Intestinal Microbiota in Early Life and Its Implications on Childhood Health

Trillions of microbes reside in the human body and participate in multiple physiological and pathophysiological processes that affect host health throughout the life cycle. The microbiome is hallmarked by distinctive compositional and functional features across different life periods.Accumulating evidence has shown that microbes residing in the human body may play fundamental roles in infant development and the maturation of the immune system. Gut microbes are thought to be essential for the facilitation of infantile and childhood development and immunity by assisting in breaking down food substances to liberate nutrients, protecting against pathogens, stimulating or modulating the immune system, and exerting control over the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis.This review aims to summarize the current understanding of the colonization and development of the gut microbiota in early life, highlighting the recent findings regarding the role of intestinal microbes in pediatric diseases. Furthermore, we also discuss the microbiota-mediated therapeutics that can reconfigure bacterial communities to treat dysbiosis.     

Characterizing symbiont inheritance during host–microbiota evolution: Application to the great apes gut microbiota

Microbiota play a central role in the functioning of multicellular life, yet understanding their inheritance during host evolutionary history remains an important challenge. Symbiotic microorganisms are either acquired from the environment during the life of the host (i.e. environmental acquisition), transmitted across generations with a faithful association with their hosts (i.e. strict vertical transmission), or transmitted with occasional host switches (i.e. vertical transmission with horizontal switches). These different modes of inheritance affect microbes’ diversification, which at the two extremes can be independent from that of their associated host or follow host diversification. The few existing quantitative tools for investigating the inheritance of symbiotic organisms rely on cophylogenetic approaches, which require knowledge of both host and symbiont phylogenies, and are therefore often not well adapted to DNA metabarcoding microbial data. Here, we develop a model‐based framework for identifying vertically transmitted microbial taxa. We consider a model for the evolution of microbial sequences on a fixed host phylogeny that includes vertical transmission and horizontal host switches. This model allows estimating the number of host switches and testing for strict vertical transmission and independent evolution. We test our approach using simulations. Finally, we illustrate our framework on gut microbiota high‐throughput sequencing data of the family Hominidae and identify several microbial taxonomic units, including fibrolytic bacteria involved in carbohydrate digestion, that tend to be vertically transmitted.     

基于高通量测序的精神分裂症患者 肠道菌群多样性

目的探讨精神分裂症患者肠道菌群多样性变化。方法收集16例精神分裂症患者(schizophrenia,Sch)与18例健康者(healthy donor,HD)的粪便样本,提取肠道菌群基因组,扩增16SrRNA基因,运用Illumina平台进行测序。对测序结果进行多样性和物种组成差异分析。结果精神分裂症患者组肠道菌群在门、纲、目、科、属、种、分类操作单元(operational taxonomic units,OTUs)水平的群落种类数目少于健康对照组。Alpha多样性指标中患者组的Ace指数(226.58±31.67)、Chao1指数(222.29±34.45)和Shannon指数(2.66±0.69)明显低于健康对照组(293.63±56.07、302.2±57.99、3.59±0.36),差异均有统计学意义(Ps0.001),而Simpson指数(0.20±0.17)明显高于健康对照组(0.07±0.03),差异有统计学意义(P0.01);Beta多样性分析显示两组研究对象肠道菌群样本可被鉴别区分。精神分裂症患者组与健康对照组样本在门和属水平上肠道菌群组成和含量有差异,其中患者组拟杆菌门和软壁菌门占比明显低于健康组,差异有统计学意义(21.76%vs.27.05%,P=0.008;0.00%vs.0.20%,P=0.033),而放线菌门明显高于健康组(13.52%vs.2.88%,P=0.020),差异有统计学意义;患者组拟杆菌属和柔嫩梭菌属占比明显低于健康组(9.15%vs.20.60%,P=0.031;3.29%vs.9.58%,P=0.005),差异有统计学意义,而双歧杆菌属、普雷沃菌属和巨单胞菌属明显高于健康组(10.89%vs.1.78%,P=0.025;10.88%vs.1.98%,P=0.046;10.78%vs.2.69%,P=0.026),差异有统计学意义。结论基于16SrRNA的高通量测序有助于分析精神分裂症患者肠道菌群多样性变化,为研究肠道菌群与精神分裂症的关系提供新的思路和理论依据。     

结直肠癌与肠道菌群

肠道是集消化、吸收、内分泌、免疫、屏障等功能为一体的重要器官,肠道菌群的结构和功能与人体的健康、疾病的发生发展及机体的快速康复息息相关。结直肠癌变是个逐步发生发展的过程,从局部炎性反应、腺瘤、癌前病变到恶化的过程可达数年甚至数十年之久。结肠癌早期临床症状不明显且潜伏期较长,容易造成漏诊和误诊,贻误最佳治疗时机。近年来,国内外多项研究显示大肠埃希菌、粪肠球菌、脆弱拟杆菌、解没食子酸链球菌、具核梭杆菌等细菌与结直肠癌的发生发展关系密切,这为我们从另外一个角度来进行结直肠癌早期诊断提供了新思路和新途径。