Dynamics of Microbes Infecting the Guts of Great Apes

描述(申请人提供)：胃肠道内的微生物群落对消化过程、对病原体的保护和免疫系统的完整性至关重要，一个人一生中的多种因素可以影响和改变这些群落的组成。宿主和/或环境因素可以塑造肠道微生物区系的内容，但这些因素的作用不能基于先前的采样和分析来确定。除了对宿主的生命至关重要之外，这些肠道微生物群落通常还包括对宿主的健康和健身有害的细菌和病毒。此外，一个物种携带的肠道微生物可以作为相关物种的疾病来源，人们通常观察到，病原体的形式与在相关物种中传播的形式非常相似，有时是相同的。最近的两项进展使我们有可能获得必要的信息，以解决与肠道微生物区系的动态、进化和传播有关的问题。首先是高通量测序技术的应用，使我们能够以前所未有的深度询问肠道中存在的复杂微生物群落。第二个是我们调查类人猿宿主样本的能力，这些样本的范围比包括人类在内的任何物种的样本都要全面。这项拟议的研究有三个广泛的目标。第一个是研究环境和宿主相关因素如何塑造肠道微生物区系内的细菌多样性。为了做到这一点，我们将研究冈贝国家公园中黑猩猩个体的肠道微生物群落，其中许多已经被监测和采样超过十年。第二个目标是调查传染性细菌在物种边界内和跨物种边界的传播。这将通过调查在中非几个物种共存的广大地区采集的野生类人猿肠道微生物群落来实现。最后，通过建立在类人猿体内循环的感染性病原体与那些与人类疾病有关的病原体之间的联系，我们确定了类人猿如何成为人类细菌和病毒的主要储存库。 与公共健康相关：拟议的研究调查肠道微生物群落的持续动态，通过提供对病原体的保护和刺激免疫系统，肠道微生物群落对人类健康至关重要。此外，深入了解非人类灵长类动物所藏匿的微生物群落及其与人类微生物区系的关系对健康问题至关重要，因为这些非人类宿主被认为是人类新出现疾病的主要来源。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The microbial communities within the gastrointestinal tract are vital to the digestive process, protection against pathogens and the integrity of the immune system, and multiple factors over the lifetime of an individual can influence and alter the composition of these communities. Host and/or environmental factors can shape the contents of the gut microbiota, but the roles of these factors cannot be established based on previous sampling and analyses. In addition to being essential to the life of their hosts, these gut microbial communities often include bacteria and viruses that are detrimental to their host's health and fitness. Furthermore, the gut microbes harbored by one species can serve as the source of disease in associated species, and it is commonly observed that pathogenic agents have closely similar, and sometimes identical, forms that circulate in related species. Two recent developments have now made it possible for us to obtain the information necessary to address questions pertaining to the dynamics, evolution and transmission of the gut microbiota. The first is the application of high-throughput sequencing technologies that allow us to interrogate at unprecedented depths the complex microbial communities present in the gut. The second is our capacity to investigate sets of samples from great-ape hosts that are more comprehensive in scope than those available for any species, including humans. The proposed research has three broad aims. The first is to examine how environmental and host- related factors shape the bacterial diversity within the gut microbiota. To accomplish this, we will examine the distal gut microbial communities of individual chimpanzees from Gombe National Park, many of which have been monitored and sampled for over a decade. The second aim is to investigate the transmission of infectious bacteria within and across species boundaries. This will be achieved by investigating the gut microbial communities sampled from wild apes over broad areas of central Africa where several species co-occur. Finally, we determine how apes can serve as a primary reservoir of bacteria and viruses in humans by establishing the links between the infectious agents circulating in great apes to those implicated in human disease. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research investigates the on-going dynamics of gut microbial communities, which are essential to human health by providing protection against pathogens and by stimulating the immune system. Additionally, in-depth knowledge of the microbial communities harbored by non-human primates and their relationship to the human microbiota is critical to health issues because these non- human hosts are known to serve as a primary source for emerging diseases in humans.