Abstract deadline for ICOPA2022 - ICOPAnhagen!

 Hola everyone!

Did you upload your suggestion(s) for ICOPA2022 symposia? If yes - good! If not - don't worry; you still have lots of opportunity to share your parasitology research.

Deadline for regular abstract submission is 8 March, 2022. 

Go here to submit.

For more information on ICOPA2022 - go here. 

Cheers!

ICOPA2022 Deadline approaching: You've got one more week to submit your Symposium Proposals!

Hello everyone,

In the LOC and SC we are working hard to develop the ICOPA2022 conference YOU would like to attend.

But we need input from you as well! Please note that the deadline for submission of Symposium proposals is 31 January, 2022. 

Deadline for abstracts is 8 March, 2022. You can browse the list of Abstract topics here.

So, please go ahead an submit!

It is teamwork! 💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡 Yellow t-shirts look busy preparing symposia proposals to #ICOPAnhagen - deadline is 31 January! Did you submit yours already? #ICOPA2022 @_SBSP_ @DParasitology @WorldFedPara pic.twitter.com/op5dP5wwRa

— International Congress of Parasitology - ICOPA (@ICOPAnhagen) January 20, 2022

ICOPA2022: Abstract submission is open!

Hello everyone!

In case you didn't see this already, abstracts and proposals for symposia can now be submitted to the ICOPA2022 website!

Deadline for abstracts: 8 March.

Deadline for symposia: 31 January.

Please also make sure to get more updates on social media - we're on FB, Twitter, and IG.

Search terms: #ICOPA2022 and #icopanhagen

 

It's time! 💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛 https://t.co/qGpJuIp6gZ

— Chr. Rune Stensvold (@Eukaryotes) December 7, 2021

Wrap-up of 3rd International Blastocystis Conference

The 3rd International Blastocystis Conference took place Wednesday-Friday last week.

Organising committee:

• Anastasios (Tasos) Tsaousis 
• Eleni Gentekaki
• Chr. Rune Stensvold
• Funda Dogruman-Al

 Scientific committee:

• Kevin S W Tan
• Özgür Kurt
• Eleni Gentekaki 
• Chr. Rune Stensvold
• Funda Dogruman-Al
• Anastasios (Tasos) Tsaousis
  

 Sponsors included 

• Microbiology Society
• Biology - MDPI
• PCR Biosystems
  

The conference was facilitated by Top Kinisis

The conference in numbers:

•  3-day conference
• 73 attendees
• 29 countries represented
• 66 abstracts
• 38 oral presentations
• 28 poster presentations
• 265 tweets using #Blastocystis21 as hashtag
• 3 awards
  

Awards:

Blastocystis Quiz Award: Mark van der Giezen (@MitoRem)

Poster Award: Adriana Marcela Higuera Gelvez (Draft genomes of Blastocystis isolates from human samples in Bogotá, Colombia)

Oral Presentation:

• Winner: Jamie Newton (Investigating the metabolic fluctuations of the human gut during Blastocystis infection)
  
• 1st runner-up: Lei Deng (Experimental colonization with Blastocystis ST4 is associated with protective immune response and modulation of gut microbiome in a DSS-induced colitis mouse model)
  
• 2nd runner-up: Zuzana Lhotska and Vincent Billy (back-to-back presentations: Blastocystis colonization alters host immune response and gut microbiome, part a and b, respectively)
  

A special issue 'Putting Blastocystis on the Spot: Examining the Biology, Ecology and Epidemiology of a controversial gut microbe' has been launched in Frontiers. This Research Topic is linked to the conference. You can go here for more information.

The 4th International Blastocystis Conference is planned to take place in Chania, Crete, Greece in 2024.

Last, but not least a couple of screen capture impressions from the conference:

I will be back shortly with more updates from the conference.

R

3rd International Blastocystis Conference - abstract submission open!

Hi Everyone, and a very Happy New Year!

Please note that abstract submission and registration for the 3rd International Blastocystis Conference (virtual, 2nd to 4th of June) is now OPEN! Click here to register and share your Blastocystis research!

We have registration fees as low as € 15 for early birds!

For Twitter users, please also follow @Blastocystis21 for updates.

Our website is now live along with the abstract submission for the next #Blastocystis Conference! Spread the word! 145 days to go ...
@Blastocystis #protists #abstractsubmission #Blastocystis21 https://t.co/T3mX9bv4Jf

— Blastocystis 2021 (@Blastocystis21) January 7, 2021

2nd International Blastocystis Conference Wrap-Up - Part II

So, a lot of people would like to know about the take-home messages from the recent 2nd International Blastocystis Conference in Bogotá. There were many, and I might develop one more post to make room for more.

The first - and most important - thing I'd like to emphasise is that the community interested in Blastocystis is growing. And we're seeing a clearly multidisciplinary approach to studying the parasite. I think that this is what we need. The initial ideas about having Blastocystis-specific conference were developed by Funda Dogruman-Al and myself, and we both have a background in clinical microbiology. We have realised that in order to make sense of Blastocystis in a clinical microbiology (and infectious disease) context, we need research input from bordering fields, such as biology (genomics, cell biology, etc.), veterinary medicine (host specificity and impact of Blastocystis on animal health), gastroenterology (connection to microbiota and the extent of Blastocystis being involved in functional and inflammatory bowel diseases), bioinformatics (processing NGS data such as those pertaining to the profiling of gut microbiota communities), and ecology (people who are used to study interactions between organisms). At the conference, I believe that all (or at least most) of these fields were represented.

I was also thrilled to realise that many researchers have now adapted to the subtype terminology, - and even the allele terminology appears to be useful and pragmatic.

Status on the Blastocystis genome project. Slide by Andrew Roger.

Andrew Roger highlighted that the genomes of Blastocystis are more different than the genomes of human and mouse! Well-annotated genomes are available for ST1, ST4, and ST7, while draft genomes are available for subtypes 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9. 

 

What use are genomes? Summary provided by Andrew Roger.

Animal experimental modelling is possible. We know that rats can be colonised/infected by Blastocystis ST1 strain from a human and shed cysts in stool for more than one year.

Blastocystis is one of the few parasites that are really easy to culture and easy to get by. If we can learn to induce cysts in culture, these can be separated by sucrose gradient centrifugation or other methods and used for inoculation into volunteers, pigs, or rats, for instance. This can be used to study the impact of Blastocystis on the host, including immune system and gut microbiota. Baseline microbiota profiling is necessary prior to inoculation to know about the background variation in study individuals.

In terms of Blastocystis and gut microbiota: Since we published our conspicuous observations in 2015, many researchers have now corroborated our findings: Blastocystis is typically linked to increased microbiota richness and diversity; - something, which is generally considered a benefit and which is linked not only to gut health, but also to leanness. Especially the negative association between Blastocystis and Bacteroides has been highlighted by many now. It will be very interesting to learn why this is so. It also seems that Blastocystis are more common in individuals with a gut microbiota dominated by strictly anaerobes rather than facultative aerobes.

Faecal microbiota transplantaion (FMT): The recommendation of excluding FMT donors based on the finding of Blastocystis came up many times and was discussed in the context of the microbiota studies. It appear relevant to investigate further whether FMT donors should really be dismissed if they are Blastocystis-positive.

Some of the take home messages from Raul Tito Tadeo's talk.

In many animal groups, Blastocystis is a very common finding. These include mostly omnivores or herbivores. On the contrary, Blastocystis is very rare in strict carnivores, with no consistency in subtype distribution, indicating that these animals are not natural hosts of Blastocystis.The Blastocystis incidentially found in these hosts might stem from the prey that they have eaten.

Finally, I wish to highlight that there are excellent resources available from the pre-conference workshop, including an R script for microbiota analysis, and some tools for Blastocystis genome annotation. Please visit my previous blog post for links to these.

We cannot totally dismiss pathogenicity of Blastocystis; if existing, it may involve both strain- and host-specific factors.

And.... it's out: The time and venue for the 3rd International Blastocystis Conference will be Crete in 2021 (possibly June), with Eleni Gentekaki and Anastasios Tsaousis being involved in both the scientific and local organising committees... ! Please mark you calendars!

