State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China.
Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 2P5, Canada.
Environ Microbiol. 2015 Jun;17(6):2133-43. doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.12662. Epub 2014 Dec 17.
Human commensal microbiota are an important determinant of health and disease of the host. Different human body sites harbour different bacterial microbiota, bacterial communities that maintain a stable balance. However, many of the factors influencing the stabilities of bacterial communities associated with humans remain unknown. In this study, we identified putative bacteriocins produced by human commensal microbiota. Bacteriocins are peptides or proteins with antimicrobial activity that contribute to the stability and dynamics of microbial communities. We employed bioinformatic analyses to identify putative bacteriocin sequences in metagenomic sequences obtained from different human body sites. Prevailing bacterial taxa of the putative bacteriocins producers matched the most abundant organisms in each human body site. Remarkably, we found that samples from different body sites contain different density of putative bacteriocin genes, with the highest in samples from the vagina, the airway, and the oral cavity and the lowest in those from gut. Inherent differences of different body sites thus influence the density and types of bacteriocins produced by commensal bacteria. Our results suggest that bacteriocins play important roles to allow different bacteria to occupy several human body sites, and to establish a long-term commensal relationship with human hosts.
人体共生菌群是宿主健康和疾病的重要决定因素。不同的人体部位携带着不同的细菌菌群，这些菌群维持着稳定的平衡。然而，许多影响与人类相关的细菌群落稳定性的因素仍然未知。在这项研究中，我们鉴定了来自人体共生菌群的潜在细菌素。细菌素是具有抗菌活性的肽或蛋白质，有助于微生物群落的稳定性和动态变化。我们采用生物信息学分析方法，从不同人体部位获得的宏基因组序列中鉴定潜在的细菌素序列。潜在细菌素产生者的流行细菌类群与每个人体部位中最丰富的生物体相匹配。值得注意的是，我们发现来自不同身体部位的样本中含有不同密度的潜在细菌素基因，其中阴道、气道和口腔样本中的密度最高，而肠道样本中的密度最低。不同身体部位的固有差异因此影响了共生细菌产生的细菌素的密度和类型。我们的研究结果表明，细菌素在允许不同细菌占据几个人体部位以及与人类宿主建立长期共生关系方面发挥着重要作用。
