A comparative analysis of the intestinal metagenomes present in guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) and humans (Homo sapiens).

This study is the first to use a metagenomic approach to characterize the faecal microbiota of guinea pigs, and we present a gene catalogue containing the prevalent microbial genes of the guinea pig gut. We applied Illumina-based sequencing of total bacterial DNA in faecal samples obtained from a previously published guinea-pig study for investigation of the guinea pig gut microbiome, and compared this data to the existing human gut metagenome data obtained in the context of the European MetaHIT project.