Shao, Yan;
Garcia-Mauriño, Cristina;
Clare, Simon;
Dawson, Nicholas JR;
Mu, Andre;
Adoum, Anne;
Harcourt, Katherine;
... Lawley, Trevor D; + view all
(2024)
Primary succession of Bifidobacteria drives pathogen resistance in neonatal microbiota assembly.
Nature Microbiology
10.1038/s41564-024-01804-9.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
Shao et al_Nat Med 2204.pdf - Published Version Download (7MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Human microbiota assembly commences at birth, seeded by both maternal and environmental microorganisms. Ecological theory postulates that primary colonizers dictate microbial community assembly outcomes, yet such microbial priority effects in the human gut remain underexplored. Here using longitudinal faecal metagenomics, we characterized neonatal microbiota assembly for a cohort of 1,288 neonates from the UK. We show that the pioneering neonatal gut microbiota can be stratified into one of three distinct community states, each dominated by a single microbial species and influenced by clinical and host factors, such as maternal age, ethnicity and parity. A community state dominated by Enterococcus faecalis displayed stochastic microbiota assembly with persistent high pathogen loads into infancy. In contrast, community states dominated by Bifidobacterium, specifically B. longum and particularly B. breve, exhibited a stable assembly trajectory and long-term pathogen colonization resistance, probably due to strain-specific functional adaptions to a breast milk-rich neonatal diet. Consistent with our human cohort observation, B. breve demonstrated priority effects and conferred pathogen colonization resistance in a germ-free mouse model. Our findings solidify the crucial role of Bifidobacteria as primary colonizers in shaping the microbiota assembly and functions in early life.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Primary succession of Bifidobacteria drives pathogen resistance in neonatal microbiota assembly |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41564-024-01804-9 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41564-024-01804-9 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health > Infection and Population Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10197147 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
