scholarly journals Comment on “Seasonal cycling in the gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie L. Schnorr ◽  
Marco Candela ◽  
Simone Rampelli ◽  
Silvia Turroni ◽  
Amanda G. Henry ◽  
...  

AbstractIn a recent paper, Smits et al. (Science, 25 August 2017, p. 802) report on seasonal changes in the gut microbiome of Hadza hunter-gatherers. They argue that seasonal volatility of some bacterial taxa corresponds to seasonal dietary changes. We address the authors’ insufficient reporting of relevant data and problematic areas in their assumptions about Hadza diet that yield inconsistencies in their results and interpretations.

BMC Genomics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xue Zhu ◽  
Jiyue Qin ◽  
Chongyang Tan ◽  
Kang Ning

Abstract Background Most studies investigating human gut microbiome dynamics are conducted on humans living in an urban setting. However, few studies have researched the gut microbiome of the populations living traditional lifestyles. These understudied populations are arguably better subjects in answering human-gut microbiome evolution because of their lower exposure to antibiotics and higher dependence on natural resources. Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania have exhibited high biodiversity and seasonal patterns in their gut microbiome composition at the family level, where some taxa disappear in one season and reappear later. Such seasonal changes have been profiled, but the nucleotide changes remain unexplored at the genome level. Thus, it is still elusive how microbial communities change with seasonal changes at the genome level. Results In this study, we performed a strain-level single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis on 40 Hadza fecal metagenome samples spanning three seasons. With more SNP presented in the wet season, eight prevalent species have significant SNP enrichment with the increasing number of SNP calling by VarScan2, among which only three species have relatively high abundances. Eighty-three genes have the most SNP distributions between the wet season and dry season. Many of these genes are derived from Ruminococcus obeum, and mainly participated in metabolic pathways including carbon metabolism, pyruvate metabolism, and glycolysis. Conclusions Eight prevalent species have significant SNP enrichments with the increasing number of SNP, among which only Eubacterium biforme, Eubacterium hallii and Ruminococcus obeum have relatively high species abundances. Many genes in the microbiomes also presented characteristic SNP distributions between the wet season and the dry season. This implies that the seasonal changes might indirectly impact the mutation patterns for specific species and functions for the gut microbiome of the population that lives in traditional lifestyles through changing the diet in wet and dry seasons, indicating the role of these variants in these species’ adaptation to the changing environment and diets.


1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
June Nutter

Dietary intakes of 24 female athletes in various sports were compared inseason and postseason to those reported by 24 nonathletes during the same time period. Diets were analyzed for energy, carbohydrate, fat, protein, vitamins A and C, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folacin, calcium, and iron. During the study, the athletes' and nonathletes' diets were similar. Their energy intakes were lower than recommended while their iron and calcium intakes were marginal (less than 70% of the recommended dietary allowance). Although few dietary changes were observed, the nonathletes' diets changed more than those of the athletes during the study. Both groups reduced their energy intakes but only the nonathletes' reduction was significant. Initially many subjects were dieting. More subjects reported dieting during the second recording period. These results suggest that the desire to be thin may influence dietary intakes of female athletes more than changes in exercise training.


