ena-STUDY-Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology, CAS-27-10-2017-03:55:28:920-747
The link between gut microbiota and urbanization
Urbanization is associated with shifts in human lifestyles, which may influence the diversity, interaction and assembly of gut microbiota. However, the question how the gut microbiota is impacted by human adaptation to varying lifestyles is still elusive. To understand the relationship between gut microbiota and urbanization, we compared the diversity, interaction and assembly of gut microbial communities of herdsmen from three regions with different levels of urbanization, including traditional herdsmen (TH), semi-urban herdsmen (SUH) and urban herdsmen (UH). The relative abundance of Prevotella increased with the degree of urbanization (from TH to UH), while Bacteroides, Faecalibacterium and Blautia showed the opposite trend. Although the alpha diversity measures (observed OTUs and phylogenetic diversity) of gut microbiota were not impacted by urbanization, while the beta diversity (Jaccard or Bray-Curtis distances) was significantly influenced by urbanization. Metagenome prediction showed those gene functions associated with metabolism (i.e. carbohydrate metabolism and lipid metabolism) had significant differences between TH and UH. Network analysis showed that the modularity of bacterial networks increased with the degree of urbanization, while the trend of network density was opposite. Notably, the relative importance of deterministic processes that governed the community assembly increased with the degree of urbanization. A quantification of ecological processes showed that there was a stronger signal of variable selection in the urban than traditional herdsmen. Our results suggested that beta diversity and interspecies interaction in gut microbiota may reflect the degree of urbanization, and highlight different selective pressures cause divergent gut community compositions in response to modern lifestyles.
Urbanization is associated with shifts in human lifestyles, which may influence the diversity, interaction and assembly of gut microbiota. However, the question how the gut microbiota is impacted by human adaptation to varying lifestyles is still elusive. To understand the relationship between gut microbiota and urbanization, we compared the diversity, interaction and assembly of gut microbial communities of herdsmen from three regions with different levels of urbanization, including traditional herdsmen (TH), semi-urban herdsmen (SUH) and urban herdsmen (UH). The relative abundance of Prevotella increased with the degree of urbanization (from TH to UH), while Bacteroides, Faecalibacterium and Blautia showed the opposite trend. Although the alpha diversity measures (observed OTUs and phylogenetic diversity) of gut microbiota were not impacted by urbanization, while the beta diversity (Jaccard or Bray-Curtis distances) was significantly influenced by urbanization. Metagenome prediction showed those gene functions associated with metabolism (i.e. carbohydrate metabolism and lipid metabolism) had significant differences between TH and UH. Network analysis showed that the modularity of bacterial networks increased with the degree of urbanization, while the trend of network density was opposite. Notably, the relative importance of deterministic processes that governed the community assembly increased with the degree of urbanization. A quantification of ecological processes showed that there was a stronger signal of variable selection in the urban than traditional herdsmen. Our results suggested that beta diversity and interspecies interaction in gut microbiota may reflect the degree of urbanization, and highlight different selective pressures cause divergent gut community compositions in response to modern lifestyles.