Caribbean sea urchins are marine invertebrates that have experienced a decline over the years. Studies on sea urchins have focused primarily on the microbiome of the coelomic fluid or the gut microbiota. In this study, the epibiota community associated with four wild Caribbean sea urchin species, Lytechinus variegatus, Echinometra lucunter, Tripneustes ventricosus, and Diadema antillarum, was characterized for the first time. Using 57 sea urchin animal samples, we evaluated the influence of animal species, trophic niches, and geographical location on the composition of the epibiotic microbiota. We found significant differences in the bacterial biota among species and trophic niches, but not among geographical locations. L. variegatus exhibited the highest alpha diversity with high dominance of Fusobacteria, Planctomycetes, and Cyanobacteria, whereas T. ventricosus and D. antillarum were dominated by Firmicutes. T. ventricosus inhabiting the seagrass biotope dominated by Thalassia testudinum meadows had mostly Endozoicomonas. In contrast, samples located in the reef (dominated by corals and other reef builders) had a higher abundance of Kistimonas and Photobacterium. Our findings confirm that the epibiotic microbiota is species-specific, but also niche-dependent, revealing the trophic networks emerging from the organic matter being recycled in the seagrass and reef niches. As echinoids are important grazers of benthic communities, their microbiota will likely influence ecosystem processes.

However, there are concerns regarding limitations of its use with regard to access to and ability to use requisite technology. The purpose of this study was to characterize gynecologic oncology patients who utilized telemedicine in their cancer care in order to determine potential barriers to telemedicine use.

Recent studies suggest that the cervical microbiome can strongly influence inflammation and pre-cancerous lesion progression. However, research focused on understanding the role of microbial communities in the progression of pre-cancerous lesions to cancer in Latino women is scarce. We aimed to investigate the relationship between the cervicovaginal microbiome and inflammation while considering cervical neoplasia and HPV infection in Puerto Rican women. We collected cervical swabs and lavages from 142 participants coming to colposcopy clinics in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Genomic DNA was extracted from swabs, and 16S rDNA V4 region genes were amplified and sequenced by Illumina MiSeq. Inflammatory (IL-1β, TNFa, IFNg, IL-6), anti-inflammatory (IL-4, IL-10, TGFβ1), and trafficking (IL-8, MIP1a, MCP1, IP10) cytokines were measured from cervical lavages, using Luminex MAGPIX technology. Cytokines were related to microbes via an inflammation scoring index based on the quartile and tercile distribution of the cytokine’s concentration. IL-10 (p value= 0.0455) was significantly different when evaluating HPV risk, while IL1-β (p value= 0.0005) and INF-γ (p value= 0.0258) were significant when evaluating cervical disease. We found significant differences in diversity and composition of the microbiota among HPV risk, cervical disease, pro-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory, and trafficking cytokine abundances. The increasing concentration of IL1-β, IL-10, and INF-γ, associated with a decrease in Lactobacillus communities. While contrarily, bacteria associated with dysbiosis such as Gardnerella, Prevotella, Atopobium increased. This study also revealed that the most dominant community state types (CST) among Puerto Rican women regardless of lesion or HPV status, are CST3 and 4 featuring high diversity and anaerobic bacteria typical of vaginosis in Caucasians. These CSTs are especially abundant with ~ 90% dominance in participants with high grade disease (HGSIL) and high-risk HPV. Our study evidence that the cervical microbiota of Puerto Ricans is characteristically diverse and that the joint host-microbe interaction analyses via cytokine signaling and microbiota in pre-cancerous lesions has great translational potential. Citation Format: Eduardo Lemuel Tosado Rodríguez, Anelisse Dominicci-Maura, Loyda Mendez, Stephanie Dorta, Josefina Romaguera, Filipa Godoy-Vitorino. Cytokine and TGF-β levels are associated with changes in cervicovaginal microbiota in a cohort of Caribbean women [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 712.

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The human cervix is colonized by microbial communities that have traditionally been regarded as a protective barrier against infections. Dysbioses disrupting the balance of the normal microbiota, leads to the appearance of anaerobic taxa that have been related to sexual transmitted infections and cancer. The complexity of the diversity and composition of cervicovaginal communities has been recently highlighted by 16S rDNA surveys, although these have limitations to either select mostly bacteria and the lack of strong lower taxonomic resolution such as being species-specific. Metagenomic shotgun sequencing overcomes these limitations, and gives us access to the extent of diversity beyond bacterial communities. This is the first project to characterize the bacterial and archaeal communities of the cervix of Puerto Ricans using shotgun metagenomics. Women coming for gynecology and colposcopy evaluation at the UPR and San Juan City clinics (San Juan Metropolitan area), and who did not meet several excluding criteria including having taken antibiotics for the last month, were recruited for the study. Samples were acquired by inserting a speculum for access and visualization of the cervix and a sterile swab was rotated along the lumen with a circular motion and frozen immediately for posterior genomic DNA extractions and sequencing. Library construction and shotgun sequencing of 10 cervical patient samples was done with the Illumina HiSeq platform An average of 1,690,000 good quality reads per sample were analyzed. Approximately 90% of the contigs had more than 1,000bp and 10% had sizes ranging from 1,000-5,000bp. Microbial communities were dominated by Lactobacillus, including L. iners, Gardnerella vaginallis, Nocardia and Atapobium vaginae. Archaeal diversity was dominated by Methanosarcina (namely, M. barkeri) with other less dominant taxa such as Methanolobus, Methanococcus, Natrococcus and Methanobrevibacter. The dominance of Lactobacillus was expected, and as Archaea are environmental organisms that have been associated with the mucosa in mammals, including protecting the human gut, they must have an important role in the cervix. As methanogenic archaea are known to remove fermentation end products, such as methanol and ethanol, as end-products of other fermentative bacteria, methanogenesis maybe important in preventing the accumulation of gases and other reaction end products that could damage the cervical mucosa. Citation Format: Filipa Godoy-Vitorino, Frances Vazquez-Sanchez, Anelisse Dominicci-Maura, Josefina Romaguera. Detection of methane-producing archaea in the cervix of Hispanics using shotgun metagenomics [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2831.