Overall, given that FOS are often included in infant formulas and used widely as prebiotics, it’s important to understand the mechanisms by which microbes utilize these oligosaccharides of different chain lengths

We observed a similar pattern in Bifidobacterium: only strains carrying a specific ABC transporter could metabolize long-chain FOS, while utilization of short-chain FOS was broadly conserved
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genomic studies in bifidobacteria often focus only on CAZymes. IMHO, in Gram-positives, transporters are the true gatekeepers of glycan metabolism. We need to prioritize improving their functional annotations and include them in metabolic reconstructions (7/7)

We demonstrated that phylogenetically closely related strains can exhibit substantial differences in HMO utilization, which is driven by subtle variations in HMO transporter genes. Species/subspecies names alone don’t tell the full story; one needs to look at gene content in individual strains(6/7)

Among the new pathways we uncovered was a xyloglucan degradation pathway that was present in rare B. catenulatum subsp. kashiwanohense strains and conserved in B. dentium and B. tsurumiense (5/7)

We validated phenotypic predictions for 30 bifidobacterial strains, achieving 94% accuracy. For example, we confirmed the unique ability of the new B. longum clade to grow on starch and pullulan, and described an unconventional B. adolescentis strain that can use 2’-fucosyllactose (4/7)

Our analysis revealed notable inter- and intra-species variability. Among notable findings was a new Bifidobacterium longum clade harboring pathways for starch, pullulan, and difructose dianhydride metabolism but lacking pathways for LNB/GNB, N-glycan, and human milk oligosaccharide utilization(3/7)

We reconstructed 68 glycan utilization pathways encoded in 3,083 bif genomes by looking at the distribution of 589 curated metabolic functions (transporters, CAZymes, etc). Several years of manual curation greatly improved the quality of functional gene annotations (>90% for transporters!) (2/7)

Among the new pathways we uncovered was a xyloglucan degradation pathway that was present in rare B. catenulatum subsp. kashiwanohense strains and conserved in B. dentium and B. tsurumiense (5/7)

We validated phenotypic predictions for 30 bifidobacterial strains, achieving 94% accuracy. For example, we confirmed the unique ability of the new B. longum clade to grow on starch and pullulan, and described a B. adolescentis strain that can use 2’-fucosyllactose (4/7)

Our analysis revealed notable inter- and intra-species variability. Among notable findings was a new Bifidobacterium longum clade harboring pathways for starch, pullulan, and difructose dianhydride metabolism but lacking pathways for LNB/GNB, N-glycan, and human milk oligosaccharide utilization(3/7)

We reconstructed 68 glycan utilization pathways encoded in 3,083 bif genomes by looking at the distribution of 589 curated metabolic functions (transporters, CAZymes, etc). Several years of manual curation greatly improved the quality of functional gene annotations (>90% for transporters!) (2/7)