Scholars@Duke
Jason Arnold

Jason Arnold

Assistant Research Professor in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
4124 MSRB3, Box 103053, Durham, NC 27710
4124 MSRB III BX 103053, 3 Genome Ct, Durham, NC 27710

Scholarly Works - Journal articles

Branched chain amino acid metabolism and microbiome in adolescents with obesity during weight loss therapy.

Journal article J Clin Invest · July 15, 2026 BACKGROUNDObesity and weight loss in adults have been associated with distinct metabolome and gut microbiome features, but the extent to which those associations apply to adolescent stages remain unclear.METHODSThe Pediatric Obesity Microbiome and Metaboli ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prebiotic β (1-4) Galacto-oligosaccharides Strengthen Intestinal Barrier Integrity via Mucus Production and Modulation of Tight Junction Genes.

Journal article Food Biosci · January 2026 Preserving a functional intestinal barrier is crucial for overall host health, as increased permeability can lead to systemic pathologies, including a dysregulated immune system and increased susceptibility to infections. Pure β (1-4) galacto-oligosacchari ... Full text Link to item Cite

Impact of fiber-containing enteral nutrition on microbial community dynamics in critically ill trauma patients: a pilot-randomized trial.

Journal article BMC Med · December 29, 2025 BACKGROUND: Gut microbial dysbiosis is common in the intensive care unit and certain derangements, like expansion of Enterobacteriaceae and other potential pathogens (pathobionts), are associated with increased morbidity. In other populations, dysbiosis is ... Full text Link to item Cite

A pollution crisis of synthetic plastic polymers and their hidden chemical complexity

Journal article One Earth · November 21, 2025 The diverse material properties of plastic polymers have prompted their extensive use, resulting in widespread pollution, including environmental contamination by chemical additives used to enhance polymer properties. Additives have diverse biological impa ... Full text Cite

Protein Malnutrition Facilitates Intestinal Colonization with Highly Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Journal article bioRxiv · July 21, 2025 Pediatric infections with Highly Resistant Enterobacterales (HRE), including Klebsiella pneumoniae resistant to 3rd-generation cephalosporins and/or carbapenems, disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries where malnutrition is prevalent. Th ... Full text Link to item Cite

Genome assembly and annotation of microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica C018.

Journal article Microbiol Resour Announc · February 11, 2025 The microalga Nannochloropsis is an important organism for algae-based biocommodity production of food, feed, and fuel, among other products. Using PacBio Revio, we sequenced, assembled, and annotated a 26.41 Mbp Nannochloropsis oceanica C018 genome. ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Giardia Antagonizes Beneficial Functions of Indigenous and Therapeutic Intestinal Bacteria during Malnutrition.

Journal article bioRxiv · January 23, 2024 Undernutrition in children commonly disrupts the structure and function of the small intestinal microbial community, leading to enteropathies, compromised metabolic health, and impaired growth and development. The mechanisms by which diet and microbes medi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Giardia antagonizes beneficial functions of indigenous and therapeutic intestinal bacteria during protein deficiency.

Journal article Gut Microbes · 2024 Undernutrition in children commonly disrupts the structure and function of the small intestinal microbial community, leading to enteropathies, compromised metabolic health, and impaired growth and development. The mechanisms by which diet and microbes medi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Greener residential environment is associated with increased bacterial diversity in outdoor ambient air.

Journal article Sci Total Environ · July 1, 2023 In urban areas, exposure to greenspace has been found to be beneficial to human health. The biodiversity hypothesis proposed that exposure to diverse ambient microbes in greener areas may be one pathway leading to health benefits such as improved immune sy ... Full text Link to item Cite

Giardia hinders growth by disrupting nutrient metabolism independent of inflammatory enteropathy.

Journal article Nat Commun · May 18, 2023 Giardia lamblia (Giardia) is among the most common intestinal pathogens in children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Although Giardia associates with early-life linear growth restriction, mechanistic explanations for Giardia-associated growth i ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Gallbladder microbiota in healthy dogs and dogs with mucocele formation.

Journal article PLoS One · 2023 To date studies have not investigated the culture-independent microbiome of bile from dogs, a species where aseptic collection of bile under ultrasound guidance is somewhat routine. Despite frequent collection of bile for culture-based diagnosis of bacteri ... Full text Link to item Cite

The pleiotropic effects of prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharides on the aging gut.

