Design, construction, and in vivo augmentation of a complex gut microbiome

Please cite: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.08.003

Cheng AG, Ho PY, Aranda-Díaz A, Jain S, Yu FB, Meng X, Wang M, Iakiviak M, Nagashima K, Zhao A, Murugkar P, Patil A, Atabakhsh K, Weakley A, Yan J, Brumbaugh AR, Higginbottom S, Dimas A, Shiver AL, Deutschbauer A, Neff N, Sonnenburg JL, Huang KC, Fischbach MA. Design, construction, and in vivo augmentation of a complex gut microbiome. Cell. 2022 Sep 15;185(19):3617-3636.e19. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.08.003. Epub 2022 Sep 6. PMID: 36070752; PMCID: PMC9691261.

This dataset contains the latest versions of the genomic sequences and bakta annotations of hCom2 community. Please note that these may not be identical to the ones used in the publication. For the exact versions used in the publication, please reach out to the authors. 

Original raw sequencing data is available in the BioProject: PRJNA746600

Article summary:

Efforts to model the human gut microbiome in mice have led to important insights into the mechanisms of host-microbe interactions. However, the model communities studied to date have been defined or complex, but not both, limiting their utility. Here, we construct and characterize in vitro a defined community of 104 bacterial species composed of the most common taxa from the human gut microbiota (hCom1). We then used an iterative experimental process to fill open niches: germ-free mice were colonized with hCom1 and then challenged with a human fecal sample. We identified new species that engrafted following fecal challenge and added them to hCom1, yielding hCom2. In gnotobiotic mice, hCom2 exhibited increased stability to fecal challenge and robust colonization resistance against pathogenic Escherichia coli. Mice colonized by either hCom2 or a human fecal community are phenotypically similar, suggesting that this consortium will enable a mechanistic interrogation of species and genes on microbiome-associated phenotypes.