Studying Vertical Microbiome Transmission from Mothers to Infants by Strain-Level Metagenomic Profiling.

ABSTRACT: The gut microbiome becomes shaped in the first days of life and continues to increase its diversity during the first months. Links between the configuration of the infant gut microbiome and infant health are being shown, but a comprehensive strain-level assessment of microbes vertically transmitted from mother to infant is still missing. We collected fecal and breast milk samples from multiple mother-infant pairs during the first year of life and applied shotgun metagenomic sequencing followed by computational strain-level profiling. We observed that several specific strains, including those of Bifidobacterium bifidum, Coprococcus comes, and Ruminococcus bromii, were present in samples from the same mother-infant pair, while being clearly distinct from those carried by

SUBMITTER: Asnicar F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5264247 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature