Improved resolution of bacteria by high throughput sequence analysis of the rRNA internal transcribed spacer.

Current high throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are limited in their ability to resolve bacteria at or below the genus level. While the impact of this limitation may be relatively minor in whole-community analyses, it constrains the use of HTS as a tool for identifying and examining individual bacteria of interest. The limited resolution is a consequence of both short read lengths and insufficient sequence variation within the commonly targeted variable regions of the small-subunit rRNA (SSU) gene. The goal of this work was to improve the resolving power of bacterial HTS. We developed an assay targeting the hypervariable rRNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region residing between the SSU and large-subunit (LSU) rRNA genes. Comparisons of the ITS region and two SSU regions using annotated bacterial genomes in GenBank showed much greater resolving power is possible with the ITS region. This report presents a new HTS method for analyzing bacterial composition with improved capabilities. The greater resolving power enabled by the ITS region arises from its high sequence variation across a wide range of bacterial taxa and an associated decrease in taxonomic heterogeneity within its OTUs. Although the method should be adaptable to any HTS platform, this report presents PCR primers, amplification parameters, and protocols for Illumina-based analyses.

Integrative analysis of the microbiome and metabolome of the human intestinal mucosal surface reveals exquisite inter-relationships.

BACKGROUND: Consistent compositional shifts in the gut microbiota are observed in IBD and other chronic intestinal disorders and may contribute to pathogenesis. The identities of microbial biomolecular mechanisms and metabolic products responsible for disease phenotypes remain to be determined, as do the means by which such microbial functions may be therapeutically modified. RESULTS: The composition of the microbiota and metabolites in gut microbiome samples in 47 subjects were determined. Samples were obtained by endoscopic mucosal lavage from the cecum and sigmoid colon regions, and each sample was sequenced using the 16S rRNA gene V4 region (Illumina-HiSeq 2000 platform) and assessed by UPLC mass spectroscopy. Spearman correlations were used to identify widespread, statistically significant microbial-metabolite relationships. Metagenomes for identified microbial OTUs were imputed using PICRUSt, and KEGG metabolic pathway modules for imputed genes were assigned using HUMAnN. The resulting metabolic pathway abundances were mostly concordant with metabolite data. Analysis of the metabolome-driven distribution of OTU phylogeny and function revealed clusters of clades that were both metabolically and metagenomically similar. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that microbes are syntropic with mucosal metabolome composition and therefore may be the source of and/or dependent upon gut epithelial metabolites. The consistent relationship between inferred metagenomic function and assayed metabolites suggests that metagenomic composition is predictive to a reasonable degree of microbial community metabolite pools. The finding that certain metabolites strongly correlate with microbial community structure raises the possibility of targeting metabolites for monitoring and/or therapeutically manipulating microbial community function in IBD and other chronic diseases.