PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Amanda L. Muehlbauer
AU  - Allison L. Richards
AU  - Adnan Alazizi
AU  - Michael Burns
AU  - Andres Gomez
AU  - Jonathan B. Clayton
AU  - Klara Petrzelkova
AU  - Camilla Cascardo
AU  - Justyna Resztak
AU  - Xiaoquan Wen
AU  - Roger Pique-Regi
AU  - Francesca Luca
AU  - Ran Blekhman
TI  - Interspecies variation in hominid gut microbiota controls host gene regulation
AID  - 10.1101/2020.08.17.255059
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.08.17.255059
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/17/2020.08.17.255059.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/17/2020.08.17.255059.full
AB  - The gut microbiome exhibits extreme compositional variation between hominid hosts. However, it is unclear how this variation impacts host physiology, and whether this effect can be mediated through microbial regulation of host gene expression in interacting epithelial cells. Here, we characterized the transcriptional response of colonic epithelial cells in vitro to live microbial communities extracted from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. We found most host genes exhibit a conserved response, whereby they respond similarly to the four hominid microbiomes, while some genes respond only to microbiomes from specific host species. Genes that exhibit such a divergent response are associated with relevant intestinal diseases in humans, such as inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn’s disease. Lastly, we found that inflammation-associated microbial species regulate the expression of host genes previously associated with inflammatory bowel disease, suggesting health-related consequences for species-specific host-microbiome interactions across hominids.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.