Metagenomic Analysis of the Human Distal Gut Microbiome

Overview

Journal Science

Specialty Science

Date 2006 Jun 3

PMID 16741115

Citations 1874

Authors

Steven R Gill

Mihai Pop

Robert T DeBoy

Paul B Eckburg

Peter J Turnbaugh

Buck S Samuel

Jeffrey I Gordon

David A Relman

Claire M Fraser-Liggett

Karen E Nelson

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The human intestinal microbiota is composed of 10(13) to 10(14) microorganisms whose collective genome ("microbiome") contains at least 100 times as many genes as our own genome. We analyzed approximately 78 million base pairs of unique DNA sequence and 2062 polymerase chain reaction-amplified 16S ribosomal DNA sequences obtained from the fecal DNAs of two healthy adults. Using metabolic function analyses of identified genes, we compared our human genome with the average content of previously sequenced microbial genomes. Our microbiome has significantly enriched metabolism of glycans, amino acids, and xenobiotics; methanogenesis; and 2-methyl-d-erythritol 4-phosphate pathway-mediated biosynthesis of vitamins and isoprenoids. Thus, humans are superorganisms whose metabolism represents an amalgamation of microbial and human attributes.

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