Comprehensive Metagenomic Investigations Give Insight to Environmental and Trophic Factors Interacting with Microbial Flora of Animals and soils in China

Microbiota as a functional assemblage of microbes plays an important role in environment and in lives of multicellular organisms. Animal gut microbiota is strongly influenced by dietary factors while soil microbial flora can be shaped by various physical, chemical, and biological conditions. Applying next-generation sequencing technology in this study, we made a comprehensive investigation on animal fecal samples as well as soil samples from two areas of China, Hongyuan and XilinGol. Our major findings are: (1) biodiversity is decreasing from soil to herbivorous animal guts and then to human guts, and soil has a distinct structure of microbial flora than animal guts. (2) Gut microbiota of Bos animals, though more similar to each other than to microbiome of soil from their residential areas, however, is indicative of the latter. (3) The probiotic Bifidobacterium was found to be enriched in gut of XilinGol people. And the functional structure and biodiversity of human gut microbiota are consistent with people’s dietary habits. (4) Inter-species difference of microbiomes between human and Bos animals remain largely constant through geographic locations. Our findings give insights to how microbial flora is associated with and influenced by external factors and shed light on connections among microbiomes of different sources.