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UnlabelledHuman papillomavirus (HPV) causes a number of neoplastic diseases in humans. Here, we show a complex normal HPV community in a cohort of 103 healthy human subjects, by metagenomics analysis of the shotgun sequencing data generated from the NIH Human Microbiome Project. The overall HPV prevalence was 68.9% and was highest in the skin (61.3%), followed by the vagina (41.5%), mouth (30%), and gut (17.3%). Of the 109 HPV types as well as additional unclassified types detected, most were undetectable by the widely used commercial kits targeting the vaginal/cervical HPV types. These HPVs likely represent true HPV infections rather than transitory exposure because of strong organ tropism and persistence of the same HPV types in repeat samples. Coexistence of multiple HPV types was found in 48.1% of the HPV-positive samples. Networking between HPV types, cooccurrence or exclusion, was detected in vaginal and skin samples. Large contigs assembled from short HPV reads were obtained from several samples, confirming their genuine HPV origin. This first large-scale survey of HPV using a shotgun sequencing approach yielded a comprehensive map of HPV infections among different body sites of healthy human subjects.ImportanceThis nonbiased survey indicates that the HPV community in healthy humans is much more complex than previously defined by widely used kits that are target selective for only a few high- and low-risk HPV types for cervical cancer. The importance of nononcogenic viruses in a mixed HPV infection could be for stimulating or inhibiting a coexisting oncogenic virus via viral interference or immune cross-reaction. Knowledge gained from this study will be helpful to guide the designing of epidemiological and clinical studies in the future to determine the impact of nononcogenic HPV types on the outcome of HPV infections.

Emerging evidence suggests that the gut microbiome actively regulates cognitive functions and that gut microbiome imbalance is associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder. However, the changes in gut microbiome composition in AD and their association with disease pathology, especially in the early stages, are unclear. Here, we compared the profiles of gut microbiota between APP/PS1 transgenic mice (an AD mouse model) and their wild-type littermates at different ages by amplicon-based sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA genes. Microbiota composition started diverging between the APP/PS1 and wild-type mice at young ages (i.e., 1–3 months), before obvious amyloid deposition and plaque-localized microglial activation in the cerebral cortex in APP/PS1 mice. At later ages (i.e., 6 and 9 months), there were distinct changes in the abundance of inflammation-related bacterial taxa including Escherichia-Shigella, Desulfovibrio, Akkermansia, and Blautia in APP/PS1 mice. These findings suggest that gut microbiota alterations precede the development of key pathological features of AD, including amyloidosis and plaque-localized neuroinflammation. Thus, the investigation of gut microbiota might provide new avenues for developing diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have shown that microorganisms may be associated with the onset and development of bladder cancer. The purpose of this study is to identify the common core bacteria associated with bladder cancer. We characterized the urinary microbial profile of the individuals with bladder cancer by 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and the results of 24 bladder cancer samples collected in our laboratory reveal 31 common core bacteria at genera level. In addition, the abundance of four common core bacteria is significantly higher in bladder cancer samples than in samples from nondiseased people analyzed by LEfSe, based on two previous datasets. In particular, the abundance of Acinetobacter is much higher in bladder cancer samples. It has been reported that Acinetobacter is involved not only in biofilm formation but also in the adhesion and invasion of epithelial cells, the spread of bacteria caused by the degradation of phospholipids in the mucosal barrier, and the escape of the host immune response. Thus, Acinetobacter may be related to bladder cancer and is a potential microbial marker of bladder cancer. However, due to the limited number of participants, further studies are needed to better understand the role of microorganisms in bladder cancer to provide novel biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]