifidobacteria decreased over time, particularly in infants that switched to formula feeding. 

In addition, samples dominated by B. longum showed a higher stability over time, compared to samples dominated by other species. 
5/n

We found that the taxonomic overlap between breastmilk and infant gut microbiome is driven by bifidobacteria (in particular by B. longum). 4/n

We collected breastmilk (BM) and infant stool samples from 195 mother-infant pairs from different hospitals in the MN-OK area.

The paper has a lot of exciting results, but here are some highlights:  3/n

We are excited to present our latest preprint on breastmilk and infant gut microbiome! 1/n
tinyurl.com/4rcpsawm
@blekhman.bsky.social

Our paper, "Meconium Microbiome of Very Preterm Infants across Germany", was highlighted as an
@ASMicrobiology Top Cited paper in 2023! ✨

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Fantastic talk by @merenbey.bsky.social @microbiomevif.bsky.social reminding everyone on the importance of keeping a microbial ecology-oriented perspective in microbiome studies.