Characterization of Indian gut microbiome for B-vitamins production and its comparison with Chinese cohort.
Nisha ChandelPramod Rajaram SomvanshiVivek ThakurPublished in: The British journal of nutrition (2023)
The human gut microbiota can biosynthesize essential micronutrients such as B-vitamins, and is also known for its metabolic cooperative behaviour. The current study characterizes such B-vitamin biosynthesizers, their biosynthetic pathways, explores their prevalence and abundance, and examines how lifestyle or diet affects them in multiple Indian cohorts, and compares it with the Chinese cohort. To achieve this, publicly available fecal metagenome data of healthy individuals from multiple Indian (two urban and three tribal populations) and a Chinese cohort were analyzed. The distribution of prevalence and abundance of B vitamin biosynthesizers showed similar profiles to that of the entire gut community of the Indian cohort, and there were 28 B-vitamin biosynthesizers that had modest or higher prevalence and abundance. The omnivorous diet affected only the prevalence of a few B-vitamin biosynthesizers, however, lifestyle and/or location affected both prevalence and abundance. A comparison with the Chinese cohort showed that fourteen B-vitamin biosynthesizers were significantly more prevalent and abundant in Chinese as compared to Indian samples (FDR <= 0.05). The metabolic potential of the entire gut community for B-vitamin production showed that within India, the tribal cohort has a higher abundance of B-vitamin biosynthesis pathways as compared to two urban cohorts namely, Bhopal and Kasargod, and comparison with the Chinese cohort revealed a higher abundance in the latter group. Potential metabolic cooperative behaviour of the Indian gut microbiome for biosynthesis of the B vitamins showed multiple pairs of species showed theoretical complementarity for complete biosynthetic pathways genes of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and pantothenate.