Journal article Microbiome · January 28, 2021 BACKGROUND: Prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) have an extensively demonstrated beneficial impact on intestinal health. In this study, we determined the impact of GOS diets on hallmarks of gut aging: microbiome dysbiosis, inflammation, and intestinal ... Full text Link to item Cite

Safety and Modulatory Effects of Humanized Galacto-Oligosaccharides on the Gut Microbiome.

Journal article Front Nutr · 2021 Complex dietary carbohydrate structures including β(1-4) galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) are resistant to digestion in the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract and arrive intact to the colon where they benefit the host by selectively stimulating microbial grow ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prebiotics for Lactose Intolerance: Variability in Galacto-Oligosaccharide Utilization by Intestinal Lactobacillus rhamnosus.

Journal article Nutrients · October 16, 2018 Lactose intolerance, characterized by a decrease in host lactase expression, affects approximately 75% of the world population. Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) are prebiotics that have been shown to alleviate symptoms of lactose intolerance and to modulate ... Full text Link to item Cite

Evolution of STEC virulence: Insights from the antipredator activities of Shiga toxin producing E. coli.

Journal article Int J Med Microbiol · October 2018 Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are a diverse group of strains that are implicated in over 270,000 cases of human illness annually in the United States alone. Shiga toxin (Stx), encoded by a resident temperate lambdoid bacteriophage, is the m ... Full text Link to item Cite

A High-Throughput Organoid Microinjection Platform to Study Gastrointestinal Microbiota and Luminal Physiology.

Journal article Cell Mol Gastroenterol Hepatol · 2018 BACKGROUND & AIMS: The human gut microbiota is becoming increasingly recognized as a key factor in homeostasis and disease. The lack of physiologically relevant in vitro models to investigate host-microbe interactions is considered a substantial bottleneck ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intra-species Genomic and Physiological Variability Impact Stress Resistance in Strains of Probiotic Potential.

Journal article Front Microbiol · 2018 Large-scale microbiome studies have established that most of the diversity contained in the gastrointestinal tract is represented at the strain level; however, exhaustive genomic and physiological characterization of human isolates is still lacking. With i ... Full text Link to item Cite

A comparison of sequencing platforms and bioinformatics pipelines for compositional analysis of the gut microbiome.

Journal article BMC Microbiol · September 13, 2017 BACKGROUND: Advancements in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies regarding throughput, read length and accuracy had a major impact on microbiome research by significantly improving 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. As rapid improvements in sequencing ... Full text Link to item Cite

Genome Sequences of Potential Probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus Isolates from Human Infants.

Journal article Genome Announc · April 6, 2017 Probiotics provide health benefits to their hosts, including modulation of host immune response, inhibition of colonization by pathogens, modulation of the gut microbiota, and epithelial barrier enhancement. Here, we present the draft genome sequences of t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Emerging Technologies for Gut Microbiome Research.

Journal article Trends Microbiol · November 2016 Understanding the importance of the gut microbiome on modulation of host health has become a subject of great interest for researchers across disciplines. As an intrinsically multidisciplinary field, microbiome research has been able to reap the benefits o ... Full text Link to item Cite

Determinants that govern the recognition and uptake of Escherichia coli O157 : H7 by Acanthamoeba castellanii.

Journal article Cell Microbiol · October 2016 Predation by phagocytic predators is a major source of bacterial mortality. The first steps in protozoan predation are recognition and consumption of their bacterial prey. However, the precise mechanisms governing prey recognition and phagocytosis by proti ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Trojan Horse of the microbiological arms race: phage-encoded toxins as a defence against eukaryotic predators.

Journal article Environ Microbiol · February 2014 Phage-encoded Shiga toxin (Stx) acts as a bacterial defence against the eukaryotic predator Tetrahymena. To function as an effective bacterial anti-predator defence, Stx must kill a broad spectrum of predators. Consistent with that assertion, we show here ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neurospora crassa female development requires the PACC and other signal transduction pathways, transcription factors, chromatin remodeling, cell-to-cell fusion, and autophagy.

Journal article PLoS One · 2014 Using a screening protocol we have identified 68 genes that are required for female development in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa. We find that we can divide these genes into five general groups: 1) Genes encoding components of the PACC signal tr ... Full text Link to item Cite