This suggests that a subset of the enzymatic functions associated

with nickel [27], specifically links to butyrate production and may be connected to levels of obesity with the host, possibly through influence of butyrate production. Additionally, as this transport system can also be involved in more general transport of peptide from two to five amino acid residues in length it could be another unknown function being utilised by this species within the human digestive tract habitat. ZD1839 concentration This module was characterised based upon the Opp complex in Salmonella typhimurium[32], which has been shown to be involved in modulating expression of surface-exposed proteins [14]. These proteins may be involved in functions such as sporulation and virulence, both of which have been shown to be important in the human gut microbiome [19, 33]. Thus MK0683 manufacturer it is possible that this MX69 in vivo transporter is not involved in nickel regulation but actually modulating the cell surface responses to the digestive tract environment. As it has been shown that low levels of F. prausnitzii are associated with Crohn’s disease [34] and we have shown here that F. prausnitzii may also be associated with obesity, it is likely that LGT of systems such as

peptides/nickel transport may contribute to host adaptation of this species, as has been observed with LGT in other species [35, 36], or play a role in determining the importance of the species within the microbiome. However, further experimental analysis would be required to confirm the link between this membrane transport system and host obesity and also determine is precise function. Understanding the effect of habitat-directed LGT is a difficult problem. Microbiome data can be utilised to address this as has been shown here. We have found that although an overall signal for clustering of gut-associated organisms was not observed, this is not indicative of a lack of LGT. Each protein tree did not correlate exactly with a species tree as would be usually

derived from single-gene studies based on 16S or other marker genes. Subsequent analysis revealed that some species that were clustered together in the protein trees were from taxonomically distant groups (Additional file 4: Figure S3). http://www.selleck.co.jp/products/Decitabine.html These species were usually found to be occupying similar environmental niches and were possibly associated with influencing the habitat, in this case the BMI of the host. Thus these findings signify that subsets of species may share genetic information within the environment and such LGT may impact how the habitat as a whole is shaped. Methods Dataset selection The dataset of [4] derived from 124 European individuals using Illumina sequencing was used for this analysis. Deep sequencing of samples from these individuals resulted in an average of 4.5 Gb of data per patient, which was further assembled into contigs as described in reference [4].