All microbes, all the time. May the microbes be ever in your favor.
Author: Jonathan Eisen
I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis
Not sure what the basis for this is but when I start typing in a Web address in Safari on my laptop(s), the system attempts to autocomplete the address. Useful in many cases. A bit annoying in others. So I decided to see where autocomplete takes me for each letter of the alphabet. Not sure how often this changes or that the basis for it is …but it does say something about sites I visit often. A bit scary that so many of these are from goggle .. but they do run the world I suppose …
Last week I wrote about how the National Science Foundation was involved in a painful press release about microbial genomics and evolution: Ugg – story about gene transfer/evolution based on NSF press release has a NASA-esque smell. Today after getting some emails from people about this I decided to look to see if this was unusual or just what NSF press releases tend to look like.
I went to this site: News – US National Science Foundation (NSF) and decided to look at the links for stories I might know something about. Here are some of them – a mix of NSF Press Releases and Links to outside PRs.
Alas most of these have some issues – some more than others. Going through them one by one
Untangling Life’s Origins. Link to an outside PR about work supported by NSF. Not so bad – some painful stuff in the PR like the following:
“They are not the standard trees that people see in phylogenetic analysis,” he said. “In phylogenetic analysis, usually the tips of the trees, the leaves, are organisms or microbes. In these, they are entire biological systems.”
But overall reasonably tolerable compared to the others.
Home Toxic Home. Link to an outside PR. Filled with really painful stuff. Some examples
“Most organisms would die in the volcanic sulfur pools of Yellowstone and Mount Etna. Robust simple algae call it home, and their secrets to survival could advance human medicine and bioremediation. ” Everything could advance human medicine and just about any other topic if you stretch it. And it is a big stretch to find any connections here.
“Michael Garavito, Michigan State University professor of biochemistry and molecular biology was part of a research team that revealed how primitive red algae use horizontal gene transfer, in essence stealing useful genes from other organisms to evolve and thrive in harsh environments. ” Ahh. Back to the same general story that got me riled up to begin with. This also has the fun “primitive” reference for algae which are not in any obvious way primitive.
“The algae’s membrane proteins are biologically quite interesting because they’re receptors and transporters, the same classes of proteins that play key roles in energy metabolism and human immune response,” said Garavito. “This has applications in human medicine because virtually all of the important pathways that contribute to disease treatment involve membrane proteins.” So let me get this straight. The algae has membrane transporters and receptors. And therefore it is relevant to studies of human disease because many diseases are due to problems in transporters and receptors. So – what organism on the planet then would not be relevant? Uggh.
They then clarify “What makes the algae’s membrane proteins attractive as a model for humans is their robustness. Other traditional candidates, such as yeast, insect cell cultures and slime mold, are fragile. The algae give researchers extra time to manipulate and examine their membrane proteins.” Oh. I see. So nobody has ever thought of this before. No work has ever been done on organisms that are “robust” as a model system. Like – say – thermophiles? Wouldn’t that be cool (or hot) to work on.
A few days ago I posted about this to Facebook and to Twitter.
In idiotic evolution news: scientists “discover” reversible evolution (b/c we really all thought it was impossible) sciencerecorder.com/news/have-scie… — Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) March 10, 2013
And it still riles me up. Some lines to treasure:
In evolutionary biology, there is a deeply rooted supposition that you can’t go home again: Once an organism has evolved specialized traits, it can’t return to the lifestyle of its ancestors.
While most of what I looked at that seemed painful was from outside groups – I wonder whether NSF does any screening of outside press releases before posting them to their News site. Given how bad some of the NSFs press releases are I am not so sure how they deal with outside PR. But why aren’t they linking to actual news stories by real journalists? Instead they simply link to PRs from groups supported by NSF. Yuck.
No bias here – given that it is organized by Holly Bik in my lab and it is at UC Davis. The lineup of speakers is great and the topic is timely. So sign up …
Large scale phylogenomic analyses of Blastocystis subtype 1 reveals a major role for lateral gene transfer in adaptation to parasitism of the human gut
“These kinds of adaptations are likely to allow microorganisms like Halorubrum lacusprofundi to survive not only in Antarctica, but elsewhere in the universe,” says Dr. DasSarma.
What? Does he really think there will be microorganisms like this elsewhere in the universe? If there is life elsewhere in the universe is it really going to be like this at all?
And then in a shameless attempt to connect to the work being done on Mars:
“For example, there have been recent reports of seasonal flows down the steep sides of craters on Mars suggesting the presence of underground brine pools. Whether microorganisms actually exist in such environments is not yet known, but expeditions like NASA’s Curiosity rover are currently looking for signs of life on Mars.”
Does this mean in my next PR I should mention Curiosity too?
Actually the most painful part of me is the next paragraph
“Dr. DasSarma and his colleagues are unraveling the basic building blocks of life,” says E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland and John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Their research into the fundamentals of microbiology are enhancing our understanding of life throughout the universe, and I look forward to seeing further groundbreaking discoveries from their laboratory.”
First – do they really need to list that Reece is MD, PHD, MBA, VP, Dean and Distinguished Prof? Seriously? Uggh. And then the quotes attributed to said person are not impressive. The basic building blocks of life? Dassarma is not really looking at that. And “life throughout the universe”? Really? What life exactly is that? And finally, “further groundbreaking discoveries.” Just what exactly makes this groundbreaking?
Uggh. Can someone just make this PR crap stop? Please?
Roller derby players share their skin microbes during play
Single-celled organisms are intimately associated with multicellular organisms across the tree of life, and human beings are no exception. Making up 90% of our cellular composition, these invisible passengers (our microbiome) contribute to our health and well-being in crucial ways, including aiding our digestion, the education of our immune system, and resistance to pathogens. Despite this importance, we still lack a fundamental understanding of where our host-associated microbes actually come from. We know that infants are born practically sterile; early-life events such as birth mode can contribute to the types of microbial species found on an individual, but these events cannot adequately explain the majority of spatiotemporal variation observed over a host’s lifetime. To be able to accurately describe the processes that drive host-associated microbial community dynamics, we must have an informed understanding of the role of dispersal in structuring host-associated microbial communities.
Where do they come from? How do they get there? Do these changes (if any) last?
The Green Lab at the University of Oregon-Eugene attempted to answer some of these questions in our latest publication “Significant changes in the skin microbiome mediated by the sport of Roller Derby”, released today by PeerJ. We decided to use Roller Derby as a model system to investigate the role of contact in dispersing skin microbial communities between hosts. We have known for a long time that pathogens can be transmitted via direct contact; could not our commensal microbial communities be shared in this way?
We swabbed the upper arms (a frequent contact point between players during a bout) of players belonging to 3 geographically distinct derby teams and characterized the skin microbiome of each player using 16s rRNA gene Illumina sequencing. We found that each team’s upper arm microbiome was significantly different from one another before play, and that this difference decreased after bouts were played. Not only did teams’ skin microbiomes become less different from one another after play, but the differences were driven in part “by the presence of unique indicator taxa that are commonly associated with human skin, gut, mouth, and respiratory tract.” There were also environmental bacteria associated with soil and plants found in the skin samples.
Although we weren’t able to show a direct link between contact and transfer of specific microbial taxa, the best explanation of the data seems to be that contact between these players during a one-hour bout effectively resulted in homogenization of their upper arm skin microbiomes.
So much yet to explore! As a 2nd year graduate student in the Green Lab I hope to address some of the questions that the Roller Derby paper has brought to our attention. My dissertation research is gearing up to understand the role of dispersal on our skin microbiome. Are some skin sites more amenable to changes than others? Can we pick up host-associated microbes not just from other individuals, but from objects that other individuals have touched? Can we pick up non-host-associated microbes? If we can pick them up, how long do they stick around? How do they participate in the functions attributed to the skin microbiome?
Hope to keep up the fantastic momentum that has been launched by this latest publication – if you have any thoughts or comments, feel free to contact me at abateman@uoregon.edu, or via Twitter: @microbesrock
And you can check out a stop-motion video I made on the skin microbiome here:
Definitely worth a look at this special in Nature on Women in Science: Special: Women in Science. Articles seem to be freely available – at least for now (they were not initially).
The article discusses a new paper which itself sounds potentially interesting. The paper itself sounds somewhat interesting. But that is besides the point. The parts that made me cringe are the inaccurate or overhyped statements about the novelty of this work. Here are some of the statements I find troubling
“While the ability to pilfer genes from another microorganism has been seen before, scientists have never observed this ability in a eukaryote – an organism with a nucleus.”
Wow. Completely ludicrous. There are hundreds if not thousands of papers on lateral gene transfer to organisms with nuclei.
“The results give us new insights into evolution,” said co-author Gerald Schoenknecht of Oklahoma State University’s Department of Botany. “Before this, there was not much indication that eukaryotes acquire genes from bacteria.”
Same complaint as above.
“The age of comparative genome sequencing began only slightly more than a decade ago, and revealed a new mechanism of evolution – horizontal gene transfer – that would not have been discovered any other way,” said co-author Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology. “This finding extends our understanding of the role that this mechanism plays in evolution to eukaryotic microorganisms.”
This quote is deeply troubling. Genome sequencing did not reveal a new mechanism of evolution. And it is thus also inaccurate to say ‘it would not have been discovered any other way“. Lateral gene transfer was studies for many many many years before the first genome sequence was determined. Certainly, comparative genome analysis helped reveal the extent of gene transfer but it is seriously inaccurate to say it “revealed a new mechanism of evolution“. Here for example is a link to a google search for the specific phrase “lateral gene transfer” in papers published prior to 1995. And here is one for the phrase “horizontal gene transfer“.
I hoped that this was a misquote because the person quoted is Matt Kane – an NSF program officer responsible for many areas related to microbial studies. But alas I found the press release from NSF with the same quote. Perhaps NSF PR people misquoted Matt. I hope they misquoted Matt. Because if not – the quote grossly oversells genome sequencing and what has been learned from it and rather than standing on the shoulders of giants it makes the giants of the past seem like ants.
“It’s usually assumed that organisms with a nucleus cannot copy genes from different species–that’s why eukaryotes depend on sex to recombine their genomes. “How has Galdieria managed to overcome this limitation? It’s an exciting question. What Galdieria did is “a dream come true for biotechnology,” says Weber.”
This is wrong in so so many ways. Again, as discussed above, eukaryotes have been known to undergo gene transfer for many years.
And to say that the inability to acquire genes by LGT is why eukaryotes depend on sex to recombine their genes? Really? Uggh. As far as I know there are no major theories out there that suggest sex is there because eukaryotes cannot undergo lateral transfer (although certainly some theories on the origin and maintenance of sex do indeed relate to increasing diversity by recombination).
And what makes this a dream come true for Biotech exactly?
I note – this too was in the NSF press release. Has NSF suddenly decided to become like NASA in terms of ludicrous PRs?
I note – I do worry about the effect of calling out NSF on this in terms of my ability to get grants from them. But this is just terrible stuff in this PR and story and it needs to be stopped. I note further that I consider Matt Kane a friend and I hope that he clarifies his quote here and also manages to get NSF to be more rigorous in their PRs.
Jonathan Eisen's Lab 