TY - JOUR T1 - A gut commensal niche regulates stable association of a multispecies microbiota JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.09.30.462663 SP - 2021.09.30.462663 AU - Ren Dodge AU - Eric W. Jones AU - Haolong Zhu AU - Benjamin Obadia AU - Daniel J. Martinez AU - Chenhui Wang AU - Andrés Aranda-Díaz AU - Kevin Aumiller AU - Zhexian Liu AU - Marco Voltolini AU - Eoin L. Brodie AU - Kerwyn Casey Huang AU - Jean M. Carlson AU - David A. Sivak AU - Allan C. Spradling AU - William B. Ludington Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/30/2021.09.30.462663.abstract N2 - The intestines of animals are typically colonized by a complex, relatively stable microbiota that influences health and fitness, but the underlying mechanisms of colonization remain poorly understood. As a typical animal, the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is associated with a consistent set of commensal bacterial species, yet the reason for this consistency is unknown. Here, we use gnotobiotic flies, microscopy, and microbial pulse-chase protocols to show that a commensal niche exists within the proventriculus region of the Drosophila foregut that selectively binds bacteria with exquisite strain-level specificity. Primary colonizers saturate the niche and exclude secondary colonizers of the same strain, but initial colonization by Lactobacillus physically remodels the niche to favor secondary colonization by Acetobacter. Our results provide a mechanistic framework for understanding the establishment and stability of an intestinal microbiome.One-Sentence Summary A strain-specific set of bacteria inhabits a defined spatial region of the Drosophila gut that forms a commensal niche.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -