Regional distribution of Christensenellaceae and its associations with metabolic syndrome based on a population-level analysis

Xiang Li; Zewen Li; Yan He; Pan Li; Hongwei Zhou; Nianyi Zeng

doi:10.7717/peerj.9591

Regional distribution of Christensenellaceae and its associations with metabolic syndrome based on a population-level analysis

PeerJ. 2020 Aug 4:8:e9591. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9591. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Xiang Li^#¹, Zewen Li^#¹, Yan He¹, Pan Li¹, Hongwei Zhou¹, Nianyi Zeng¹

Affiliation

¹ Microbiome Medicine Center, Division of Laboratory Medicine, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The link between the gut microbiota and metabolic syndrome (MetS) has attracted widespread attention. Christensenellaceae was recently described as an important player in human health, while its distribution and relationship with MetS in Chinese population is still unknown. This study sought to observe the association between Christensenellaceae and metabolic indexes in a large sample of residents in South China. A total of 4,781 people from the GGMP project were included, and the fecal microbiota composition of these individuals was characterized by 16S rRNA sequencing and analyzed the relation between Christensenellaceae and metabolism using QIIME (Quantitative Insight Into Microbial Ecology, Version 1.9.1). The results demonstrated that microbial richness and diversity were increased in the group with a high abundance of Christensenellaceae, who showed a greater complexity of the co-occurrence network with other bacteria than residents who lacked Christensenellaceae. The enriched bacterial taxa were predominantly represented by Oscillospira, Ruminococcaceae, RF39, Rikenellaceae and Akkermansia as the Christensenellaceae abundance increased, while the abundances of Veillonella, Fusobacterium and Klebsiella were significantly reduced. Furthermore, Christensenellaceae was negatively correlated with the pathological features of MetS, such as obesity, hypertriglyceridemia and body mass index (BMI). We found reduced levels of lipid biosynthesis and energy metabolism pathways in people with a high abundance of Christensenellaceae, which may explain the negative relationship between body weight and Christensenellaceae. In conclusion, we found a negative correlation between Christensenellaceae and MetS in a large Chinese population and reported the geographical distribution of Christensenellaceae in the GGMP study. The association data from this population-level research support the investigation of strains within Christensenellaceae as potentially beneficial gut microbes.

Keywords: 16S rRNA sequencing; Bioinformatic analysis; Christensenellaceae; Human gut microbiota; Metabolic syndrome.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81925026). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.