Early-life gut microbiota assembly patterns are conserved between laboratory and wild mice.

ABSTRACT: Assembly of the mammalian gut microbiota during early life is known to shape key aspects of organismal development, including immunity, metabolism and behaviour. While house mice (Mus musculus) are the major laboratory model organism for gut microbiota research, their artificial lab-based lifestyle could fundamentally alter ecological processes of microbiota assembly and dynamics, in ways that affect their usefulness as a model system. To examine this, here we directly compared patterns of gut microbiota assembly in house mice from the lab and from the wild, making use of a tractable, individually-marked wild population where we could examine patterns of gut microbiota assembly during early life. Despite lab and wild mice harbouring taxonomically distinct communities, we identify striking

SUBMITTER: Hanski E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11543677 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature