Dynamics of Microbes Infecting the Guts of Great Apes

描述（由申请人提供）：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，并且个体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群的内容，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外，这些肠道微生物群落通常还包括对宿主健康有害的细菌和病毒。此外，一个物种所携带的肠道微生物可以作为相关物种的疾病来源，并且通常观察到病原具有非常相似的，有时是相同的形式，在相关物种中传播。最近的两项进展使我们有可能获得必要的信息，以解决有关肠道微生物群的动力学、进化和传播的问题。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。其次，我们有能力调查类人猿宿主的一系列样本，这些样本的范围比任何物种（包括人类）都要全面。这项拟议中的研究有三大目标。首先是研究环境和宿主相关因素如何塑造肠道菌群内的细菌多样性。为了实现这一目标，我们将检查贡贝国家公园的黑猩猩个体的远端肠道微生物群落，其中许多已经被监测和采样了十多年。第二个目的是调查传染性细菌在物种内和物种间的传播。这将通过在中非多个物种共存的广阔地区调查野生猿类的肠道微生物群落来实现。最后，我们确定类人猿如何成为人类细菌和病毒的主要储存库，通过建立类人猿中传播的传染性病原体与那些涉及人类疾病的病原体之间的联系。

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.