Holck Fitzsimmons (mealsweets12)

dicated that complete DEHP degradation in O2-limited estuarine sediments depends on synergistic microbial networks between diverse denitrifying proteobacteria and uncultured candidates. Our data also suggested that the side chain hydrolysis of DEHP, rather than o-phthalic acid activation, is the rate-limiting step in DEHP biodegradation within O2-limited estuarine sediments. Therefore, deciphering the bacterial ecophysiology and related biochemical mechanisms can help facilitate the practice of bioremediation in O2-limited environments. Furthermore, the DEHP hydrolase genes of active DEHP degraders can be used as molecular markers to monitor environmental DEHP degradation. Finally, future studies on the directed evolution of identified DEHP/mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP) hydrolase would bring a more catalytically efficient DEHP/MEHP hydrolase into practice.Soil-dwelling microorganisms associated with plant roots carry out essential processes that promote plant growth and productivity. In addition to these beneficial functions, the rhizosphere microbiome also serves as the first line of defense against many plant pathogens. While many rhizobacteria are capable of producing antifungal natural products, fungal pathogens, such as those belonging to the genus Fusarium, continue to be a major threat to agricultural crops worldwide. In this issue, Tracanna and coworkers (V. Tracanna, A. Ossowicki, M. L. C. Petrus, S. Overduin, et al., mSystems 6e01116-20, 2021, https//doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.01116-20) implement a targeted amplicon sequencing approach to identify conserved domains and specific metabolic pathways shared among soil samples with antagonistic activities against Fusarium culmorum. They also introduce dom2BGC, an open-source annotation platform that builds co-occurrence networks of natural product-associated domains across samples and aids in putative gene cluster reconstruction. When coupled with metagenomics, functional amplicon sequencing and the dom2BGC pipeline can aid in identifying mechanisms and potential metabolites associated with particular microbiome-associated phenotypes.Bariatric surgery is often the preferred method to resolve obesity and diabetes, with ∼800,000 cases worldwide yearly and high outcome variability. The ability to predict the long-term body mass index (BMI) change following surgery has important implications for individuals and the health care system in general. Given the tight connection between eating habits, sugar consumption, BMI, and the gut microbiome, we tested whether the microbiome before any treatment is associated with different treatment outcomes, as well as other intakes (high-density lipoproteins [HDL], triglycerides, etc.). A projection of the gut microbiome composition of obese (sampled before and after bariatric surgery) and lean patients into principal components was performed, and the relation between this projection and surgery outcome was studied. The projection revealed three different microbiome profiles belonging to lean, obese, and obese individuals who underwent bariatric surgery, with the postsurgery microbiome more different from tobiome than the microbiome of the presurgery obese patients. These results can lead to a microbiome-based presurgery decision whether to perform surgery.Disease-suppressive soils protect plants against soilborne fungal pathogens that would otherwise cause root infections. Soil suppressiveness is, in most cases, mediated by the antagonistic activity of the microbial community associated with the plant roots. Considering the enormous taxonomic and functional diversity of the root-associated microbiome, identification of the microbial genera and mechanisms underlying this phenotype is challenging. One approach to unravel the underlying mechanisms is to identify metabolic pathways enriched in the disease-suppressive microbial community, in particular, pathways that harbor natural prod