Gut
microbes provide many services for their hosts, including digesting
their food. Researchers have long known that mammals with specialized
diets, such as carnivores and anteaters, have special types of gut
microbes that allow them to eat that diet.
Is
the same true in primates? In the largest published comparative dataset
of non-human primate gut microbiomes to date, a new Northwestern
University study set out to find whether leaf-eating primates have
similar gut microbes that help them break down their leafy diet, which
is full of fiber and toxins.
A
common theme in the microbiome field is that host diet has large
effects on the gut microbiome — both across lifespans (week-to-week
changes in host diet change the gut microbiome) and across evolution
(mammals with similar diets have similar gut microbes regardless of
their evolutionary histories), said Katherine Amato, lead author of the study and assistant professor of anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern.
Therefore,
they expected to see many similarities between leaf-eating primates,
regardless of how closely related they were to each other. Rather, the
researchers discovered that diet mattered much less than host
evolutionary relationships in shaping the gut microbiome.
“Our
data suggest that, across evolution, the effect of primate diet on the
primate gut microbiome is not large,” Amato said. “Evolutionary
relationships between primates are much more important for predicting
microbiome composition and function.”
The study is the first cross-species comparison of the gut microbiota that exclusively uses samples from wild animals.
“We
conclude that although gut microbes play a critical role in supporting
host dietary specializations, their impact is regulated through host
physiology,” Amato said.
“Leaf-eating
primates shared very few gut microbial characteristics. Instead, New
World monkeys shared the most gut microbial characteristics with each
other, regardless of diet. The same was true for Old World monkeys,
lemurs and apes. These patterns appear to be the result of host
physiological traits such as how the gastrointestinal tract is built.”
Cross-mammal
examinations of the gut microbiome have been performed, Amato said, but
they all had weaknesses in that species with similar diets also had
similar evolutionary histories or physiology. Many studies also mixed
captive and wild animals, and captivity is known to change the gut
microbiome.
“This
study was able to eliminate these issues due to the fact that
leaf-eating evolved independently multiple times in the order Primates
and is associated with a different physiology in each part of the
primate tree,” Amato said. “We also only used wild primates, which
compared to captive primates, are more likely to have gut microbiomes
like those they evolved with.”
Further
research could involve looking at more primate species with more varied
diets and understanding how the human gut microbiome fits into this
bigger evolutionary picture and what it can tell us about our physiology
and health, Amato said.
“Evolutionary trends in host physiology outweigh dietary niche in structuring primate gut microbiomes” published online earlier this month in the ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology.
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle,
Pharmaceutical Microbiology Resources (http://www.pharmamicroresources.com/)
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