Andrew Roger, Raul Tito Tadeo, Kevin Tan and myself (taking the picture) enjoying some Club Colombia.

2nd International Blastocystis Conference Wrap-Up - Part I

The 2nd International Blastocystis Conference has been completed with great success. It was a very worthy sequel to the first conference in Ankara back in 2015, attracting about 100 delegates.

The Scientific Committee (image above) consisted of Prof Funda Dogruman-Al (main organiser of the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium), Senior Scientist Rune Stensvold, and Associate Prof Juan-David Ramírez González, who also headed the local organising committee (LOC; image below).

We are all very thankful to Juan-David and his colleagues, the entire LOC, the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá and La Fontana Hotel, which provided an excellent framework with premium facilities.


The Faculty can be seen on the image below. From left to right, it's Rodolfo Casero, [Magdalena Maria Martinez Agüero, Director of Investigation and Innovation, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales Y Matemáticas, Universidad del Rosario], Andrew Roger, Rune Stensvold, Hisao Yoshikawa, Raul Tito Tadeo, Monica Santin-Duran, Funda Dogruman-Al, Kevin Tan, and Juan David Ramirez Gonzalez. Workshop sessions and keynote lectures were developed and given by members of the Faculty.

The workshop took place on 9–10 October and covered sessions on diagnosis (microscopy, culture, PCR, etc.), in vivo and in vitro experimental models, subtype calling from DNA sequence data, gut microbiota analysis (NGS data processing in R), genomics and evolution (introduction to Blastocystis genomics and resources available), and theoretical topics linked to epidemiology, clinical microbiology and infectious disease issues.

Some of the workshop participants and Faculty members

The conference took place on 11–12 October and consisted of nine keynote lectures delivered by the Faculty members, 12 oral presentations and 22 poster presentations.

The award for the best oral presentation was given to Justinn Hamilton who is an ecologist now based at University of Copenhagen for his talk 'Exploring interactions between Blastocystis sp., other intestinal parasites and the gut microbiomes of wild Chimpanzees (Senegal): Not-so-friendly old-friends-hypothesis'.

The award for the best poster presentation went to David Carmena's group for the impressive study 'Molecular epidemiology of Blastocystis sp. in asymptomatic school children from Madrid, Spain'.

The workshop programme can be viewed/downloaded here, and the conference programme is available here. The poster programme is available here.
Please go here to browse conference proceedings, and here for workshop guidelines.
Stay tuned for Wrap Up Part II and III, which will include more photos and some of the take-home messages from the conference.

Please also follow @Blastocystis on Twitter and and the International Blastocystis Network Facebook page for updates/pictures from the conference.

Updates on 2nd International Blastocystis Conference in Bogotá!

Hi everyone,

There's only little more than three months before the kick-off of our 2nd International Blastocystis Conference! And as in the case of our 1st conference in Ankara in 2015, participants are in for a real treat! I simply don't know where to begin... !

Well, for starters, here's the hotel in which the conference will take place (11–12 October). It's the Hotel Estelar La Fonata in Bogotá! I think it looks amazing!

Prior to the very conference (9–10 October), there will be a two-day workshop at Universidad del Rosario - Quinta De Mutis.

Please go to the conference website and find more information: http://www.urosario.edu.co/Blastocystis/en/home/

The line-up of faculty members is impressive; again, please visit website to update yourself with workshop leaders and keynote speakers.

We will be dealing with anything from diagnostics to genomics, from epidemiology to cell biology, from experimental models to phylogenetics!

There will be plenty of Colombian coffee to sample and you might also with to sign up for the gala dinner!

So, don't miss out on the opportunity to put yourself into the very epicentre of Blastocystis research and experience the dynamic city of Bogotá!

Importantly, the deadline for abstract submission is 1st of July, so please everyone: Get your act together - submit your abstract today and support us with your presence and your enthusiasm with regard to the most common parasite in the human gut: Blastocystis!

SEE YOU THERE!!!

Website for 2nd International Blastocystis Conference is now live!

I'm happy to be able to point your attention towards the website for the 2nd International Blastocystis Conference in Bogotá in October 2018. You can access the website here.

