Microbial signature of multiple physical and psychological symptoms in a 135 days oceangoing voyage Metagenome

In the oceangoing voyage, the complex pressures from living and working environment will lead to a series of sub-optimal healthy status for the sailors. Previous studies have shown that gut microbiome is closely related to human health, however the association between the gut microbiome and the sub-optimal healthy status of the crews in the oceangoing voyage is still unclear. We recruited 77 sailors and sequenced the stool samples using metagenomic shotgun both at the beginning and the ending of a 135 days voyage, 24 physical and physiological conditions were recorded via questionnaire at the same time points. Based on an observation of simultaneously onsets of multiple symptoms e.g. abnormal defecation frequency, insomnia, shallow sleep, nausea and overeating, we named this sub-optimal healthy status as "Oceangoing Syndrome". Then a microbial signature consist of 19 species and 31 gene families in the Oceangoing Syndrome were identified and a Random Forest model based on 27 biomarkers was built which can predict the Oceangoing Syndrome with 87.01% (AUC=0.91) accuracy using samples at the beginning of the voyage. Moreover, we discovered seven isolate species-function islands in co-occurrence network analysis, which can outline the risks of different symptoms in Oceangoing Syndrome. Studying the association between the gut microbiome and the sub-optimal healthy status in extreme environments will give us a better understanding of the interaction between the gut microbiome and systemic or chronic diseases, thus provide us a fundamental basis for discovering potential predictors and therapeutic targets.