Comparative Study On Gut Microbial Diversity Of Humans,Rhesus Macaques And Dogs In Different Altitude Environments

Microbial communities coexist in the gastrointestinal tract of animal,playing an important role in host immunological,physiological,metabolic and behavioral.Numerous studies have demonstrated that host diet and phylogeny as the two major forces modulate the animal intestinal microbiome.However,few literatures had proposed a unified framework to separate out the effects of host diet and evolutionary history to the diversity of gut microbiota.Meanwhile,studying on microbial diversity and composition of high-altitude mammals are largely lacking.we compared three species of mammal that shared the similar diets or proximate phylogeny.In this study,humans,dogs and rhesus macaques in high-altitude and low-altitude environment were used to study the difference of intestinal microbial composition of 134 samples by high-throughput sequencing of V3-V4 region of 16 s rRNA.The differences in the composition of intestinal microbiome were compared and studied.The following results are obtained:Our data strongly suggest that there was more similar diversity between humans and dogs than that of human and rhesus macaques.Notably,the gut microbiota of monkeys has a high alpha diversity and the three mammals living at high-altitude have higher microbial species richness than living at low-altitude.Through the classification and identification of OTUs,it was found that there were significant differences among the three mammals at phylum,family and genus,and there were significant differences in the composition of gut microbiota in the same species at high and low altitude.The phylum level,the three mammals gut microbiome communities were dominated by Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes,and the gut microbiota differences between high and low altitude samples was significant.The family level,the abundance of Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae were highest in rhesus macaques.The genus level,about 10% of the sequences at the level of 3 genera are unannotated,and Prevotella is the most abundant genus,with the highest relative abundance in the three mammals.Interestingly,in high-altitude groups “common OTUs”shared by human,dogs,and rhesus macaques,with a total of 535 OTUs detected,over four times more than“common OTUs” in low-altitude groups(125).Through the functional prediction and analysis of the related microbiota by PICRUSt method,it was found that Functions enriched in humans were involved in a wide range of processes,for instance,Membrane Transport,Carbohydrate Metabolism,Amino Acid Metabolism,Replication and Repair,Translation,Energy Metabolism.Therefore,Humans share more similar gut microbiota features with dogs,than with phylogenetically close of rhesus monkeys,which suggests diet had a stronger influence than host phylogeny on shaping gut microbial communities.Significant convergent evolution of intestinal microflora in humans and dogs.The changes of the gut microbiota were mainly caused by the differences in diet,and which can help the host adapt to the high-altitude environments.The results show that the gut microbiome communities plays an important role in the adaptability of the host to the high-altitude environment.