On this site, you'll find information about the venue, the preliminary programme, speakers, registration, and sponsors. You will also find some information about Bogotá.

Please visit the website on a regular basis for potential updates/changes.

See you there!

Abstract Book from 1st International Blastocystis Symposium

Here is a link to the abstract book from the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium last week in Ankara.

This Month in Blastocystis Research (MAY 2015)

Words cannot describe my gratitude for being part of the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium, which was seen through to marvelous success by Dr Funda Dogruman-Al, her colleagues and students, her professional arrangement committee and the scientific committee, made up by Dr Graham Clark, Dr Kevin Tan, Dr Hisao Yoshikawa, Professor Ibrahim Dogan, Funda Dogruman-Al, and myself.

Funda Dogruman-Al in the middle flanked by some of the delegates outside Gazi Hastanesi.

A total of 70 delegates had registered, comprising 37 national and 33 international attendees. Countries represented included Australia, Japan, Russia, China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Spain, France, Denmark, UK, USA, and Mexico.

Some of the delegates gathering before the gala dinner.

A presymposium workshop taking place the day before the launching of the actual symposium focussed on methods for diagnosis and molecular epidemiological studies of Blastocystis.

The two-day symposium included 13 half-hour lectures, 10 shorter oral presentations, and 27 posters.

Lectures were given by Dr Graham Clark (one of his three talks was on behalf on Prof Andrew Roger and post doc Laura Eme), Dr Kevin Tan, Dr Hisao Yoshikawa, Dr Philippe Poirier, Dr Özgür Kurt, Dr Javed Jakoob, Dr Funda Dogruman-Al, and myself, and covered updates on genomics, cell biology, host-parasite interactions, genetic diversity, epidemiology, clinical significance, treatment, and methods used for detection and molecular characterisation.

We were spoilt with lots of 'Turkish Delight': Here are some of the dancers performing at the gala dinner.

There were six prizes in total; three for the best oral presentations and three for the best posters. Prize money was donated by Elsevier.

The prize winners were as follows: 

Oral presentations:
1st Prize: Erdogan Malatyali, Adnan Menderes University, Aydin, Turkey
2nd Prize: Sitara SR Ajjampur, National University of Singapore, Singapore
3rd Prize: Unaiza Parkar, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia

Poster presentations:
1st Prize:  John Anthony Yason, National University of Singapore, Singapore
2nd Prize: Joel Martinez-Ocana, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, Mexico
3rd Prize: Chen-Chieh Liao, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Over the next few months, original manuscripts – seminal papers and reviews – will be developed for a special issue on Blastocystis in of Parasitology International to mark the event.

An important landmark in Blastocystis history has been made, and we are already looking into our chances of developing the 2nd International Blastocystis Symposium, which may be in 2017.

A huge THANK YOU to Funda for all her efforts, and KUDOS to all contributors for making this such a fantastic event!

Updated programme for the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium + Pre-Symposium Course programme

There has been changes to the programme for the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium (May 28-29), please go here to see the updated programme.

Also, the Pre-Symposium Course programme (May 27) can be viewed here.

We will be absolutely spoilt with speakers!

Please do not forget to visit the official website for updates on the social programme plus abstract/registration deadlines.

Blastocystis Conference Website Launched!

I have the pleasure of introducing the official website for the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium scheduled for the 28-29 May, 2015, in Ankara, Turkey.

Please go to www.blastomeeting.com to visit and bookmark the page and to subscribe to updates via email or rss.

We'll be back shortly on the site with updates on the scientific committee, the venue, and how to submit abstracts (including deadline).

Please share. Thanks.

Blastocystis Parasite Blog - 2 Years Anniversary!

Today marks the 2 Years Anniversary of the Blastocytis Parasite Blog! And tomorrow my daughter will be turning three, so there is plenty of reason to celebrate!

My 'Birthday Special' is a collection of links to blog posts that are among the most popular or most unusual ones; a couple of them have been slightly edited (typos and updates).

But before that just a couple of announcements:
A colleague of mine will be at the Digestive Diasese Week in Chicago from 3-6 May 2014 presenting an abstract with the title: 'Dientamoeba fragilis and Blastocytis - two parasites associated with gastrointestinal health'. The title may have a harsh connotation to some, but soon I will be posting the abstract here on the blog, and you will understand why we chose this title.

Next, I'd like to encourage colleagues to come up with suggestions for topics and guest bloggers.

Soon, I'll be doing a separate post on tools available for students/researchers to detect and characterise Blastocystis in samples from humans and animals.

That's it for now; here are the links!

1. The Circular Problem of Blastocystis
2. Amelioration of Colitis by Parasites - or "An Elliot & Weinstock Special"
3. Do IBS Patients Lack Blastocystis and Dientamoeba??
4. Micro-Eukaryotic Diversity in The Human Instestine
5. Blastocystis aux Enfers

'Save the Date's + Resources

Some 'Save the Date's:

1. ASM Meeting, Boston, MAY 2014:
Speaker: Christen Rune Stensvold 
Session Title: Passion for Parasites! Current Topics in Medical Parasitology 
Session Date/Time:  5/18/2014 8:00:00 AM 
Presentation Title: Blastocystis Clinical Relevance: More Common and Important than You Think


2. ICOPA, Mexico City, AUGUST 2014:

UNU-BIOLAC has accepted to fund the MOLECULAR PARASITOLOGY WORKSHOP-ICOPA 2014 to be held in Mexico city August 7-10! pic.twitter.com/YbTjUI0MFt
— Chr. Rune Stensvold (@Eukaryotes) February 22, 2014

 
3. 1st International Blastocystis Symposium, Ankara, 28-29 MAY 2015:

Please go here for more information.



Just found out that out of 1065 Blastocystis papers in PubMed, 269 are can be downloaded for free! If you enter 'Blastocystis' in the search box, you'll see the 1065 or so hits, but if you go to the right side bar, you have the option of having the Free Full Text (269) display.

I have disabled Google+ comments for now due to repetitive abuse. However, it is still possible to comment on blog posts, only now comments will be reviewed and potentially moderated by me prior to publishing.

In case there should be readers who think that I'm trying to propagate the view that Blastocystis is pathogenic, I hope that after going through my blog posts they will realise that I'm not; in fact, I'm much more trying to be the devil's advocate: Blastocystis is 'innocent' unless proven otherwise. In my opinion we have very little clinical evidence of pathogenicity. And at our lab, we generally do not recommend treating patients with Blastocystis. In fact, we really don't know HOW to treat Blastocystis, - and maybe that's one of the most fundamental issues in Blastocystis research. I know that many treatment regimens are currently in use for Blastocystis despite the absence of clinical guidelines, and some of them are used systematically at various clinics it seems, but off the top of my head I cannot think of one single randomised controlled treatment study that have explored the microbiological and clinical effect of treatment. Such studies are critical to our understanding of  the role of the parasite in health and disease, although even this type of studies have limitations such as non-specific drug actions that will blur our ability to point out Blastocystis as the culprit, and also some drugs may have adverse effects that mimic symptoms potentially caused by Blastocystis, including symptoms related to intestinal dysbiosis. I hope that those who have extensive experience with Blastocystis treatment will soon take to sharing their knowledge.

But I guess that what we are currently trying in various fields is to get a differentiated view of Blastocystis - for instance: can colonisation turn into infection, and is there any such thing as a Blastocystis infection at all? Can, and if so, when does Blastocystis carriage lead to pathology/disease? Which are the interactions between Blastocystis and the remaining microbiota? What host factors may be responsible for potential differences in Blastocystis-mediated disease susceptibility?

Don't miss the February issue of 'This Month In Blastocystis Research' which will be available in a week or so.

Blastocystis Highlights 2013

For decades man has striven to improve sanitation and protect production animals and crops from infectious agents to prevent diseases in humans, animals and plants. We tend to eat highly processed foods and many children grow up in almost sterile surroundings, for instance without contact to animals. Consequently, in developed parts of the world we are much less exposed to microorganisms and helminths than previously, and the extensive use of antibiotics for prevention, treatment and control of microorganisms is well-known.

As we are now starting to get a much deeper understanding of the role of the human microbiome (whatever that is) in health and disease, we become aware that microbes are to a large extent beneficial to us; for instance we are currently realising that human health is more or less proportional to intestinal biodiversity, including colonisation by parasites. I have previously mentioned the intentional use of eggs of the parasite Trichuris suis to alleviate symptoms and maybe even reduce disease processes in inflammatory bowel disease, a disorder seemingly stemming from immunological processes out of balance. Also in the food sector, steps may now be taken to diminish breeding and gene manipulation to increase crop yield; instead manipulation of microbes (e.g endophytes) may be used to makes crops hardier. Using microbes to combat other microbes and disease processes, thereby reducing the use of antibiotics and other chemical compounds will probably - and hopefully - be central to controlling diseases and increasing production yields.

For us in the 'Blasto business' these trends are particularly intriguing. I'm not the only one who just a couple of years ago thought that functional bowel disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to a large extent might be directly attributable to undiagnosed parasite infections (e.g. Blastocystis and Dientamoeba), something that could be supported by data going out from one of the studies that I carried out during my PhD studies. Over the years, however, we and other groups have produced data showing that patients with IBS are in fact significantly less colonised by the microbial eukaryotes Blastocystis and Dientamoeba than the healthy 'background' population (see this blog post). We also have access to metagenomic data that link the presence of these microbial eukaryotes with high bacterial diversity in the intestine, and I have colleagues confirming that patients suffering post infectious IBS-like symptoms do practically not harbour these parasites. Our hypothesis now is that - generally speaking - Blastocystis and Dientamoeba are proxies for high intestinal microbial diversity and thereby for a healthy gut ecology. This does of course not rule out the possibility of pathogenic strains/subtypes/whatever of microbial eukaryotes, and we are currently increasing our efforts to investigate whether these organisms can cause disease directly or indirectly, - I'll post a few lines on some of the work we have in mind for 2014 in my next post. I believe that one of the things that most Blastocystis researchers are interested in currently, is to increase our knowledge on the diversity and biological characteristics of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes.

It takes time to produce, analyse and interpret genomic data on Blastocystis, simply because we have so little money that can be allocated to PhD students and post docs. Although we try hard to get funding, we only have one PhD student working with Blastocystis genome data... I could have wished for at least one more. One year ago, I thought that 2013 would see at least one more Blastocystis genome paper, but so far, only very little data have emerged and only included in conference abstracts. But so far it appears that the genetic universe of Blastocystis is even bigger than most of us may have thought! To get a very preliminary impression of their data and how much ST1 differs from ST7 (currently the only available genome), you may want to visit a previous blog post. This basically means that even though we know about genes present and expressed by one subtype, the situation may be completely different for other subtypes! Very interesting, but it also means that a lot of work remains to get a clear picture of what Blastocystis actually does and is capable of doing.

This year was also the year where three seminal papers came out from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, all of them first authored by Dr Mohammed Alfellani, who did a magnificent job collecting, culturing and 'DNA extracting' samples from both humans, non-human primates, and other animals from various geographic regions. I have already given numerous examples of his findings. Dr Alfellani identified new subtypes, and did a great job in identifying remarkable variations in the geographical distribution of subtypes in both humans and animals. There are also some useful tables in Alfellani's papers showing overviews of molecular data produced by him and our colleagues. We definitely hope that his papers will stimulate other colleagues to pursuing the epidemiology of Blastocystis and should definitely hold some useful tools for those who are new to Blastocystis epidemiology research. 

I had the pleasure to write up a paper to Trends in Parasitology together with Dr Pauline Scanlan. The paper was free for download in November, and we received quite a lot of positive feedback, so thank you all who are so supportive of the work! It was also very rewarding to put together a review for Advances in Parasitology together with Drs Alfellani, van der Giezen and Clark on 'Recent Developments in Blastocystis Research'.

2013 was also the year where my SSI colleagues and I published a comment in the ISME Journal on how impatiently we are awaiting data on the human 'eukaryotic' microbiome. To map the microbial eukaryotes of the intestine and to try and characterise their structure and function and the intestinal ecology that accompany these organisms are activities that should receive top priority in my opinion. There is a link to the comment here.

Congress-wise, I experienced my first-time-ever Blastocystis session at a conference! It was at the merged meeting arranged by the Scandinavian-Baltic Society for Parasitology and the European Society for Tropical Medicine & International Health. Next year, I will be involved in the session 'Passion for Parasites' at the general ASM 2014 meeting in Boston (morning session,18th of May 2014), where I'll be giving a talk on Blastocystis, and, later next year, I will also be leading a lecture/workshop associated with the ICOPA conference in Mexico on Blastocystis barcoding, - I hope to see a few upcoming Blastocystis geeks there!

I don't think we have ever had better opportunities to do significant research on Blastocystis. More and more people are working with it, our epidemiological data have become a lot stronger, enabling more subtle hypotheses, lots of strains have been sequenced, we have developed protocols for experimental in-vitro and in-vivo studies, so here's to hoping for a vast increase in funding and work in 2014!

Attaching an image of the Nutcracker display currently adorning the facade of the Hotel d'Angleterre in Copenhagen, I wish all of the readers of this blog a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Literature:

Nicola Jones (2013). Food fuelled with fungi. Nature, 504 DOI: 10.1038/504199a

Blastocystis Parasite Blog Hits Pageview #100,000!

I want to thank all the readers of this blog who all contribute to an increasing traffic across the site. I reckon I have between 200-400 pageviews daily, and the blog has now reached more than 100,000 pageviews! While I know that quite a few pageviews are fake (i.e. due to bots), it's still great to see visitors from all over the world stopping by, - something that makes my Blasto musings so much more worthwhile.

So, how to celebrate? Well, I've got some pretty cool announcements:

For instance, I can tell you that there is a brand new review out by Dr Pauline D. Scanlan (University of Cork) and myself in Trends in Parasitology (November issue) with some suggestions for shifts in paradigms, and it should be free for download throughout all of November! I hope that you'll enjoy it.

There's also a review out by Wawrzyniak and colleagues (members of the French group who published the first Blastocystis genome) in Therapeutic Advances in Infectious Disease available free for download here.

Congress-wise, I'm happy to announce that I've been invited to the ASM conference in Boston in May 2014 (there goes my Copenhagen Marathon dream for next year!) to give a talk at the special Parasitology Symposium with the title 'Blastocystis - clinical relevance: more common and important than you think'. Moreover, the ICOPA conference in August 2014 in Mexico City will host a symposium and a workshop on 'Blastocystis Barcoding'; more on this and the speakers included in the symposium later. Maybe I'll see you there?

Final TM&IH Copenhagen Conference Programme Now Available.

The final programme for 8th European Congress on Tropical Medicine & International Health and the 5th Conference of the Scandinavian-Baltic Society for Parasitology (merged venue) has now appeared and can be downloaded here. Abstract book (including poster abstracts) not yet available, but there will be a few that include Blastocystis. For those attending the conference and interested in Blastocystis, I recommend session 6.3.3. (11 SEP 2013).

Read more here. 

Wrap-Up of Cell Symposium on Microbiome and Host Health

For a parasitologist with a major interest in novel technology like me the Cell Symposium on Microbiome and Host Health (#CMHH) was a challenging, yet stimulating tour de force in bacteriology and immunology, and I realise that gut fungi and protists still fly below the radar of intestinal microbiome research.

The announced line-up of speakers was impressive, and although we missed e.g. Drs Peter Turnbaugh and Fergus Shanahan, we were still spoiled with brilliant talks.

Most of the projects and results presented on the meeting were based on studies on bacterial diversity and structure by either targeted 16S 454 sequencing or metagenomics, while studies of gene function and the 'super-organism' that is the complete microbiome (including the  fungome and protistome I should say, since these genomes are much larger than bacterial ones) were still scarce if represented at all.

Since my focus is on intestinal parasites, my main interest in the vast universe of the human microbiome naturally orbits around the intestinal microbiome. Although there is still a long way to go - due to e.g. significant differences in methodologies and lack of consensus on the analytical basis for 'enterotypes'  - we are slowly but steadily building up a picture of the effect that the human microbiome has on health and disease. Hundreds of species live and have important functions in our gut, to cite Dr Peer Bork, but these species have also been associated with more than 30 human diseases, even neurological ones. Shifts in the composition of the microbiome are associated with an expanding list of chronic diseases that includes obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and diabetes (Dr Ruth Ley).

Many things may influence our susceptibility to intestinal pathogens, including competition between species (colonisation resistance), the ability of some bacteria to synthesise antimicrobial compounds or stimulate innate immune defenses. Differences in susceptibility to infection may boil down to differences in antimicrobial compounds secreted by our individual microbiota (Dr Michael Fischbach). Bacteroides fragilis is a commensal immunoregulatory microbe mediating major effects through a single molecule, polysaccharide A (Dr Dennis Kasper); polysaccharide A mediates immunoregulation via innate and cognate immune system collaboration.

The list of buzz words was endless, and patterns of cause and effect in this fascinating hubbub of cutting edge science difficult to keep apart - but then again, - many pathways and interactions leading to alterations in gut flora and thereby alteration in host clinical phenotype may result from the complex interplay of any type of intervention (diet, antibiotics, surgery (gastric bypass), microbe exposure, etc.) and host genetics. Dr Wendy Garrett used some of her time to address the fact that antibiotic treatment may lead to more significant perturbation of the intestinal microbiota than e.g. diets and immunoregulation, and she also encouraged thoughts on how to approach causality in studies of microbial communities.

Other things that are interesting include how bacteria "talk" together by quorum sensing to control gene expression and crosstalk between beneficial bacteria (e.g. probiotics) and the intestinal ecosystem, and how these systems can be influenced altogether.

Computer technology - the Creed of today: The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (with 'Mare Nostrum') located in a former chapel. Source.

So, while focus is still on the trillions of bacteria we have in our gut, we hope that it won't be long before common eukaryotic components of the intestinal microbiome will be studied and analysed alongside with bacterial communities. It says on Wikipedia that targeted studies of eukaryotic and viral communities are limited and subject to the challenge of excluding host DNA from amplification and the reduced eukaryotic and viral biomass in the human microbiome. Excluding host DNA is challenging, but not impossible, and who has actually documented that eukaryotic biomass in the human microbiome is 'reduced'?

The meeting was very well organised and took place at the Sheraton Hotel in Lisbon. I've storified a list of the #CMHH tweets here in case you are interested in more 'headlines'. I apologise for any misquotes.

Further reading:

Koren O, Knights D, Gonzalez A, Waldron L, Segata N, Knight R, Huttenhower C, & Ley RE (2013). A guide to enterotypes across the human body: meta-analysis of microbial community structures in human microbiome datasets. PLoS Computational Biology, 9 (1) PMID: 23326225

Andersen LO, Vedel Nielsen H, & Stensvold CR (2013). Waiting for the human intestinal Eukaryotome. The ISME Journal PMID: 23407309

Ivanov II, & Honda K (2012). Intestinal commensal microbes as immune modulators. Cell Host & Microbe, 12 (4), 496-508 PMID: 23084918

Brown J, de Vos WM, Distefano PS, Doré J, Huttenhower C, Knight R, Lawley TD, Raes J, & Turnbaugh P (2013). Translating the human microbiome. Nature Biotechnology, 31 (4), 304-8 PMID: 23563424

Blaser M, Bork P, Fraser C, Knight R, & Wang J (2013). The microbiome explored: recent insights and future challenges. Nature Reviews. Microbiology, 11 (3), 213-7 PMID: 23377500

Cell Symposium: Microbiome & Host Health - Lisbon 2013

My colleagues from Statens Serum Institut and I are heading to Lisbon, Portugal, tomorrow morning to attend the Cell Symposium on Microbiome and Host Health (link may be really busy now).

We are bringing a poster displaying some of our work related to our GUT18S project: A Novel Approach For Eukaryotic Phylogenetic Interrogation Of Clinical Samples Using Next Generation Sequencing Of SSU rRNA Genes; a pdf version of the poster can be downloaded here.

The GUT18S work is partly funded by the Marie Curie Actions (FP7) program.