Biogeochemical forces shape the composition and physiology of polymicrobial communities in the cystic fibrosis lung.

ABSTRACT: The cystic fibrosis (CF) lung contains thick mucus colonized by opportunistic pathogens which adapt to the CF lung environment over decades. The difficulty associated with sampling airways has impeded a thorough examination of the biochemical microhabitats these pathogens are exposed to. An indirect approach is to study the responses of microbial communities to these microhabitats, facilitated by high-throughput sequencing of microbial DNA and RNA from sputum samples. Microbial metagenomes and metatranscriptomes were sequenced from multiple CF patients, and the reads were assigned taxonomy and function through sequence homology to NCBI and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database hierarchies. For a comparison, saliva microbial metagenomes from the Human Microbiome Projec

SUBMITTER: Quinn RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3967525 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature