Gontang Erin A, Aylward Frank O, Carlos Camila, Glavina Del Rio Tijana, Chovatia Mansi, Fern Alison, Lo Chien-Chi, Malfatti Stephanie A, Tringe Susannah G, Currie Cameron R, Kolter Roberto
Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America.
Department of Bacteriology and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 May 18;12(5):e0177189. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177189. eCollection 2017.
Investigations of gut microbiomes have shed light on the diversity and genetic content of these communities, and helped shape our understanding of how host-associated microorganisms influence host physiology, behavior, and health. Despite the importance of gut microbes to metazoans, our understanding of the changes in diversity and composition across the alimentary tract, and the source of the resident community are limited. Here, using community metagenomics and 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we assess microbial community diversity and coding potential in the foregut, midgut, and hindgut of a juvenile Panchlora cockroach, which resides in the refuse piles of the leaf-cutter ant species Atta colombica. We found a significant shift in the microbial community structure and coding potential throughout the three gut sections of Panchlora sp., and through comparison with previously generated metagenomes of the cockroach's food source and niche, we reveal that this shift in microbial community composition is influenced by the ecosystems in which Panchlora sp. occurs. While the foregut is composed of microbes that likely originate from the symbiotic fungus gardens of the ants, the midgut and hindgut are composed of a microbial community that is likely cockroach-specific. Analogous to mammalian systems, the midgut and hindgut appear to be dominated by Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes with the capacity for polysaccharide degradation, suggesting they may assist in the degradation of dietary plant material. Our work underscores the prominence of community changes throughout gut microbiomes and highlights ecological factors that underpin the structure and function of the symbiotic microbial communities of metazoans.
对肠道微生物群的研究揭示了这些群落的多样性和基因内容，并有助于我们理解宿主相关微生物如何影响宿主的生理、行为和健康。尽管肠道微生物对后生动物很重要，但我们对整个消化道中微生物多样性和组成的变化以及常驻群落的来源的了解仍然有限。在这里，我们使用群落宏基因组学和16S rRNA基因测序，评估了一种幼年潘氏蜚蠊前肠、中肠和后肠中的微生物群落多样性和编码潜力，这种蜚蠊生活在切叶蚁物种哥伦比亚切叶蚁的垃圾堆中。我们发现，在潘氏蜚蠊的三个肠道部分中，微生物群落结构和编码潜力发生了显著变化，通过与之前生成的蜚蠊食物来源和生态位的宏基因组进行比较，我们发现这种微生物群落组成的变化受到潘氏蜚蠊所处生态系统的影响。前肠由可能起源于蚂蚁共生真菌园的微生物组成，而中肠和后肠则由可能是蜚蠊特有的微生物群落组成。与哺乳动物系统类似，中肠和后肠似乎以具有多糖降解能力的厚壁菌门和拟杆菌门为主，这表明它们可能有助于降解饮食中的植物物质。我们的研究强调了整个肠道微生物群中群落变化的突出性，并突出了后生动物共生微生物群落结构和功能的生态因素。
