Abstract
Poor health and malnutrition in preschool children are longstanding problems in Bangladesh. Gut microbiota plays a tremendous role in nutrient absorption and determining the state of health. In this study, metagenomic tool was employed to assess the gut microbiota composition of healthy and malnourished children. DNA was extracted from fecal samples of seven healthy and seven malnourished children (n = 14; age 2–3 years) were analyzed for the variable region of 16S rRNA genes by universal primer PCR followed by high-throughput 454 parallel sequencing to identify the bacterial phyla and genera. Our results reveal that the healthy children had a significantly higher number of operational taxonomic unit in their gut than that of the malnourished children (healthy vs. malnourished: 546 vs. 310). In malnourished children, bacterial population of the phyla Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes accounted for 46 and 18%, respectively. Conversely, in healthy children, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes accounted for 5% and 44, respectively (p < 0.001). In malnourished children, the phylum Proteobacteria included pathogenic genera, namely Klebsiella and Escherichia, which were 174-fold and 9-fold higher, respectively, than their healthy counterpart. The predominance of potentially pathogenic Proteobacteria and minimal level of Bacteroidetes as commensal microbiota might be associated to the ill health of malnourished children in Bangladesh.
Highlights
The human gastrointestinal tract harbors a diverse microbial community throughout its extent, which support their hosts mostly for healthy living
The data presented in this study provide important insights into the distinctive compositions of colonic microbiota, showing that the healthy children possessed significantly higher number of operational taxonomic unit (OTU) in their gut than that of the malnourished children in Bangladesh, a developing country of 160 million people, where poor child health and malnutrition are recognized as a longstanding problem
Our results appeared in line with the results presented in some other studies in which bacteria of these four phyla were shown to represent the largest part of the human gut www.frontiersin.org microbiota (Backhed et al, 2005; Qin et al, 2010)
Summary
The human gastrointestinal tract harbors a diverse microbial community throughout its extent, which support their hosts mostly for healthy living. The colon of a healthy human adult harbors around 400–500 different species of bacteria belonging to 190 different genera, a few genera together comprise the major cultivable flora of the feces (Ramakrishna, 2007) These bacteria have important metabolic roles, e.g., production of short-chain fatty acids and vitamins such as vitamin k and biotin, structural functions like immune system development and protective functions, e.g., pathogen displacement by colonization competition (Ann and O’Hara, 2006). Microbial ecology of the gastrointestinal tract plays a key role in nutrition research into the relation between colonic microbiota signatures and age (Mariat et al, 2009), diet (De Filippo et al, 2010), dietary allergies (Lay et al, 2005), or diseases (Frank et al, 2007). As gut microbiota play an important role in nutrient extraction from food in the lower part of GI tract, the nutritional value of food is influenced partially by a person’s gut microbial community (microbiota) and its component genes (microbiome; Turnbaugh et al, 2009)
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