Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Elife. 2021 Mar 23;10:e60197. doi: 10.7554/eLife.60197.
Domesticated animals experienced profound changes in diet, environment, and social interactions that likely shaped their gut microbiota and were potentially analogous to ecological changes experienced by humans during industrialization. Comparing the gut microbiota of wild and domesticated mammals plus chimpanzees and humans, we found a strong signal of domestication in overall gut microbial community composition and similar changes in composition with domestication and industrialization. Reciprocal diet switches within mouse and canid dyads demonstrated the critical role of diet in shaping the domesticated gut microbiota. Notably, we succeeded in recovering wild-like microbiota in domesticated mice through experimental colonization. Although fundamentally different processes, we conclude that domestication and industrialization have impacted the gut microbiota in related ways, likely through shared ecological change. Our findings highlight the utility, and limitations, of domesticated animal models for human research and the importance of studying wild animals and non-industrialized humans for interrogating signals of host-microbial coevolution.
家养动物的饮食、环境和社会互动经历了深刻的变化，这些变化可能塑造了它们的肠道微生物群，并与人类在工业化过程中经历的生态变化具有潜在的相似性。通过比较野生和家养哺乳动物（包括黑猩猩和人类）的肠道微生物群，我们发现了一个强烈的驯化信号，表明肠道微生物群落的整体组成发生了变化，而且随着驯化和工业化的进行，这种变化也很相似。在小鼠和犬科动物的对偶中进行的互惠饮食转换实验证明了饮食在塑造驯化肠道微生物群中的关键作用。值得注意的是，我们通过实验定植成功地在驯化的小鼠中恢复了类似野生的微生物群。尽管这是两个截然不同的过程，但我们得出结论，驯化和工业化以相关的方式影响了肠道微生物群，可能是通过共同的生态变化。我们的研究结果突出了利用家养动物模型进行人类研究的实用性和局限性，以及研究野生动物和非工业化人类对于探究宿主-微生物共同进化信号的重要性。
