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Genetic diversity and mother-child overlap of the gut associated microbiota determined by reduced genome sequencing
Anuradha ravi, Ekaterina avershina, Inga leena angell, Jane ludvigsen, Prashanth manohar, Sumathi padmanaban, Ramesh nachimuthu, Knut rudi
Published in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Abstract
ABSTRACT The genetic diversity and sharing of the mother-child associated microbiota remain largely unexplored. This severely limits our functional understanding of gut microbiota transmission patterns. The aim of our work was therefore to use a novel reduced metagenome sequencing in combination with shotgun and 16S rRNA gene sequencing to determine both the metagenome genetic diversity and the mother-to-child sharing of the microbiota. For a cohort of 17 mother-child pairs we found an increase of the collective metagenome size from about 100 Mbp for 4-day-old children to about 500 Mbp for mothers. The 4-day-old children shared 7% of the metagenome sequences with the mothers, while the metagenome sequence sharing was more than 30% among the mothers. We found 15 genomes shared across more than 50% of the mothers, of which 10 belonged to Clostridia . Only Bacteroides showed a direct mother-child association, with B. vulgatus being abundant in both 4-day-old children and mothers. In conclusion, our results support a common pool of gut bacteria that are transmitted from adults to infants, with most of the bacteria being transmitted at a stage after delivery.
About the journal
PublisherCold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Open Access0