Microbiota and Host

Scope

Microbiota and Host is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal publishing fundamental and applied research and reviews that advance our understanding of the impact of commensal microbiota both on their human and non-human hosts.

The emergence of the field of research on microbiota and microbiomes has caused a shift in perspective on form and function of eukaryotes as holobionts or 'meta-organisms' to be considered together with their microbiota. In humans, disturbances in a harmonious relationship between commensal microbiota and the host are being increasingly implicated in a wide range of diseases including, but not limited to, gut-related disease, obesity, liver disease, cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders and cancer. Non-human hosts encompassing a wide range of species are also being investigated for understanding fundamental mechanisms governing host-commensal interactions.

Microbiota and Host is particularly interested in publishing experimental or mechanistic articles in both human and non-human hosts, and those which propose potential therapeutic interventions. Descriptive studies are not encouraged and will be particularly scrutinised for novelty. We welcome the following article types: Original full-length and short research manuscripts, reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, editorials and commentaries. The journal will also publish invited special issues. The Editorial Board aims to provide rapid and constructive peer review with a turnaround period for a first decision in less than a month.

Microbiota and Host will serve as a nexus for the international scientific community to publish research on the cross-talk between microbiota and the host, with a view to advancing health. The journal welcomes basic, translational and clinical studies.

Topics of interest include:

• Influence of microbiota on host
• Influence of host on microbiota
• Potential therapeutic targets
• Personalised treatment studies
• Epidemiological studies
• ‘Omics studies: metagenomics, metabolomics, metatransproteomics, metaproteomics, culturomics, immunomics, and multi-omics studies
• Immunological studies
• New technologies

The journal is newly launched, and as such does not yet have an impact factor. We aim to achieve indexing in PubMed as soon as possible, after which point all published articles will be indexed retrospectively. We also aim to achieve indexing in Web of Science so that the journal receives an impact factor as soon as possible, but unlikely to be sooner than 4 years after launch.

Publication Model

Microbiota and Host is a fully gold open-access journal. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. Articles are freely available to everyone to read and reuse immediately upon publication, provided the terms of the licence are met.

For more information, please see our Open Access page.

Publication Metrics

• Time to first decision: Microbiota and Host aims to return a decision on articles in under a month
• Time to online publication: Accepted manuscripts are published online and are fully citable within 24 hours of acceptance

Publication charges

Microbiota and Host has the following publication charges:

Article Publication Charge: Bioscientifica is currently sponsoring the Article Publication Charge; as such authors can publish completely free of charge*.

Colour charges: There are no colour charges when publishing in Microbiota and Host.

*Bioscientifica reserves the right to withdraw this offer at any time

Article Types

Microbiota and Host publishes the following types of article:

• Research Articles
• Reviews
• Brief Communications
• Commentaries
• Editorials
• Letters to the Editor
• Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Editorial Board

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Bina Joe, MSc, PhD, FAHA, FAPS, ISHF
Distinguished University Professor and Chair, Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Toledo, Ohio, USA
Her research is focused on the fundamental mechanisms underpinning the genesis of hypertension, which is the single largest risk factor for human mortality through cardiovascular diseases. She pioneered the discovery that gut microbiota contribute to hypertension and later, using germ-free rats, demonstrated that gut microbiota is essential for vascular tone and maintenance of blood pressure homeostasis. Her current research is on host-microbiota interactions and the mechanisms by which host epigenetics and microbial metabolites regulate blood pressure.

STRATEGIC EDITORS

Sanjay H Chotirmall, MD, PhD
Associate Professor and Provost’s Chair in Molecular Medicine, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Assistant Dean (Research) and Consultant Respiratory Physician, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore
As an internationally recognized clinician-scientist, Sanjay H Chotirmall has established a Translational Respiratory Research Group, with focus on infection, inflammation, and immunity in the context of chronic inflammatory respiratory diseases affecting Asian populations. His research interests include bronchiectasis, pulmonary infection, and the microbiome.

Ruth E Ley, PhD
Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen, Director of the Department of Microbiome Science, Tübingen, Germany
Ruth Ley is currently the Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology, Tübingen, where she is the Director of the Department of Microbiome Science. She is also acting as co-Speaker for the Cluster of Excellence 'Controlling Microbiomes to Fight Infection' with the University of Tübingen, Germany. She joined the Department of Microbiology at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor, and in 2013 became an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. Dr Ley’s awards include a Fellowship in Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the ISME Young Investigator Award, and the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine. She is a member of EMBO, of the European Academy of Microbiology, and of the American Academy of Microbiology. In 2020 she was elected to the Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences. She is the recipient of the 2020 Otto Bayer award.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Simon JS Cameron, BSc, PhD, MRSB, FHEA
Senior Lecturer in Microbiology and Bioanalytical Chemistry, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Dr Cameron’s research group within the School of Biological Sciences and Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast utilises microbiology and mass spectrometry techniques to explore the role of microorganisms in human, animal, and plant health and disease. They use a combination of molecular and culture-based microbiology with mass spectrometry – with a focus on ambient ionisation techniques – to understand the role that microorganisms play in different systems and how this can be utilised to better understand health and diagnose disease.

Benoit Chassaing, PhD Microbiology
Research Director, INSERM – French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Paris, France
Dr Chassaing obtained his PhD in microbiology at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, France, identifying factors involved in the virulence of adherent and invasive Escherichia colistrain, the pathovar involved in the etiology of Crohn's disease. He then joined Georgia State University to work with Dr Andrew T Gewirtz on various subjects related to mucosal immunology, trying to decipher how genetic and environmental factors can perturb the intestinal microbiota composition in a detrimental way, leading to chronic intestinal inflammation and metabolic deregulations. Appointed assistant professor in 2015, his laboratory relocated to Paris, with a focus on the understanding of mechanisms by which environmental factors, such as select food components, are involved in shaping detrimental microbiota, and particular focus on intestinal inflammation and altered metabolism. His current research uses pre-clinical and clinical approaches, as well as in vitro modelling of the intestinal microbiota, to better define microbiota regulation and subsequent impact on intestinal health and metabolism.

Sandrine Claus, PhD Biochemistry
Chief Scientific Officer at Ysopia Bioscience, France and visiting lecturer at King’s College London, UK
After earning her PhD in Biochemistry at Imperial College London, where she started to study host–gut microbiota metabolic interplay, Dr Claus joined the University of Reading to lead a research group as Associate Professor in Integrative Metabolism. After 12 years of academic research, she decided to translate the fundamental science of the gut microbiome into clinical applications by joining Ysopia bioscience as CSO. Her research focuses on the host immune and metabolic response to gut microbiome changes in health and disease. Her interests include the development of microbiome-based therapies and gut microbiome ecology.

Sean Colgan, PhD
Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA
The Colgan Lab has a long-standing interest in defining novel mechanisms of mucosal inflammatory responses, specifically related to innate immunity and immunometabolism. We have identified a number of novel regulatory pathways related to shifts in metabolism associated with ongoing inflammatory responses. Our overarching goal is to understand, at a basic level, changes in tissue metabolism during active mucosal inflammation. We use basic biochemistry, molecular biology and physiology to define these principles. Our target human disease is inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Wherever possible, we translate our basic studies into actionable endpoints in IBD patients.

David Durgan, PhD Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Assistant Professor of Integrative Physiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA
Dr Durgan’s research focus is on understanding the role of the gut microbiota on cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology. His work has demonstrated a causal role got dysbiosis in the development of hypertension and cerebral small vessel disease. He is actively investigating microbial metabolites and host inflammatory response to microbes as mechanisms involved in blood pressure regulation.

Marwa Hassan, PhD
Research Fellow in Microbiology and Molecular Biology, University of Surrey, UK
Her research interest is focused on understanding microbial interactions utilising ex vivo and in vitro animal models. She is particularly interested in developing these models and utilising them in understanding the spread of antimicrobial resistance and the effects on bacterial persistence from a single cell perspective.

Luigina Romani, PhD
Professor of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Perugia, Italy
Her research is focused on host- and microbial-dependent mechanisms of antifungal immunity. She introduced several novel scientific and translatable concepts which have become popular in the field of medical microbiology. Examples are the concept of protective tolerance to microbes, the basis of antimicrobial immunotherapy, the pathogenic role of inflammation in infections, the discovery of tryptophan metabolites as potential mediators of the host/fungi/bacteria crosstalk. More recently, human metagenomics and metabolomics signatures predictive of infectious diseases are also of interest.

Matam Vijay-Kumar, PhD
University of Toledo, OH, USA
Professor Vijay-Kumar's research interests are the dynamics between innate immunity, gut microbiota and gastrointestinal pathogens. The co-ordination and fine tuning between accessory immune cells (e.g. epithelia) and professional immune cells (e.g. neutrophils and macrophages) helps not only in gut microbiotal homeostasis but also helps in eradication of perturbing pathogens in the gut. These cells express specific 'pattern recognition receptors' (PRRs), which broadly sense specific microbial ligands and evoke innate immune response and help in gut homeostasis. In addition, we demonstrate that microbial products (i.e. viral RNA, flagellin) which potently activate their cognate TLR activation and broadly protect against enteropathogens and viruses.

Jasenka Zubcevic, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Toledo, OH, USA
Dr Zubcevic’s research focuses on interoceptive mechanisms of blood pressure control. This includes investigation of host-microbiota interactions in the GI tract and elucidation of mechanisms of gut dysbiosis in cardiometabolic diseases. Most recent work suggests a role for gut microbiota in modulation of vagal afferent gut–brain signaling in regulation of blood pressure.

STATISTICAL EDITOR

Hani Aldirawi, PhD
Assistant Professor of Statistics, California State University-San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA, USA
Dr Aldirawi’s research focus is on modeling microbiome data. He is studying and investigating the probabilistic and regression models that are used for modeling microbiome data such as zero-inflated and hurdle models.

Author guidelines

Ready to submit? Contact the editorial office.

Bioscientifica is committed to providing our authors with the support and resources they need to successfully publish their papers.
Visit the Bioscientifica author resource centre for advice.

Overview

Before submitting

Manuscript formatting

Article types

• Research Articles

• Reviews

• Brief Communications

• Commentaries

• Editorials

• Letters to the Editor

• Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Supplementary data

Editorial policies

Submitting an article

Authors can find all the information needed to prepare articles for submission to Microbiota and Host on our Author Guidelines page.

Once an article is ready to submit, authors are advised to visit our How to Submit page.

Submissions are managed though the Microbiota and Host ScholarOne Manuscripts site.

Publication charges

Microbiota and Host has the following publication charges:

• Article Publication Charge: Bioscientifica is currently sponsoring the Article Publication Charge; as such authors can publish completely free of charge*.
• Colour charges: There are no colour charges when publishing in Microbiota and Host.

*Bioscientifica reserves the right to withdraw this offer at any time.

Peer review

Articles published in Microbiota and Host undergo peer review before acceptance. Key facts about the peer-review process are given below:

• identity transparency: single anonymized
• reviewer interacts with: editor
• review information published: none

If an article is not accepted for publication, we may offer the author the opportunity to transfer their submission to other suitable journals published by Bioscientifica.

More information about the peer-review process can be found on our Peer-review process page.

Ethics

Microbiota and Host maintains the highest standards of publication and research ethics and is a member of the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE).

Authors, Reviewers and Editors are expected to comply with Bioscientifica’s Ethical Policy.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Microbiota and Host recognises that there are biases and inequalities in the publishing system. We are committed to scrutinising our own processes and policies to prevent bias, reduce inequality and better represent and serve our diverse community of authors, reviewers, editors and readers.

Research data

Microbiota and Host supports open data and strongly encourages authors to publicly release all data supporting the analysis and conclusions of primary research articles, on or before publication of the article.

All primary research articles published in Microbiota and Host should include a Data Availability Statement.

More information is on our Research data page.

Indexing

Applications will be made for Microbiota and Host to be indexed in the following once enough articles have been published, and/or the minimum acceptance criteria have been met:

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI; Web of Science)
• Google Scholar
• PubMed and PubMed Central

Abstracting and indexing

Microbiota and Host    Online ISSN: 2753-6955

Published articles will be fully referenced and linked to a wide variety of discoverability services. We anticipate that Microbiota and Host will be accepted for inclusion in PubMed Central as soon as enough articles have been published, at which point indexing will be applied to all published articles retrospectively.

Microbiota and Host will apply for indexing in Web of Science's Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) as soon as the minimum assessment criteria have been met. This is required to secure an Impact Factor.

In addition, the journal will be submitted for indexing to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), amongst others.

Digital preservation

Articles published in Microbiota and Host are archived in LOCKSS and Portico to ensure that these articles are preserved in the long term.