Growth dynamics of gut microbiota in health and disease inferred from single metagenomic samples.

Science
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Metagenomic sequencing increased our understanding of the role of the microbiome in health and disease, yet it only provides a snapshot of a highly dynamic ecosystem. Here, we show that the pattern of metagenomic sequencing read coverage for different microbial genomes contains a single trough and a single peak, the latter coinciding with the bacterial origin of replication. Furthermore, the ratio of sequencing coverage between the peak and trough provides a quantitative measure of a species' growth rate. We demonstrate this in vitro and in vivo, under different growth conditions, and in complex bacterial communities. For several bacterial species, peak-to-trough coverage ratios, but not relative abundances, correlated with the manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease and type II diabetes.

Year of Publication
2015
Journal
Science
Volume
349
Issue
6252
Pages
1101-6
Date Published
2015 Sep 04
ISSN
1095-9203
URL
DOI
10.1126/science.aac4812
PubMed ID
26229116
PubMed Central ID
PMC5087275
Links
Grant list
P30 DK043351 / DK / NIDDK NIH HHS / United States