Liver cirrhosis occurs as a consequence of many chronic liver diseases that are prevalent worldwide. Previous studies have shown an association between the gut microbiota and liver complications such as cirrhosis and other liver injuries. We therefore undertook a whole gut microbiome wide association study of stool samples from 98 liver cirrhosis patients and 83 healthy controls to characterise the faecal microbial communities and their functional composition. In total, we generated 860 Gb of high-quality sequence data and built a reference gene set for the liver cirrhosis cohort containing 2.69 million genes, 36.1% of which was not covered by previously published gene catalogues.

Liver cirrhosis occurs as a consequence of many chronic liver diseases that are prevalent worldwide. Previous studies have shown an association between the gut microbiota and liver complications such as cirrhosis and other liver injuries. We therefore undertook a whole gut microbiome wide association study of stool samples from 98 liver cirrhosis patients and 83 healthy controls to characterise the faecal microbial communities and their functional composition. In total, we generated 860 Gb of high-quality sequence data and built a reference gene set for the liver cirrhosis cohort containing 2.69 million genes, 36.1% of which was not covered by previously published gene catalogues.

肝硬化是全球范围内高发的多种慢性肝脏疾病所导致的最终结局。既往研究已证实肠道微生物群（gut microbiota）与肝硬化及其他肝损伤类肝脏并发症存在关联。为此，本研究纳入98例肝硬化患者与83例健康对照的粪便样本，开展全肠道微生物组关联研究（whole gut microbiome wide association study），以解析粪便微生物群落及其功能组成特征。本研究共生成860Gb高质量测序数据，并为该肝硬化队列构建了包含269万个基因的参考基因集，其中36.1%的基因未被既往已发表的基因目录所覆盖。