DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Geographic variation of gut microbial community in natural populations of house mice across the Americas

最近的研究表明，肠道微生物群落可以对个人的健康以及对肥胖的易感性产生重大影响。该项目将实验室实验与来自北美和南美26个野生家鼠种群的体型变化的定量信息相结合，以揭示影响肠道微生物组成和功能的因素。由于人类和野生小鼠在地球仪上的肠道微生物组成显示出相似的变化，因此野生小鼠的发现可以作为一个模型，帮助更广泛地了解肠道微生物在消化和人类健康中的作用。该项目将支持研究，以改善博士生的论文。野外收集的数据和标本将通过加州大学伯克利分校的脊椎动物学博物馆和电子方式公开提供。家鼠是一种理想的哺乳动物模型系统，可用于通过操纵实验室实验，解开与自然种群中微生物群落变异相关的混杂因素。来自高纬度和低纬度自然种群的小鼠在体型上表现出明显的差异。这些极端种群的人工饲养后代将用于操纵实验，以测试两种饮食类型和两种宿主基因型对肠道微生物群的影响。野生和实验室饲养个体盲肠内容物的比较宏基因组学将量化种群之间微生物代谢能力（例如，能量提取效率）的差异。研究结果将提高目前对哺乳动物肠道微生物生态学的理解。

Recent research shows that the gut microbial communities can have significant effects on an individual's health as well as on susceptibility to obesity. This project combines laboratory experiments with quantitative information on body size variation from 26 populations of wild house mice across North and South America to shed new light on factors contributing to the composition and the function of gut microbes. Because humans and wild mice show similar variation in their gut microbial composition across the globe, the findings in wild mice may serve as a model to help understand the role of gut microbes in digestion and human health more broadly. The project will support the research to improve a doctoral student's dissertation. Data and specimens collected in the field will be publicly available through the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at University of California, Berkeley and electroically. House mice are an ideal mammalian model system that can be used, through manipulative laboratory experiments, to disentangle confounding factors that are associated with microbial community variation in natural populations. Mice derived from natural populations at high and low latitudes show pronounced differences in body size. Laboratory-reared descendants of these extreme populations will be used in manipulative experiments to test the effects of two dietary types and the two host genotypes on gut microbiota. Comparative metagenomics of the cecal contents of wild and laboratory-reared individuals will quantify the differences in microbial metabolic capability (for example, efficiency in energy extraction) between populations. Results will improve current understanding of mammalian gut microbial ecology.