Abstract
Bacterial community acquisition in the infant gut impacts immune education and disease susceptibility. We compared bacterial strains across and within families in a prospective birth cohort of 44 infants and their mothers, sampled longitudinally in the first months of each child's life. We identified mother-to-child bacterial transmission events and describe the incidence of family-specific antibiotic resistance genes. We observed two inheritance patterns across multiple species, where often the mother's dominant strain is transmitted to the child, but occasionally her secondary strains colonize the infant gut. In families where the secondary strain of B. uniformis was inherited, a starch utilization gene cluster that was absent in the mother's dominant strain was identified in the child, suggesting the selective advantage of a mother's secondary strain in the infant gut. Our findings reveal mother-to-child bacterial transmission events at high resolution and give insights into early colonization of the infant gut. Using longitudinal metagenomic sequencing from 44 mother/child pairs, Yassour et al. characterized mother-to-child strain transmission patterns. While mothers' dominant strains were often inherited, nondominant secondary strain transmissions were also observed. Microbial functional analysis reveals that inherited maternal secondary strains may have a selective advantage to colonize infant guts.
Original language | American English |
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Pages (from-to) | 146-154.e4 |
Journal | Cell Host and Microbe |
Volume | 24 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 11 Jul 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Tiffany Poon, James Bochicchio, and Scott Steelman (Broad Institute) for help in sequence production and sample management and Theresa Reimels for text and graphical support. The study was supported by the NIDDK, NIH (grant number 1DP3DK094338-01), the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Molecular Systems Immunology and Physiology Research (2012-17 grant 250114), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (grant 2-SRA-2016-247-S-B), Sigrid Juselius Foundation, and the Medical Research Funds, Tampere and Helsinki University Hospital.
Funding Information:
We thank Tiffany Poon, James Bochicchio, and Scott Steelman (Broad Institute) for help in sequence production and sample management and Theresa Reimels for text and graphical support. The study was supported by the NIDDK, NIH (grant number 1DP3DK094338-01 ), the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Molecular Systems Immunology and Physiology Research (2012-17 grant 250114 ), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (grant 2-SRA-2016-247-S-B ), Sigrid Juselius Foundation , and the Medical Research Funds, Tampere and Helsinki University Hospital .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Inc.