Fecal metabolome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers: a host-microbiome integrative view.
The recent characterization of the gut microbiome of traditional rural and foraging societies allowed us to appreciate the essential co-adaptive role of the microbiome in complementing our physiology, opening up significant questions on how the microbiota changes that have occurred in industrialized urban populations may have altered the microbiota-host co-metabolic network, contributing to the growing list of Western diseases. Here, we applied a targeted metabolomics approach to profile the fecal metabolome of the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the world's few remaining foraging populations, and compared them to the profiles of urban living Italians, as representative of people in the post-industrialized West. Data analysis shows that during the rainy season, when the diet is primarily plant-based, Hadza are characterized by a distinctive enrichment in hexoses, glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, and acylcarnitines, while deplete in the most common natural amino acids and derivatives. Complementary to the documented unique metagenomic features of their gut microbiome, our findings on the Hadza metabolome lend support to the notion of an alternate microbiome configuration befitting of a nomadic forager lifestyle, which helps maintain metabolic homeostasis through an overall scarcity of inflammatory factors, which are instead highly represented in the Italian metabolome.
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Silvia
S
Turroni
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Jessica
J
Fiori
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Simone
S
Rampelli
Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
Stephanie L
SL
Schnorr
Institute of Biomedical Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Segrate, Milan 20090, Italy.
Clarissa
C
Consolandi
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Monica
M
Barone
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Elena
E
Biagi
Endocrinology Unit, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences and Center for Applied Biomedical Research, University of Bologna - S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, Bologna 40138, Italy.
Flaminia
F
Fanelli
Endocrinology Unit, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences and Center for Applied Biomedical Research, University of Bologna - S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, Bologna 40138, Italy.
Marco
M
Mezzullo
Metabolism, Anthropometry, and Nutrition Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5003, USA.
Alyssa N
AN
Crittenden
Plant Foods in Hominin Dietary Ecology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
Amanda G
AG
Henry
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Patrizia
P
Brigidi
Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy.
Marco
M
Candela
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005075:Biological Evolution; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004032:Diet; D017753:Ecosystem; D005243:Feces / Q000737:chemistry / Q000382:microbiology*; D000069196:Gastrointestinal Microbiome; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008019:Life Style; D055442:Metabolome; D055432:Metabolomics; D056186:Metagenomics; D064307:Microbiota; D008875:Middle Aged; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D013636:Tanzania; D055815:Young Adult