Mostly Microbes and Infection

The land, water and air around us are chock-full of DNA from fungi that scientists can’t identify.

Genetically speaking, we are more microbe than human and, whether on our skin or up our nose, they are essential to our health. Here are simple ways to keep yours thriving.

A growing body of research reveals the deaths and diseases linked to rising temperatures across the continent.  

Microbes constitute the most prevalent life form on Earth, yet their remarkable diversity remains mostly unrecognized. Microbial diversity in vertebrate models presents a significant challenge for investigating host–microbiome interactions. The model organism  Caenorhabditis elegans  has many advantages for delineating the effects of host genetics on microbial composition. In the wild, the  C. elegans  gut contains various microbial species, while in the laboratory it is usually a host for a single bacterial species. There is a potential host–microbe interaction between microbial metabolites, drugs, and  C. elegans  phenotypes. This mini-review aims to summarize the current understanding regarding the microbiome in  C. elegans . Examples using  C. elegans  to study host–microbe–metabolite interactions are discussed.

Currently approved vaccines have been successful in preventing the severity of COVID-19 and hospitalization. These vaccines primarily induce humoral immune responses; however, highly transmissible and mutated variants, such as the Omicron variant, weaken the neutralization potential of the vaccines, thus, raising serious concerns about their efficacy. Additionally, while neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) tend to wane more rapidly than cell-mediated immunity, long-lasting T cells typically prevent severe viral illness by directly killing infected cells or aiding other immune cells. Importantly, T cells are more cross-reactive than antibodies, thus, highly mutated variants are less likely to escape lasting broadly cross-reactive T cell immunity. Therefore, T cell antigen-based human coronavirus (HCoV) vaccines with the potential to serve as a supplementary weapon to combat emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants with resistance to nAbs are urgently needed. Alternatively, T cell antigens could also be ...

The microbiota and its effect on health has been extensively studied over the past decade. In many studies, the term microbiota has become synonymous with the bacterial component of the microbiota. Other microbes in the microbiota, such as viruses and fungi, have been neglected until recently. This special issue provides some background on the mycobiota and explores the role of gut fungi in human diseases such as cancer, metabolic diseases, and infection by  Clostridiodes difficile , and describes the incidence of fungal infections in transplant patients. The mycobiota, once overlooked, now garners increasing attention.

Dean Prof. Dr. Zahid Yousaf of the University of Gujrat (UOG) embarked on a significant visit to the University of the Pacific, California, US, from May 20 to May 25. This visit was planned on the special invitation of Dr Qingwen Dong, Director graduate program and a leading academic from the department of communication. This visit not only facilitated fruitful discussions among academics from both countries but also laid the groundwork for a series of innovative collaborations between the two esteemed institutions.