School of Life Sciences, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong, China.
PeerJ. 2023 Nov 6;11:e16365. doi: 10.7717/peerj.16365. eCollection 2023.
Typing analysis has become a popular approach to categorize individual differences in studies of animal gut microbial communities. However, previous definitions of gut microbial types were more understood as a passive reaction process to different external interferences, as most studies involve diverse environmental variables. We wondered whether distinct gut microbial types can also occur in animals under the same external environment. Moreover, the role of host sex in shaping gut microbiota has been widely reported; thus, the current study preliminarily explores the effects of sex on potential different microbial types.
Here, adult striped hamsters of different sexes were housed under the same controlled laboratory conditions, and their fecal samples were collected after two months to assess the gut microbiota by 16S rRNA sequencing.
The gut microbiota of captive striped hamsters naturally separated into two types at the amplicon sequence variant (ASV) level. There was a significant difference in the Shannon index among these two types. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve showed that the top 30 ASVs could effectively distinguish each type. Linear discriminant analysis of effect size (LEfSe) showed enrichment of the genera , and in one gut microbial type and enrichment of the genera and in the other. The former type had higher carbohydrate metabolism ability, while the latter harbored a more complex co-occurrence network and higher amino acid metabolism ability. The gut microbial types were not associated with sex; however, we did find sex differences in the relative abundances of certain bacterial taxa, including some type-specific sex variations.
Although captive animals live in a unified environment, their gut bacteria can still differentiate into distinct types, but the sex of the hosts may not play an important role in the typing process of small-scale captive animal communities. The relevant driving factors as well as other potential types need to be further investigated to better understand host-microbe interactions.
在研究动物肠道微生物群落的个体差异时，分型分析已成为一种流行的方法。然而，之前对肠道微生物类型的定义更多地被理解为对不同外部干扰的被动反应过程，因为大多数研究涉及到多种环境变量。我们想知道在相同的外部环境下，动物是否也会出现不同的肠道微生物类型。此外，宿主性别在塑造肠道微生物群方面的作用已被广泛报道；因此，本研究初步探讨了性别对潜在不同微生物类型的影响。
在这里，不同性别的成年条纹仓鼠被安置在相同的控制实验室条件下，两个月后收集它们的粪便样本，通过 16S rRNA 测序来评估肠道微生物群。
圈养条纹仓鼠的肠道微生物群在扩增子序列变异 (ASV) 水平上自然分为两种类型。这两种类型的 Shannon 指数存在显著差异。受试者工作特征 (ROC) 曲线表明，前 30 个 ASVs 可以有效地区分每种类型。线性判别分析效应量 (LEfSe) 显示，一个肠道微生物类型中 、 和 的丰度增加，而另一个类型中 、 和 的丰度增加。前者具有更高的碳水化合物代谢能力，而后者具有更复杂的共生网络和更高的氨基酸代谢能力。肠道微生物类型与性别无关；然而，我们确实发现某些细菌分类群的相对丰度存在性别差异，包括一些特定类型的性别变化。
尽管圈养动物生活在统一的环境中，但它们的肠道细菌仍然可以分化为不同的类型，但宿主的性别可能在小规模圈养动物群落的分型过程中不起重要作用。需要进一步研究相关驱动因素以及其他潜在类型，以更好地理解宿主-微生物相互作用。
