Faecal metabolome of the Hadza hunther-gatherers: a host-microbiome integrative view

The recent characterization of the gut microbiome of traditional rural and foraging societies allowedus to appreciate the essential co-adaptive role of the microbiome in complementing our physiology, opening up signi cant questions on how the microbiota changes that have occurred in industrialized urban populations may have altered the microbiota-host co-metabolic network, contributing to the growing list of Western diseases. Here, we applied a targeted metabolomics approach to pro le the fecal metabolome of the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the world’s few remaining foraging populations,and compared them to the pro les of urban living Italians, as representative of people in the post- industrialized West. Data analysis shows that during the rainy season, when the diet is primarily plant-based, Hadza are characterized by a distinctive enrichment in hexoses, glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, and acylcarnitines, while deplete in the most common natural amino acids and derivatives. Complementary to the documented unique metagenomic features of their gut microbiome, our ndings on the Hadza metabolome lend support to the notion of an alternate microbiome con guration be tting of a nomadic forager lifestyle, which helps maintain metabolic homeostasis through an overall scarcity of in ammatory factors, which are instead highly represented in the Italian metabolome. DOI: 10.1038/srep32826