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:

"Soil quality is crucial to sustaining agriculture and maintaining food security. Soil ecosystems involve complex interactions between biological communities, such as microbes, and physicochemical variables, but although living organisms can affect soil health, they are often ignored in soil management systems, running the risk that we won’t detect detrimental impacts of our actions on the soil until it is too late. A recent study shed new light on bacteria living in soil ecosystems. Researchers examined the composition of bacterial communities and physicochemical properties in 3,000 soil samples from 606 sites in New Zealand, covering indigenous forests, exotic forest plantations, horticultural areas, and pastoral grasslands. Their results showed that soil bacteria community composition was strongly tied to land use. Soil properties such as pH, nutrient concentration, and bulk density could be predicted by the bacterial communities present in the soil..."

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

The concept of water activity is important to food preservation. When water activity is less than 0.6, almost all microbes, including bacteria, molds, and yeasts, stop growing. Vegetables are usually dried even further, to water activity of 0.3 or 0.2, for quality and storage. Virtual Labs – Controlling Water Activity in Food explores a traditional method of preserving corn by drying. In this virtual laboratory, learners test water activity levels of dried corn and explore how they change under three different storage environments. The interactive animation guides users through the theory and practice of sampling a food product, using a water activity meter, and setting up replicates, to build familiarity with concepts and procedures used in real food science labs. Before beginning this lab, it may be useful to complete Virtual Labs – Understanding Water Activity.

Moist foods – like fresh fruit or raw meat – often have high water activity and spoil quickly. But some foods that seem moist – like jam or pepperoni – don’t spoil as quickly. Why is this? All living things need water to survive. Enzymes and chemical reactions also require water. If water activity is less than 0.6, almost all microbes, including bacteria, molds, and yeasts, stop growing. This means that food can be preserved against spoilage by lowering its water activity – whether by evaporating water away or binding it up. Virtual Labs – Understanding Water Activity familiarizes the user with food science lab equipment and standard techniques for measuring water activity. The interactive animation guides the user through both theory and practice, preparing them for experiences in a real lab. Complete this lab first, then follow up with Virtual Labs – Controlling Water Activity.

How can you tell if harmful bacteria are growing in your food? Students learn to culture bacteria in order to examine ground meat and bagged salad samples, looking for common foodborne bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella. After 2-7 days of incubation, they observe and identify the resulting bacteria. Based on their first-hand experiences conducting this conventional biological culturing process, they consider its suitability in meeting society's need for ongoing detection of harmful bacteria in its food supply, leading them to see the need for bioengineering inventions for rapid response bio-detection systems.

This activity focuses on getting students to think about bacteria, water quality and water treatment processes. Students develop and test their hypotheses about the "cleanliness" of three water samples prepared by the teacher. Then they grow bacteria in Petri dishes from the water samples. They learn how private septic systems and community sewage and wastewater treatment plants work, the consequences to the surrounding environment and wildlife from human wastewater, and what measurements of the released "clean" water are monitored to minimize harm to receiving rivers and lakes.

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:

"Age brings with it many chronic conditions related to tissue decline and inflammation. The functions of our intestinal barrier, brain, and eyes can all be affected by changes in our gut microbiota which occur with ageing. However, we don’t yet know if age-related changes to the microbiome cause any of the observed changes in other tissues. To close this gap, researchers used fecal microbiota transfer (FMT) between mice of different ages. They found that transfer of gut microbiota from aged donor mice to young mice induced inflammation in the gut, brain and retina. Intestinal permeability was increased, and the brain showed microglial activation in these aged-to-young FMT recipients. The retinas of recipients also showed altered cytokine signalling and loss of a key protein important for normal vision, thus identifying a role for gut microbiota in regulating eye health..."

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:

"Coral reefs are especially sensitive to environmental changes, which is evident from mass “bleaching” events, where corals expel the microalgae living in their cells. Reefs have suffered during both climate change and oil contamination, and chemical remediation efforts can harm corals further. A recent study sought to evaluate the impacts of oil contamination and find potential alternatives to chemical dispersants. Using a mesocosm experiment with the fire coral Millepora alcicornis, which is sensitive to environmental changes, researchers constructed a realistic oil-spill scenario and compared the effects of a chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, to those of bioremediators. They found that bioremediators – bacteria, filamentous fungi, and yeast – helped to mitigate the effects of the oil and maintain the integrity of the coral. In contrast, the chemical dispersant negatively affected host physiology and altered the coral-associated microbial community..."

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 microbiome plays a key role in our health and contains bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea. However, due to several factors, the bacterial residents get the most attention. Consequently, our understanding of fungi and their interactions with other microbiome residents remains limited. A recent study addressed this by collecting data on the nasal cavity and oropharynx microbiome of healthy newborn infants. The fungal and bacterial species composition was most strongly influenced by location in the airway. However, breastfeeding status also significantly shaped both the bacterial and fungal communities in the oropharynx. Multi-kingdom microbial networks inference analysis suggested potential interactions between the fungi and bacteria. To examine potential impacts on the infants, the gene expression in their nasal cavity was also evaluated..."

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:

"Termites are one of the few animal lineages able to digest the most abundant biomolecule on earth, lignocellulose. Of the nine families of termites, all but one of them eat wood, with the last feeding on soil. While termites produce enzymes that break down lignocellulose, their gut microbes are still a critical part of the digestion process. But most termite gut microbiome research to date is based on research from wood-feeding or pest species of termites. So, a recent study examined the prokaryotic gut microbes from a sample of termite species that better represent the diversity of termites. The gut microbes possessed a similar set of carbohydrate and nitrogen metabolism genes across the termite phylogenetic tree. The proportions of these genes varied with the hosts’ diet and position on the phylogenetic tree. Surprisingly, the soil-feeding termites didn't even have unique microbial metabolic genes or pathways compared to wood-feeding species..."

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:

"The gut microbiota is a diverse ecosystem. While bacteria are present in the greatest numbers, other microorganisms such as fungi and protists are also present, influencing many physiological functions. Analyses of the gut microbiome in livestock species have increased recently with improvements in technology and decreased cost. However, little is known about host genetic control over gut microbial communities. A recent study examined this relationship using healthy Duroc pigs. Using genome-wide association studies, researchers identified a gene regulatory network comprising 3,561 genes and 738,913 connections. Within this complex and polygenic network, five main regulators stood out. The proteins were associated with immune cell development, cell signaling in immune cells, and the vaccine response and a large number of predicted targets were genes associated with microbiota in pigs, mice, and humans. Host genetic variants associated with microbial functions were also identified..."

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:

"The rumen is the largest compartment of the ruminant forestomach and houses a complex microbiome. That microbiome greatly influences gut energy harvesting capacity. Improving our understanding of the mechanisms that influence energy harvesting capacity could be used to optimize ruminant feed efficiency and management. Thus, researchers recently examined temporal ecological interactions at the plant-biofilm interface by incubating fresh perennial ryegrass in cattle rumens and analyzing the bacterial diversity and gene expression at several time points. Network analysis identified two sub-microbiomes. They represented the primary (<4h) and secondary (>4h) colonization phases. Several of the most transcriptionally active microbial families didn't interact with either sub-microbiome, which suggests non-cooperative behavior. Conversely, the putative keystone families of each sub-microbiome had low transcriptional activity..."

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:

"Type 2 diabetes is a serious disease affecting the way the body converts food into energy, and an increasing number of people are diagnosed with the disorder each year. Those whose mothers had hyperglycaemia in pregnancy (HIP) are particularly at risk, and it is possible that the microbes living in the mother’s gut may be at least somewhat responsible. To find out more, researchers compared the metabolic characteristics and gut microbial communities of mice whose mothers had HIP. The mice were born either naturally or via cesarean section and were nursed by either their own mother or a foster mouse without HIP. Cesarean section birth and foster nursing prevented the transmission of gut microbes from biological mother to offspring. In fact, the gut microbial communities of fostered offspring were more closely related to those of their foster mothers than to those of their biological mothers, with increased relative abundances of Bifidobacterium species and short-chain fatty acid bacterial metabolites..."

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:

"Fresh water flows from rivers to estuaries and then to the sea, creating a salinity gradient as it meets the salt water of the ocean. While this salinity gradient is likely to have profound effects on the organisms that call these habitats home, its impact on microbial communities is far from clear. To fill this gap, researchers recently used genomic, transcriptomic, and geochemical data to examine microbial variation in both benthic and planktonic environments along a river-to-sea continuum. They observed a distinct increase in osmoregulation-related gene expression with increasing salinity and noted a prevalence of phosphate-acquisition activities among microorganisms inhabiting the freshwater zone, likely resulting from phosphate limitation, while carbon-, nitrogen-, and sulfur-cycling processes became dominant in brackish water, due to higher nutrient levels. In these brackish waters, photosynthesis was mainly conducted by cryptomonads in the water column and diatoms in the sediment..."

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:

"Soil not only provides the water and nutrients necessary for plant growth but also hosts a huge reservoir of microorganisms with important positive and negative effects on plant health. Scientists are now looking toward harnessing these soil microorganisms to design synthetic microbial communities that can help control plant disease. A team of researchers recently investigated the relationship between soil microorganisms and diseased plants of Astragalus mongholicus, a member of the pea family. They found that bacteria with particular growth-promoting or disease-inhibiting abilities colonized the roots of plants with fungal root-rot disease and the surrounding soil..."

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:

"Infectious disease is a major disruptor of the pork industry. It can reduce production rates, trigger trade restrictions, and lead to large-scale mortality of the pigs themselves. Despite these serious impacts, the common diagnostic tools don’t capture the full range of potential pathogens, and the high rate of multiple pathogen co-infection further complicates diagnosis. Despite this, few studies have systematically characterized pig pathogens. To close this gap, researchers sequenced the microbial gene expression from pig clinical samples. This allowed researchers to characterize the diversity, abundance, genomes, and epidemiological history of a range of potential pathogens. They identified 34 RNA virus species, 9 DNA virus species, 7 bacterial species, and 3 fungal species as potential pathogens. Most were known pig pathogens, except for two of the fungi, which were novel members of the genus Pneumocystis..."

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:

"Studying disease- and treatment-associated changes in bacterial abundance can clarify microbiome-related pathogenic and therapeutic mechanisms. However, the existing tests are not ideal for microbiome data, as they often have high positive rates or lack of power. Most of them also perform poorly when heterogeneous effects are present, and some are ill-suited for more than two groups or covariate adjustment. As an alternative, researchers recently developed a non-parametric zero-inflated quantile approach (ZINQ), which uses a two-part model. In part 1, logistic regression determines whether the variable of interest is associated with taxon presence/absence. In part 2, on selected quantile levels, quantile regression on the non-zero observations tests whether the variable is associated with altered taxon abundance. Finally, the marginal p-values are combined, with a significant aggregate p-value indicating differential abundance..."

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