Abstract
The animal gastrointestinal tract contains a complex community of microbes, whose composition ultimately reflects the co-evolution of microorganisms with their animal host. An analysis of 78,619 pyrosequencing reads generated from pygmy loris fecal DNA extracts was performed to help better understand the microbial diversity and functional capacity of the pygmy loris gut microbiome. The taxonomic analysis of the metagenomic reads indicated that pygmy loris fecal microbiomes were dominated by Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria phyla. The hierarchical clustering of several gastrointestinal metagenomes demonstrated the similarities of the microbial community structures of pygmy loris and mouse gut systems despite their differences in functional capacity. The comparative analysis of function classification revealed that the metagenome of the pygmy loris was characterized by an overrepresentation of those sequences involved in aromatic compound metabolism compared with humans and other animals. The key enzymes related to the benzoate degradation pathway were identified based on the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway assignment. These results would contribute to the limited body of primate metagenome studies and provide a framework for comparative metagenomic analysis between human and non-human primates, as well as a comparative understanding of the evolution of humans and their microbiome. However, future studies on the metagenome sequencing of pygmy loris and other prosimians regarding the effects of age, genetics, and environment on the composition and activity of the metagenomes are required.
Highlights
The gastrointestinal tract of animals harbors a complex microbial community, and the composition of this community reflects the co-evolution of microorganisms with their animal host and the diet adopted by the host [1]
We presented for the first-time the application of the shotgun metagenomic pyrosequencing approach to study the fecal microbiome of the pygmy loris
The relative proportion of the phyla was different; most of the less abundant phyla such as Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were more prevalent, and most of the more abundant phyla such as Firmicutes were fewer in the pygmy loris fecal microbiome than in humans and other animals
Summary
The gastrointestinal tract of animals harbors a complex microbial community, and the composition of this community reflects the co-evolution of microorganisms with their animal host and the diet adopted by the host [1]. As a result of the issues related to health and disease, the structure and function of the gut microbial community of humans has received significant attention from researchers. The study of the microbiota from these NHPs provides important insights into the reflection of their features in humans. More extensive surveys of primate gastrointestinal microbiomes, prosimian primates, about which little research work has been done [7], combined with comparative analyses of their microbiomes with those of humans are necessary to better understand the evolution of humans and their microbiome
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