生物谷报道：科学家在22日《科学》杂志上发表论文称肠道微生物群落与它们的宿主是共同进化的，并且受到宿主食物的强烈影响。
研究人员对范围广泛的哺乳动物的粪便进行了取样，这些哺乳动物包括从大鼠到熊猫到人类。通过对每一样本中所分离出的微生物的某些基因序列的分析，研究人员对存在于每种动物肠道中的属于不同门类的细菌和其它微生物进行了梳理分析。在同一种系的哺乳动物中，其肠道微生物群落相互之间没有多大的差别，这与它们是生活在野外或是在动物园中没有关系，就人类而言，其肠道微生物群落与那个人是吃肉或是素食者也没有关系。但是，不同种系动物的肠道微生物群落确实存在差别。一般来说，那些食肉动物的肠道微生物的差异最小，而食草动物之间的肠道微生物的差异则最大。研究人员报告说，人类肠道微菌群中存在的多样性在杂食性灵长类中是相当典型的。这些结果表明，肠道微菌群的进化是哺乳类动物在适应以植物为基础食物的成功进化过程中的一个重要部分。（生物谷www.bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Science，DOI: 10.1126/science.1155725，Ruth E. Ley，Jeffrey I. Gordon
Evolution of Mammals and Their Gut Microbes
Ruth E. Ley 1, Micah Hamady 2, Catherine Lozupone 3, Peter J. Turnbaugh 1, Rob Roy Ramey 4, J. Stephen Bircher 5, Michael L. Schlegel 6, Tammy A. Tucker 6, Mark D. Schrenzel 6, Rob Knight 7, Jeffrey I. Gordon 1*
1 Center for Genome Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63108, USA.
2 Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
3 Center for Genome Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63108, USA.; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
4 Wildlife Science International Inc., Nederland, CO 80466, USA.
5 St. Louis Zoological Park, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
6 Zoological Society of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92112, USA.
7 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Jeffrey I. Gordon , E-mail: jgordon@wustl.edu
Mammals are metagenomic in that they are composed not only of their own gene complements but also those of all of their associated microbes. To understand the co-evolution of the mammals and their indigenous microbial communities, we conducted a network-based analysis of bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences from the fecal microbiota of humans and 59 other mammalian species living in two zoos and the wild. The results indicate that host diet and phylogeny both influence bacterial diversity, which increases from carnivory to omnivory to herbivory, that bacterial communities co-diversified with their hosts, and that the gut microbiota of humans living a modern lifestyle is typical of omnivorous primates.
