Fogarty
Emily C.
Fogarty
Emily C.
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ArticleThe diversity and functional capacity of microbes associated with coastal macrophytes(American Society for Microbiology, 2022-08-22) Miranda, Khashiff ; Weigel, Brooke L. ; Fogarty, Emily C. ; Veseli, Iva A. ; Giblin, Anne E. ; Eren, A. Murat ; Pfister, Catherine A.Coastal marine macrophytes exhibit some of the highest rates of primary productivity in the world. They have been found to host a diverse set of microbes, many of which may impact the biology of their hosts through metabolisms that are unique to microbial taxa. Here, we characterized the metabolic functions of macrophyte-associated microbial communities using metagenomes collected from 2 species of kelp (Laminaria setchellii and Nereocystis luetkeana) and 3 marine angiosperms (Phyllospadix scouleri, P. serrulatus, and Zostera marina), including the rhizomes of two surfgrass species (Phyllospadix spp.), the seagrass Zostera marina, and the sediments surrounding P. scouleri and Z. marina. Using metagenomic sequencing, we describe 63 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) that potentially benefit from being associated with macrophytes and may contribute to macrophyte fitness through their metabolic activity. Host-associated metagenomes contained genes for the use of dissolved organic matter from hosts and vitamin (B1, B2, B7, B12) biosynthesis in addition to a range of nitrogen and sulfur metabolisms that recycle dissolved inorganic nutrients into forms more available to the host. The rhizosphere of surfgrass and seagrass contained genes for anaerobic microbial metabolisms, including nifH genes associated with nitrogen fixation, despite residing in a well-mixed and oxygenated environment. The range of oxygen environments engineered by macrophytes likely explains the diversity of both oxidizing and reducing microbial metabolisms and contributes to the functional capabilities of microbes and their influences on carbon and nitrogen cycling in nearshore ecosystems.
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ArticleA comprehensive update to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv reference genome(Nature Research, 2022-11-18) Chitale, Poonam ; Lemenze, Alexander D. ; Fogarty, Emily C. ; Shah, Avi ; Grady, Courtney ; Odom-Mabey, Aubrey R. ; Johnson, W. Evan ; Yang, Jason H. ; Eren, A. Murat ; Brosch, Roland ; Kumar, Pradeep ; Alland, DavidH37Rv is the most widely used Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain, and its genome is globally used as the M. tuberculosis reference sequence. Here, we present Bact-Builder, a pipeline that uses consensus building to generate complete and accurate bacterial genome sequences and apply it to three independently cultured and sequenced H37Rv aliquots of a single laboratory stock. Two of the 4,417,942 base-pair long H37Rv assemblies are 100% identical, with the third differing by a single nucleotide. Compared to the existing H37Rv reference, the new sequence contains ~6.4 kb additional base pairs, encoding ten new regions that include insertions in PE/PPE genes and new paralogs of esxN and esxJ, which are differentially expressed compared to the reference genes. New sequencing and de novo assemblies with Bact-Builder confirm that all 10 regions, plus small additional polymorphisms, are also present in the commonly used H37Rv strains NR123, TMC102, and H37Rv1998. Thus, Bact-Builder shows promise as an improved method to perform accurate and reproducible de novo assemblies of bacterial genomes, and our work provides important updates to the primary M. tuberculosis reference genome.
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ArticleMetabolic independence drives gut microbial colonization and resilience in health and disease(BioMed Central, 2023-04-17) Watson, Andrea R. ; Füssel, Jessika ; Veseli, Iva ; DeLongchamp, Johanna Zaal ; Silva, Marisela ; Trigodet, Florian ; Lolans, Karen ; Shaiber, Alon ; Fogarty, Emily ; Runde, Joseph M. ; Quince, Christopher ; Yu, Michael K. ; Söylev, Arda ; Morrison, Hilary G. ; Lee, Sonny T. M. ; Kao, Dina ; Rubin, David T. ; Jabri, Bana ; Louie, Thomas ; Eren, A. MuratChanges in microbial community composition as a function of human health and disease states have sparked remarkable interest in the human gut microbiome. However, establishing reproducible insights into the determinants of microbial succession in disease has been a formidable challenge.Here we use fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) as an in natura experimental model to investigate the association between metabolic independence and resilience in stressed gut environments. Our genome-resolved metagenomics survey suggests that FMT serves as an environmental filter that favors populations with higher metabolic independence, the genomes of which encode complete metabolic modules to synthesize critical metabolites, including amino acids, nucleotides, and vitamins. Interestingly, we observe higher completion of the same biosynthetic pathways in microbes enriched in IBD patients.These observations suggest a general mechanism that underlies changes in diversity in perturbed gut environments and reveal taxon-independent markers of "dysbiosis" that may explain why widespread yet typically low-abundance members of healthy gut microbiomes can dominate under inflammatory conditions without any causal association with disease.
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ArticleDiverse plasmid systems and their ecology across human gut metagenomes revealed by PlasX and MobMess(Nature Research, 2024-03-04) Yu, Michael K. ; Fogarty, Emily C. ; Eren, A. MuratPlasmids alter microbial evolution and lifestyles by mobilizing genes that often confer fitness in changing environments across clades. Yet our ecological and evolutionary understanding of naturally occurring plasmids is far from complete. Here we developed a machine-learning model, PlasX, which identified 68,350 non-redundant plasmids across human gut metagenomes and organized them into 1,169 evolutionarily cohesive ‘plasmid systems’ using our sequence containment-aware network-partitioning algorithm, MobMess. Individual plasmids were often country specific, yet most plasmid systems spanned across geographically distinct human populations. Cargo genes in plasmid systems included well-known determinants of fitness, such as antibiotic resistance, but also many others including enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of essential nutrients and modification of transfer RNAs, revealing a wide repertoire of likely fitness determinants in complex environments. Our study introduces computational tools to recognize and organize plasmids, and uncovers the ecological and evolutionary patterns of diverse plasmids in naturally occurring habitats through plasmid systems.
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ArticleA cryptic plasmid is among the most numerous genetic elements in the human gut(Elsevier, 2024-02-29) Fogarty, Emily C. ; Schechter, Matthew S. ; Lolans, Karen ; Sheahan, Madeline L. ; Veseli, Iva A. ; Moore, Ryan M. ; Kiefl, Evan ; Moody, Thomas ; Rice, Phoebe A. ; Yu, Michael K. ; Mimee, Mark ; Chang, Eugene B. ; Ruscheweyh, Hans-Joachim ; Sunagawa, Shinichi ; McLellan, Sandra L. ; Willis, Amy D. ; Comstock, Laurie E. ; Eren, A. MuratPlasmids are extrachromosomal genetic elements that often encode fitness-enhancing features. However, many bacteria carry “cryptic” plasmids that do not confer clear beneficial functions. We identified one such cryptic plasmid, pBI143, which is ubiquitous across industrialized gut microbiomes and is 14 times as numerous as crAssphage, currently established as the most abundant extrachromosomal genetic element in the human gut. The majority of mutations in pBI143 accumulate in specific positions across thousands of metagenomes, indicating strong purifying selection. pBI143 is monoclonal in most individuals, likely due to the priority effect of the version first acquired, often from one’s mother. pBI143 can transfer between Bacteroidales, and although it does not appear to impact bacterial host fitness in vivo, it can transiently acquire additional genetic content. We identified important practical applications of pBI143, including its use in identifying human fecal contamination and its potential as an alternative approach to track human colonic inflammatory states.