Objective: To study the composition of gut microbiota of Tibetan, Mongolian and Zhuang children.
Methods: A total of 100 school-age children aged 10-12 were randomly selected from three ethnic groups in 2016, the Tibetan in Bayi County, Tibet, the Mongolian in Zha Qi, Inner Mongolia, and the Zhuang in Shanglin County, Nanning, Guangxi. Fecal samples were collected for high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics analysis to compare the structural differences of gut microbiota of children from the three ethnic groups in the above areas.
Results: The result of α diversity analysis showed that the diversity and richness of gut microbiota of children from three ethnic groups in the surveyed area were different in pairwise comparison. The dominant phyla and genera of Tibetan children's gut bacteria are Firmicutes(54.01%), Bacteroidetes(31.13%), Prevotella(15.72%) and Faecalibacterium(15.46%). The dominant phyla and genera of Mongolian children's gut bacteria are Firmicutes(54.89%), Bacteroidetes(17.85%), Proteobacteria(15.99%), Faecalibacterium(20.84%) and Escherichia(17.52%). While in Zhuang children, the dominant phyla and genera are Firmicutes(50.86%), Bacteroidetes(34.74%), Prevotella(18.40%), Bacteroides(17.78%) and Faecalibacterium(14.68%).
Conclusion: The composition and structure of gut microbiota of Tibetan and Zhuang children in the three regions are similar, while the structure of gut microbiota of Mongolian children is obviously different from those of the first two regions.
Keywords: Mongolian; Tibetan; Zhuang; children; gut microbiota; nutrition improvement.