Many species of bacteria produce small-molecule antibiotics that enter and kill a wide range of competitor microbes. However, diffusible antibacterial proteins that share this broad-spectrum activity ...

Join us at the Keystone Symposia on Human Microbiome: From Models and Mechanism to Medicine, January 2026, in Banff, with field leaders!

This first clinical study of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) addresses whether individuals share a core human microbiome. It involves broad determination of the microbiota found in five anatomical sites: the oral cavity, skin, nasal cavity, gastrointestinal tract and vagina. This study will enroll approximately 300 healthy male and female adults, 18-40 years old, from two geographic regions of the US: Houston, TX and St. Louis, MO. The participation of healthy individuals will create a baseline for discovery of the core microbiota typically found in various areas of the human body. The information from this initial study can then be used to help assess the changes in the complement of microbiota found on or within diseased individuals.

Brinkley et al. describe a general immune response strategy in Pseudomonas species, termed GUARD, that protects against both bacterial and viral threats. This program, controlled by the Gac/Rsm global...

Join us at the Keystone Symposia on Microbiome Metabolism and Metabolites: Discovery and Function in Health and Disease, January 2026, in Banff, with field leaders!

In this study, we asked whether normalization by host reads alone was sufficient to estimate absolute bacterial biomass directly from stool metagenomic data, without the need for synthetic spike-ins, ...