Research Highlights

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  • Genetics

Published online: 10 March 2010 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2010.30

Genomics: Deciphering the gut flora

Felix Cheung

Introduction

© (2010) istockphoto.com/VikaValter

The countless microbes that reside in the gut have a profound influence on human physiology and nutrition. Even small changes in the gut microbe makeup can cause health problems, such as bowel diseases and obesity. To understand the impact of gut microbes on human well-being, Jun Wang and co-workers at BGI (formerly known as Beijing Genomic Institute) in Shenzhen¹ have sequenced the total DNA from faecal samples of 124 European individuals and assembled a human gut microbial gene catalogue.

The researchers used Illumina Genome Analyzer technology to sequence the total faecal DNA. They generated 576.7 gigabases of sequence data — 200 times more than in all previous studies. They then assembled the sequence data into longer segments and derived 3.3 million unique microbial genes — about 150 times the size of the human gene complement.

The researchers found that over 99% of the genes are of bacterial origin, indicating that the cohort of European individuals harboured 1,000–1,150 prevalent bacterial species in the gut. They estimated that the gene catalogue covers the majority (>86%) of prevalent gut microbial genes in the cohort.

The gene catalogue will help scientists unravel the link between gut microbes and human living habits in future studies.

The authors of this work are from:
BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China; European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany; VIB–Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; Hagedorn Research Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark; Hospital Universitari Val d'Hebron, Barcelona, Spain; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Jouy en Josas, France; School of Software Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China; Genome Research Institute, Shenzhen University Medical School, Shenzhen, China; Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark; Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Genoscope, Evry, France; Research Center for Prevention and Health, Glostrup, Denmark; Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK; Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Faculty of Health Science, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark.

Reference

1. Qin, J. et al. A human gut microbial gene catalogue established by metagenomic sequencing. Nature 464, 59–67 (2010). | Article | PubMed | OpenURL | | ChemPort |