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Metagenomic Analysis of the Human Distal Gut Microbiome
Steven R. Gill,1*Mihai Pop,1Robert T. DeBoy,1Paul B. Eckburg,2,3,4Peter J. Turnbaugh,5Buck S. Samuel,5Jeffrey I. Gordon,5David A. Relman,2,3,4Claire M. Fraser-Liggett,1,6Karen E. Nelson1
The human intestinal microbiota is composed of 1013 to 1014microorganisms whose collective genome ("microbiome") containsat least 100 times as many genes as our own genome. We analyzed78 million base pairs of unique DNA sequence and 2062 polymerasechain reactionamplified 16S ribosomal DNA sequences obtainedfrom the fecal DNAs of two healthy adults. Using metabolic functionanalyses of identified genes, we compared our human genome withthe average content of previously sequenced microbial genomes.Our microbiome has significantly enriched metabolism of glycans,amino acids, and xenobiotics; methanogenesis; and 2-methyl-D-erythritol4-phosphate pathwaymediated biosynthesis of vitaminsand isoprenoids. Thus, humans are superorganisms whose metabolismrepresents an amalgamation of microbial and human attributes.
1 The Institute for Genomic Research, 9712 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. 2 Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. 3 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, 299 Campus Drive, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. 4 Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA. 5 Center for Genome Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63108, USA. 6 Departments of Pharmacology and Physiology and Microbiology and Tropical Diseases, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037, USA.
* Present address: Department of Oral Biology, The State Universityof New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA.
Present address: Center for Bioinformatics and ComputationalBiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: srgill{at}buffalo.edu
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