Host‐derived population genomics data provides insights into bacterial and diatom composition of the killer whale skin

Recent exploration into the interactions and relationship between hosts and their microbiota has revealed a connection between many aspects of the host's biology, health and associated micro‐organisms. Whereas amplicon sequencing has traditionally been used to characterize the microbiome, the increasing number of published population genomics data sets offers an underexploited opportunity to study microbial profiles from the host shotgun sequencing data. Here, we use sequence data originally generated from killer whale Orcinus orca skin biopsies for population genomics, to characterize the skin microbiome and investigate how host social and geographical factors influence the microbial community composition. Having identified 845 microbial taxa from 2.4 million reads that did not map to the killer whale reference genome, we found that both ecotypic and geographical factors influence community composition of killer whale skin microbiomes. Furthermore, we uncovered key taxa that drive the ...

近年来，对宿主与其微生物群（microbiota）之间相互作用及关系的探索揭示了宿主生物学、健康状况与相关微生物诸多方面之间的联系。尽管传统上采用扩增子测序（amplicon sequencing）来表征微生物组（microbiome），但日益增多的已发表群体基因组学（population genomics）数据集为从宿主宏基因组测序（shotgun sequencing）数据中研究微生物谱提供了尚未充分利用的机会。本研究利用最初为群体基因组学分析而从虎鲸（Orcinus orca）皮肤活检样本中生成的序列数据，对皮肤微生物组进行表征，并探究宿主的社会因素与地理因素如何影响微生物群落组成。从240万条未比对到虎鲸参考基因组（reference genome）的测序读段（reads）中鉴定出845个微生物类群（microbial taxa）后，我们发现生态型（ecotypic）因素与地理因素均会影响虎鲸皮肤微生物组的群落组成。此外，我们还发现了驱动……的关键类群。