Abstract
AbstractThe Bacteria Domain experienced an explosion of novel lineages identified within the last decade, especially of lineages made entirely of uncultured members. Since numerous cultivable bacteria have been shown to be instrumental in human development, health, and diseases, it is reasonable to speculate that strains from uncultured groups, which comprise nearly 80% of the human gut and 68% of human oral microbial consortia, participate in similar functions. The study of human-associated uncultured bacteria, however, has many practical limitations, such as access to patient samples, unpredictable microbial composition, and low relative abundance, all of which challenge experimental promptness and reproducibility. We propose that uncultured bacteria from environmental sources can serve as a model to better understand the roles their counterparts play in humans. In this study, we illustrate this concept using an environmental TM7 bacterium with &8805;98.5% 16S rDNA gene homology to a group of TM7 bacteria found in both the human oral cavity and skin. Our TM7 model was readily detectable with molecular techniques as viable cells in sludge and in quantities greater than its human-associated relatives. Our approach circumvents difficulties imposed by sampling humans until either a TM7 strain of interest is cultured or an alternative method is proposed.
Highlights
The Bacteria Domain experienced an explosion of novel lineages identified within the last decade, especially of lineages made entirely of uncultured members[1]
Since numerous cultivable bacteria have been shown to be instrumental in human development[2], health[3] and diseases[4,5], it is reasonable to speculate that strains from uncultured groups, which comprise nearly 80% of the human gut[6] and 68% of human oral[7] microbial consortia, participate in similar functions
We propose that uncultured bacteria from environmental sources can serve as a model to better understand the roles their counterparts play in humans
Summary
The Bacteria Domain experienced an explosion of novel lineages identified within the last decade, especially of lineages made entirely of uncultured members[1]. We illustrate this concept using an environmental TM7 bacterium with ≥98.5% 16S rDNA gene homology to a group of TM7 bacteria found in both the human oral cavity and skin. We established the evolutionary relationships among 16 of our TM7 sequences (5 from sludge and 11 from oral samples) against 239 publicly available TM7 reference sequences from a wide-range of environmental, animal, and human sources (Fig. 1).
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