Title Bacterial, Archaeal, and Eukaryal Diversity in the Intestines of Korean People
Author Young-Do Nam1,2, Ho-Won Chang1, Kyoung-Ho Kim1, Seong Woon Roh1,2, Min-Soo Kim1,2, Mi-Ja Jung1, Si-Woo Lee3, Jong-Yeol Kim3, Jung-Hoon Yoon1, and Jin-Woo Bae1,2,4*
Address 1Biological Resources Center, KRIBB, Daejeon 305-806, Republic of Korea, 2University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 305-333, Republic of Korea, 3Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon 305-811, Republic of Korea, 4Environmental Biotechnology National Core Research Center, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 660-701, Republic of Korea
Bibliography Journal of Microbiology, 46(5),491-501, 2008,
DOI
Key Words human intestinal microbes, Bacteria, Archaea, Eukaryote, DGGE, UPGMA
Abstract The bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryal diversity in fecal samples from ten Koreans were analyzed and compared by using the PCR-fingerprinting method, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). The bacteria all belonged to the Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes phyla, which were known to be the dominant bacterial species in the human intestine. Most of the archaeal sequences belonged to the methane-producing archaea but several halophilic archarea-related sequences were also detected unexpectedly. While a small number of eukaryal sequences were also detected upon DGGE analysis, these sequences were related to fungi and stramenopiles (Blastocystis hominis). With regard to the bacterial and archaeal DGGE analysis, all ten samples had one and two prominent bands, respectively, but many individual-specific bands were also observed. However, only five of the ten samples had small eukaryal DGGE bands and none of these bands was observed in all five samples. Unweighted pair group method and arithmetic averages clustering algorithm (UPGMA) clustering analysis revealed that the archaeal and bacterial communities in the ten samples had relatively higher relatedness (the average Dice coefficient values were 68.9 and 59.2% for archaea and bacteria, respectively) but the eukaryal community showed low relatedness (39.6%).