Unexplored Archaeal Diversity in the Great Ape Gut Microbiome.

ABSTRACT: Archaea are habitual residents of the human gut flora but are detected at substantially lower frequencies than bacteria. Previous studies have indicated that each human harbors very few archaeal species. However, the low diversity of human-associated archaea that has been detected could be due to the preponderance of bacteria in these communities, such that relatively few sequences are classified as Archaea even when microbiomes are sampled deeply. Moreover, the universal prokaryotic primer pair typically used to interrogate microbial diversity has low specificity to the archaeal domain, potentially leaving vast amounts of diversity unobserved. As a result, the prevalence, diversity, and distribution of archaea may be substantially underestimated. Here we evaluate archaeal di

SUBMITTER: Raymann K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5322346 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature