The microbial metagenome in airways of healthy humans

Airway microbial metagenomes are studied with increasing frequency in the context of acute or chronic lung diseases. Data on the microbial community composition in the airways of healthy people, however, is rather scarce. The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) did not contribute such data either. While microbial communities from various other sites in healthy human hosts were analysed by metagenome sequencing in this project, lung parenchyma and tracheobronchial tracts were not included as target sites, since they were still considered as sterile at that time. Research efforts have proven the presence of microbial communities also in these parts the airways of healthy people recently, and data on community composition has been collected, mainly based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Especially data based on full metagenome sequencing, which allows better discrimination on the species level and even analysis of species co-occurrence networks, however, is barely available. Therefore, we set up a study in which airway samples were collected from healthy people with no history of pulmonary diseases Donor were between 10 and 60 years of age, and either sputum or throat swab samples were collected. After DNA extraction, full metagenome sequencing was applied to 156 sputum and 172 throat swab samples in total. The resulting data was used for studying microbial community composition, similarity and/or diversity, network analyses and associations with age. The datasets can also be used for comparative studies with airway metagenome data from samples with disease background.

在急性或慢性肺部疾病的研究背景下，气道微生物宏基因组的相关研究正日益增多。然而，健康人群气道微生物群落组成的数据却相当匮乏。人类微生物组计划（Human Microbiome Project, HMP）也未提供此类数据：尽管该计划通过宏基因组测序分析了健康人体多个其他部位的微生物群落，但并未将肺实质与气管支气管树列为研究靶点——因当时学界仍认为这些部位是无菌的。近期研究已证实健康人群气道的这些区域同样存在微生物群落，相关群落组成数据多基于16S rRNA基因测序技术获取。但基于全宏基因组测序的数据集仍极为稀缺，此类技术可实现更精准的物种水平区分，甚至可开展物种共现网络分析。为此，本研究招募无肺部疾病史的健康志愿者（年龄介于10至60岁之间），采集其痰液或咽拭子样本。完成DNA提取后，对总计156份痰液样本与172份咽拭子样本开展全宏基因组测序。所得测序数据可用于分析微生物群落组成、相似度与/或多样性、构建群落共现网络，以及探究群落组成与年龄的关联。本数据集亦可用于与疾病背景样本的气道宏基因组数据开展对比研究。