mSystems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. e00815-20
Author(s):  
Ashok K. Sharma ◽  
Klara Petrzelkova ◽  
Barbora Pafco ◽  
Carolyn A. Jost Robinson ◽  
Terence Fuh ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTCompared with urban-industrial populations, small-scale human communities worldwide share a significant number of gut microbiome traits with nonhuman primates. This overlap is thought to be driven by analogous dietary triggers; however, the ecological and functional bases of this similarity are not fully understood. To start addressing this issue, fecal metagenomes of BaAka hunter-gatherers and traditional Bantu agriculturalists from the Central African Republic were profiled and compared with those of a sympatric western lowland gorilla group (Gorillagorilla gorilla) across two seasons of variable dietary intake. Results show that gorilla gut microbiomes shared similar functional traits with each human group, depending on seasonal dietary behavior. Specifically, parallel microbiome traits were observed between hunter-gatherers and gorillas when the latter consumed more structural polysaccharides during dry seasons, while small-scale agriculturalist and gorilla microbiomes showed significant functional overlap when gorillas consumed more seasonal ripe fruit during wet seasons. Notably, dominance of microbial transporters, transduction systems, and gut xenobiotic metabolism was observed in association with traditional agriculture and energy-dense diets in gorillas at the expense of a functional microbiome repertoire capable of metabolizing more complex polysaccharides. Differential abundance of bacterial taxa that typically distinguish traditional from industrialized human populations (e.g., Prevotella spp.) was also recapitulated in the human and gorilla groups studied, possibly reflecting the degree of polysaccharide complexity included in each group’s dietary niche. These results show conserved functional gut microbiome adaptations to analogous diets in small-scale human populations and nonhuman primates, highlighting the role of plant dietary polysaccharides and diverse environmental exposures in this convergence.IMPORTANCE The results of this study highlight parallel gut microbiome traits in human and nonhuman primates, depending on subsistence strategy. Although these similarities have been reported before, the functional and ecological bases of this convergence are not fully understood. Here, we show that this parallelism is, in part, likely modulated by the complexity of plant carbohydrates consumed and by exposures to diverse xenobiotics of natural and artificial origin. Furthermore, we discuss how divergence from these parallel microbiome traits is typically associated with adverse health outcomes in human populations living under culturally westernized subsistence patterns. This is important information as we trace the specific dietary and environmental triggers associated with the loss and gain of microbial functions as humans adapt to various dietary niches.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
LC Conteville ◽  
J Oliveira-Ferreira ◽  
AC Vicente

AbstractBackgroundHuman gut microbiome profiles have been associated with human health and disease. These profiles have been defined based on microbes’ taxonomy and more recently, on their functionality. Human groups that still maintain traditional modes of subsistence (hunter-gatherers and rural agriculturalists) represent the groups non-impacted by urban-industrialized lifestyles, and therefore study them provide the basis for understanding the human microbiome evolution. The Yanomami is the largest semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer group of the Americas, exploring different niches of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Venezuela. In order to extend the analysis of this unique and diverse group, we focused on the gut microbiome of the Yanomami from Brazil and compared with those from Venezuela, and also with other traditional groups from the Amazon, considering taxonomic and functional profiles.ResultsA diversity of taxonomic biomarkers were identified to each South American traditional group studied, including the two Yanomami groups, despite their overall similarity in the taxonomic gut microbiome profiles. Broader levels of functional categories poorly discriminated traditional and urban-industrialized groups. Interestingly, a diversity was observed with the stratification of these categories, clearly segregating those groups. The Yanomami/Brazil gut microbiome presented unique functional features, such as a higher abundance of gene families involved in regulation/cell signaling, motility/chemotaxis, and virulence, contrasting with the microbiomes from the Yanomami/Venezuela and other groups.ConclusionsOur study revealed biomarkers, taxonomic and functional differences between the gut microbiome of Yanomami/Brazil and Yanomami/Venezuela individuals. This intra-Yanomami group diversity was accessed due to the increase number of individuals and group studied. These differences may reflect their semi-nomadic behavior, as well as, the local and seasonal diversity of the vast rainforest niche they explore, despite their shared cultural and genetic background. Overall, their microbiome profiles are shared with South American and African traditional groups, probably due to their lifestyle. The unique features identified within the Yanomami highlight the bias imposed by underrepresented sampling, and factors such as variations over space and time (seasonality) that impact, mainly, the hunter-gatherers. Therefore, to reach knowledge about human microbiome variations and their implications in human health, it is essential to enlarge data concerning the number of individuals, as well as the groups representing different lifestyles.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie L. Schnorr ◽  
Marco Candela ◽  
Simone Rampelli ◽  
Manuela Centanni ◽  
Clarissa Consolandi ◽  
...  

