Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem

The microbial communities living in the human intestine can have profound impact on our well-being and health. However, we have limited understanding of the mechanisms that control this complex ecosystem. Here, based on a deep phylogenetic analysis of the intestinal microbiota in a thousand western...

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Main Authors:	Lahti, Leo, Salojärvi, Jarkko, Salonen, Anne, Scheffer, Marten, de Vos, Willem M.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Pub. Group 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102116/

id	pubmed-4102116
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-41021162014-07-17 Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem Lahti, Leo Salojärvi, Jarkko Salonen, Anne Scheffer, Marten de Vos, Willem M. Article The microbial communities living in the human intestine can have profound impact on our well-being and health. However, we have limited understanding of the mechanisms that control this complex ecosystem. Here, based on a deep phylogenetic analysis of the intestinal microbiota in a thousand western adults, we identify groups of bacteria that exhibit robust bistable abundance distributions. These bacteria are either abundant or nearly absent in most individuals, and exhibit decreased temporal stability at the intermediate abundance range. The abundances of these bimodally distributed bacteria vary independently, and their abundance distributions are not affected by short-term dietary interventions. However, their contrasting alternative states are associated with host factors such as ageing and overweight. We propose that the bistable groups reflect tipping elements of the intestinal microbiota, whose critical transitions may have profound health implications and diagnostic potential. Nature Pub. Group 2014-07-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4102116/ /pubmed/25003530 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms5344 Text en Copyright © 2014, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Lahti, Leo Salojärvi, Jarkko Salonen, Anne Scheffer, Marten de Vos, Willem M.
spellingShingle	Lahti, Leo Salojärvi, Jarkko Salonen, Anne Scheffer, Marten de Vos, Willem M. Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
author_facet	Lahti, Leo Salojärvi, Jarkko Salonen, Anne Scheffer, Marten de Vos, Willem M.
author_sort	Lahti, Leo
title	Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
title_short	Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
title_full	Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
title_fullStr	Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
title_full_unstemmed	Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
title_sort	tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem
description	The microbial communities living in the human intestine can have profound impact on our well-being and health. However, we have limited understanding of the mechanisms that control this complex ecosystem. Here, based on a deep phylogenetic analysis of the intestinal microbiota in a thousand western adults, we identify groups of bacteria that exhibit robust bistable abundance distributions. These bacteria are either abundant or nearly absent in most individuals, and exhibit decreased temporal stability at the intermediate abundance range. The abundances of these bimodally distributed bacteria vary independently, and their abundance distributions are not affected by short-term dietary interventions. However, their contrasting alternative states are associated with host factors such as ageing and overweight. We propose that the bistable groups reflect tipping elements of the intestinal microbiota, whose critical transitions may have profound health implications and diagnostic potential.
publisher	Nature Pub. Group
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102116/
_version_	1613115267587506176

Tipping elements in the human intestinal ecosystem

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