Lee Shih-Wei, Kuan Chin-Sheng, Wu Lawrence Shih-Hsin, Weng Julia Tzu-Ya
Taoyuan General Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Department of Life Sciences, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
PLoS One. 2016 Jul 18;11(7):e0159066. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159066. eCollection 2016.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory lung disorder characterized by the progressive obstruction of airflow and is currently the fourth leading cause of death in the world. The pathogenesis of COPD is thought to involve bacterial infections and inflammations. Owing to advancement in sequencing technology, evidence is emerging that supports an association between the lung microbiome and COPD. However, few studies have looked into the expression profile of the bacterial communities in the COPD lungs. In this study, we analyzed the sputum microbiome of four moderate and four severe COPD male patients both at the DNA and RNA level, using next generation sequencing technology. We found that bacterial composition determined by 16S rRNA gene sequencing may not directly translate to the set of actively expressing bacteria as defined by transcriptome sequencing. The two sequencing data agreed on Prevotella, Rothia, Neisseria, Porphyromonas, Veillonella, Fusobacterium and Streptococcus being among the most differentially abundant genera between the moderate and severe COPD samples, supporting their association with COPD severity. However, the two sequencing analyses disagreed on the relative abundance of these bacteria in the two COPD groups, implicating the importance of studying the actively expressing bacteria for enriching our understanding of COPD. Though we have described the metatranscriptome profiles of the lung microbiome in moderate and severe COPD, further investigations are required to determine the functional basis underlying the relationship between the microbial species in the lungs and pathogenesis of COPD.
慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）是一种以气流进行性受阻为特征的炎症性肺部疾病，目前是全球第四大致死原因。COPD的发病机制被认为与细菌感染和炎症有关。由于测序技术的进步，越来越多的证据支持肺部微生物群与COPD之间存在关联。然而，很少有研究探讨COPD患者肺部细菌群落的表达谱。在本研究中，我们使用下一代测序技术，在DNA和RNA水平上分析了4名中度和4名重度COPD男性患者的痰液微生物群。我们发现，通过16S rRNA基因测序确定的细菌组成可能无法直接转化为转录组测序所定义的一组活跃表达的细菌。两种测序数据在普雷沃菌属、罗氏菌属、奈瑟菌属、卟啉单胞菌属、韦荣球菌属、梭杆菌属和链球菌属方面达成一致，这些菌属是中度和重度COPD样本中差异丰度最大的菌属，支持它们与COPD严重程度的关联。然而，两种测序分析在这两组COPD样本中这些细菌的相对丰度上存在分歧，这表明研究活跃表达的细菌对于加深我们对COPD的理解具有重要意义。尽管我们已经描述了中度和重度COPD患者肺部微生物群的宏转录组谱，但仍需要进一步研究以确定肺部微生物物种与COPD发病机制之间关系的功能基础。