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 357 (6353) ◽  
pp. 802-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel A. Smits ◽  
Jeff Leach ◽  
Erica D. Sonnenburg ◽  
Carlos G. Gonzalez ◽  
Joshua S. Lichtman ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasun H. Bodawatta ◽  
Inga Freiberga ◽  
Katerina Puzejova ◽  
Katerina Sam ◽  
Michael Poulsen ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Gut microbial communities play important roles in nutrient management and can change in response to host diets. The extent of this flexibility and the concomitant resilience is largely unknown in wild animals. To begin untangling the dynamics of avian-gut microbiome symbiosis associated with diet changes, we exposed Parus major (Great tits) fed with a standard diet (seeds and mealworms) to either a mixed (seeds, mealworms and fruits), a seed, or a mealworm diet for four weeks, and examined the flexibility of gut microbiomes to these compositionally different diets. To assess microbiome resilience (recovery potential), all individuals were subsequently reversed to a standard diet for another four weeks. Cloacal microbiomes were collected weekly and characterised through sequencing the v4 region of the 16S rRNA gene using Illumina MiSeq. Results: Initial microbiomes changed significantly with the diet manipulation but the communities did not differ significantly between the three diet groups (mixed, seed and mealworm), despite multiple diet-specific changes of specific bacterial genera. Reverting birds to the standard diet led to only a partial recovery in gut community compositions. The majority of the bacterial taxa that increased significantly during diet manipulation decreased in relative abundances after reversion to the standard diet; however, bacterial taxa that decreased during the manipulation rarely increased after diet reversal.Conclusions: The gut microbial response and partial resilience to dietary changes support that gut bacterial communities of P. major play a role in accommodating dietary changes experienced by wild avian hosts. This may be a contributing factor to the relaxed association between microbiome composition and bird phylogeny. Our findings further imply that interpretations of wild bird gut microbiome analyses from single-time point sampling, especially for omnivorous species or species that have changing seasonal diets, should be done with caution. The partial community recovery implies that ecologically relevant diet changes (e.g., seasonality and migration) open up gut niches that may be filled by previously abundant microbes or replaced by different symbiont lineages, which has important implications for the integrity and specificity of long-term avian-symbiont associations.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyue Qin ◽  
Chongyang Tan ◽  
Kang Ning

AbstractMost studies investigating human gut microbiome dynamics are conducted in modern populations. However, unindustrialized populations are arguably better subjects in answering human-gut microbiome coevolution questions due to their lower exposure to antibiotics and higher dependence on natural resources. Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania have been found to exhibit high biodiversity and seasonal patterns in their gut microbiome composition at family level, where some taxa disappear in one season and reappear at later time. However, such seasonal changes have previously been profiled only according to species abundances, with genome-level variant dynamics unexplored. As a result it is still elusive how microbial communities change at the genome-level under environmental pressures caused by seasonal changes. Here, a strain-level SNP analysis of Hadza gut metagenome is performed for 40 Hadza fecal samples collected in three seasons. First, we benchmarked three SNP calling tools based on simulated sequencing reads, and selected VarScan2 that has highest accuracy and sensitivity after a filtering step. Second, we applied VarScan2 on Hadza gut microbiome, with results showing that: with more SNP presented in wet season in general, eight prevalent species have significant SNP enrichments in wet season of which only three species have relatively high abundances. This indicates that SNP characteristics are independent of species abundances, and provides us a unique lens towards microbial community dynamics. Finally, we identify 83 genes with the most characteristic SNP distributions between wet season and dry season. Many of these genes are from Ruminococcus obeum, and mainly from metabolic pathways like carbon metabolism, pyruvate metabolism and glycolysis, as shown by KEGG annotation. This implies that the seasonal changes might indirectly impact the mutational patterns for specific species and functions for gut microbiome of an unindustrialized population, indicating the role of these variants in their adaptation to the changing environment and diets.ImportanceBy analyzing the changes of SNP enrichments in different seasons, we have found that SNP characteristics are independent of species abundances, and could provide us a unique lens towards microbial community dynamics at the genomic level. Many of the genes in microbiome also presented characteristic SNP distributions between wet season and dry season, indicating the role of variants in specific species in their adaptation to the changing environment for an unindustrialized population.


Author(s):  
Santanu Das ◽  
Tahila Andrighettti ◽  
João Sabino ◽  
Tamas Korcsmaros ◽  
Mojibur Rohman Khan ◽  
...  

The mammalian gut ecosystem plays critical roles in multiple functions related to health and homeostasis. In many cases, disturbances in the gut ecosystem are associated with a large number of metabolic and chronic diseases and disorders such as diabetes, cancer, and obesity. A diverse community of microorganisms ranging from viruses to bacteria comprise the gut microbiota, which is often considered as an organ in itself. Recent studies have profiled the influence of lifestyles and dietary behavior by comparing the gut microbiome of populations with different cultural underpinnings. In this review, we provide an overview of the studies which report the influence on the gut microbial composition of dietary and lifestyle patterns in different contexts such as western industrialized countries and indigenous cultures (corresponding to different lifestyle gradients such as hunter-gatherers and pastoralists) and how this association may influence health and disease.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document