Host Gut Motility Promotes Competitive Exclusion within a Model Intestinal Microbiota.

ABSTRACT: The gut microbiota is a complex consortium of microorganisms with the ability to influence important aspects of host health and development. Harnessing this "microbial organ" for biomedical applications requires clarifying the degree to which host and bacterial factors act alone or in combination to govern the stability of specific lineages. To address this issue, we combined bacteriological manipulation and light sheet fluorescence microscopy to monitor the dynamics of a defined two-species microbiota within a vertebrate gut. We observed that the interplay between each population and the gut environment produces distinct spatiotemporal patterns. As a consequence, one species dominates while the other experiences sudden drops in abundance that are well fit by a stochastic mathematical mode

SUBMITTER: Wiles TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4961409 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature