Microbiome Seminar: Ruth Ley, PhD, Max Planck Inst. | Association Of Gut Microbiota With Human Hosts

The Association of Gut Microbiota With Human Hosts Over Long Time Scales: Evidence and Implications by Ruth Ley, PhD, Director of the Department of Microbiome Science at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen

Some members of the gut microbiota have been shown to have co-diversified with the mammalian species they inhabit. This is evident from matching phylogenies between strains of specific bacterial species and the host species. In humans, the stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori exhibits geographic patterns of strain diversity that are consistent with patterns of human migration. Although different human populations have been shown to harbor distinct strains of other gut bacterial species, whether differences in human genotypes underlie these strain differences remains to be evaluated. We used matching sets of human genotype data and gut metagenome data to search for gut bacteria exhibiting patterns of cophylogeny between and within human host populations. Results for about a dozen gut bacterial species are consistent for cophylogeny between and within human populations. Implications for evolutionary biology as well as human health are discussed.