View this in your browser.

IMPACTT Newsletter | March 2021
Dear Dr. reader,
In this newsletter, you will find some of our celebrations from the past month, as well as resources from the community of experts, such as reviews about our microbiome in health and diseases, new technics, upcoming webinars and events that offer the opportunity to engage with our network of experts.
Share your news and suggestions with us via email at [email protected] or tag us @IMPACTT_Canada. We will spread the news! We wish you all a happy reading!

NEWSROOM

CELEBRATIONS

Congratulations & Welcome to our 2021 mentee-mentor pairs.
Mentee-Mentor-pairs-2021-overview
The Canada Foundation for Innovation awarded $18.2 million to UCalgary-led research teams for investment in cutting-edge infrastructure
A "Wild Microbiome and Immunity Centre - Dr. Paul Kubes, Dr. Kathy McCoy and colleagues
A "Canadian Analytics Network for Outcome Prediction In Exposures (CANOPIE)" Dr. Ian Lewis and colleagues.
Full list of recipient across Canada

Dr. Markus Geuking celebrates his tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at the University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine, Alberta.

OPPORTUNITIES
A comprehensive list of grant and funding opportunities for researchers at all levels, from trainees such as PhD and postdoctoral fellow to investigators and physicians from around the globe created by the Members in Transition and Training leadership group from the Society for Leukocyte Biology.
2021 Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops - 12 workshops on topics ranging across microbiome analysis, machine learning, epigenetics, networks and pathways.

TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH
Hopper, a metabolomics-based platform for rapid infection diagnostics developed by Dr. Ian Lewis' lab, Hopper enables the identification & testing of antibiotic susceptibility of disease-causing microbes. Toward precision medicine.

ON THE RESEARCH SIDE

NEW TECHNICS
Estimating maximal microbial growth rates from cultures, metagenomes, and single cells via codon usage patterns. Weissman JL, Hou S, Fuhrman JA. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Mar 23.
Harnessing Colon Chip Technology to Identify Commensal Bacteria That Promote Host Tolerance to Infection. Gazzaniga FS, et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2021 Mar 12.
Primordial GATA6 macrophages function as extravascular platelets in sterile injury. Zindel J, et al. Science. 2021 Mar 5. Drs. Zindel and Kubes' team developed a new microscopy technique that allows looking into the peritoneal cavity, native habitat of macrophages and films them as they move around revealing that these bacteria-gobbling immune cells help the body heal but also cause surgical complications.

REVIEWS #microbiome #disease #models
Perspective: Nutritional Strategies Targeting the Gut Microbiome to Mitigate COVID-19 Outcomes. Daoust L, Pilon G, Marette A. Advances in Nutrition. 30 March 2021. "Explore potential nutritional strategies that implicate the use of polyphenols, probiotics, vitamin D, and ω-3 fatty acids with a focus on the gut microbiome and that could lead to concrete recommendations".
Cause or effect? The spatial organization of pathogens and the gut microbiota in disease. Nguyen J, Pepin D, Tropini C. Microbes Infect. 2021 Mar 25. Summarize how microbial organization differs between health and disease. The authors "describe how changes in spatial organization may induce alterations in gut homeostasis, concluding with a future outlook to reveal causality."
Defined gut microbial communities: promising tools to understand and combat disease. Bayer G, Ganobis CM, Allen-Vercoe E, Philpott DJ, et al. Microbes Infect. 2021 Mar 27. Summarize the strategies underlying the design of defined consortia and the efforts to introduce simplified communities into in vitro and in vivo models. Highlighting the potential of defined microbial ecosystems as effective modulation strategies for health benefits.
Recent advances in organoid development and applications in disease modeling. Rauth S, Karmakar S, Batra SK, Ponnusamy MP. Biochim Biophys Acta Rev Cancer. 2021 Feb 26. Discussed the recent applications, advantages, and limitations of organoids as in vitro models for studying metabolomics, drug development, infectious diseases, and the gut microbiome.

STUDIES #Microbiota #Health #CohortData

Ethnicity associations with food sensitization are mediated by gut microbiota development in the first year of life. Gastroenterology. Tun HM, et al. Gastroenterology. 2021 Mar 16.
Effectiveness of probiotic, prebiotic and synbiotic supplementation to improve perinatal mental health in mothers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Desa V, et al. Front. Psychiatry. 2021 March 22.
Azithromycin and the microbiota of cystic fibrosis sputum. Acosta N, et al. BMC Microbiology. 2021 March 30. Determine if the CF microbiome changed following azithromycin use and if clinical benefit observed during azithromycin use associated with baseline community structure.

FEEL THE HEAT
Bacterial cyclic diguanylate signaling networks sense temperature. Henrik Almblad, et al. Nat. Communication. 2021 March 31. Discovery of a new PAS-domain that enables the opportunistic pathogen P. aeruginosa to sense and respond to temperature modulating its life-style.
Dr. Joe Harrison Twitter thread.

SEX & GENDER CONSIDERATIONS
How biological sex of the host shapes its gut microbiota. Valeri F, Endres K. Front Neuroendocrinol. 2021 Mar 10.

UPCOMING EVENTS OF INTEREST

Webinars from our network of experts and more!
Engineering Organoids and Organs, a free express symposium from CellPress with the possibility to meet the experts | April 26, 2021, 10 AM – 3 PM MT.
Get insights into the multiple facets of human immunology and improve human immunology research with the Canadian Autoimmunity Standardization Core (CAN-ASC) webinar series.
Next one: Statistics at the bench: get the most out of your hard work by MSc and biostatistician Gabrielle Boucher | April 30, 2021, 10 AM MT | Register here.

Upcoming microbiome symposium
MICROBIOTA-GUT-BRAIN AXIS 3rd Ed. - May 2021
Canadian Society of Immunology CSI-SCI2021 - May, 2021.
IMPACTT eSymposium - Having IMPACTT: Advancing Microbiome Research - June 2021
Flyer-June14-16-2021
New Approaches and Concepts in Microbiology, EMBL event - July, 2021. Covers topics in microbiology, focussing on novel approaches and technologies
twitter 
Tag us @IMPACTT_Canada
We will spread the News!
IMPACTT_logo_round
CIHR_Leaf_portrait_logo-web copy
Newsletter - IMPACTT Microbiome Research Core
Unsubscribe | Manage subscription