Project description:Assessment of diet currently relies on self-reporting, such as food logs, 24 hour recalls and food frequency questionnaires. Self-reporting of diet is inaccurate due to memory lapses, lying and biased language. A molecular-based approach to assess diet would allow accurate reporting of diet for researchers, medical professionals and patients. We performed metaproteomic analysis of 22 human stool samples collected from four individuals enrolled at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center. Samples were collected between 01Aug19 and 22Nov19. All meals at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center were recorded such that the approximate quantities of each food item consumed are known.
Project description:Reprogramming in vivo using OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and MYC (OSKM) triggers cell dedifferentiation, which is considered of relevance for tissue repair and regeneration. However, little is known about the metabolic requirements of this process. We found that antibiotic depletion of the gut microbiota abolished in vivo reprogramming. Analysis of bacterial metagenomes from stool samples of wild type (WT) and OSKM mice treated with doxycycline led us to identify vitamin B12 as a key factor for in vivo reprogramming, which is partly supplied by the microbiome. We report that B12 demand increases during reprogramming due to enhanced expression of enzymes in the methionine cycle, and supplementing B12 levels both in vitro and in vivo enhances the efficiency of OSKM reprogramming.
Project description:Assessment of diet currently relies on self-reporting, such as food logs, 24 hour recalls and food frequency questionnaires. Self-reporting of diet is inaccurate due to memory lapses, lying and biased language. A molecular-based approach to assess diet would allow accurate reporting of diet for researchers, medical professionals and patients. We performed metaproteomic analysis of five human stool samples collected from a free-eating individual over five consecutive days (25Jun18-29Jun18). The free-eating individual maintained a food log during the sample collection period. We used these samples to develop a molecular-based approach for assessing diet.
Project description:46 human stool sample metagenomes as matched controls having no direct occupational links with farming of slaughter. Samples were derived from the LifeLines cohort from the Northern parts of the Netherlands. http:///www.lifelines.nl.
Project description:Combined community health programs aiming at health education, preventive antiparasitic chemotherapy, and vaccination of pigs have proven their potential to regionally reduce and even eliminate Taenia solium infections that are associated with a high risk of neurological disease through ingestion of T. solium eggs. Yet it remains challenging to target T. solium endemic regions precisely or to make exact diagnoses in individual patients. One major reason is that the widely available stool microscopy may identify Taenia ssp. eggs in stool samples as such, but fails to distinguish between invasive (T. solium) and less invasive Taenia (T. saginata, T. asiatica, and T. hydatigena) species. The identification of Taenia ssp. eggs in routine stool samples often prompts a time-consuming and frequently unsuccessful epidemiologic workup in remote villages far away from a diagnostic laboratory. Here we present “mail order” single egg RNA-sequencing, a new method allowing the identification of the exact Taenia ssp. based on a few eggs found in routine diagnostic stool samples. We provide first T. solium transcriptome data, which show extremely high mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) transcript counts that can be used for subspecies identification. “Mail order” RNA-sequencing can be administered by health personnel equipped with basic laboratory tools such as a microscope, a Bunsen burner, and access to an international post office for shipment of samples to a next generation sequencing facility. Our suggested workflow combines traditional stool microscopy, RNA-extraction from single Taenia eggs with mitochondrial RNA-sequencing, followed by bioinformatic processing with a basic laptop computer. The workflow could help to better target preventive healthcare measures and improve diagnostic specificity in individual patients based on incidental findings of Taenia ssp. eggs in diagnostic laboratories with limited resources.