Butyrate Production Pathway Abundances Are Similar in Human and Nonhuman Primate Gut Microbiomes.

ABSTRACT: Over the course of human evolution, shifts in dietary practices such as meat-eating and cooking, have resulted in reduced fiber intake, a trend that has been exaggerated more recently in industrialized populations. Reduced fiber consumption is associated with a loss of gut microbial taxa that degrade fiber, particularly butyrate. Therefore, this dietary shift in humans may have altered the abundance of microbial genes involved in butyrate production. This study uses a gene-targeted alignment approach to quantify the abundance of butyrate production pathway genes from published wild nonhuman primate and human gut metagenomes. Surprisingly, humans have higher diversity and relative abundances of butyrate production pathways compared with all groups of nonhuman primates except cercopithecoids

SUBMITTER: Mallott EK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8763029 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature