Title Correlations of Fecal Bacterial Communities with Age and Living Region for the Elderly Living in Bama, Guangxi, China
Author Liang Zhao1, Xuewei Qiao1, Jun Zhu1, Xiaoying Zhang1, Jingli Jiang2, Yanling Hao1, and Fazheng Ren1,3*
Address 1Key Laboratory of Functional Dairy, College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, P. R. China, 2MengNiu Diary (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Tongzhou, Beijing 101107, P. R. China, 3Beijing Higher Institution Engineering Research Center of Animal Product, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, P. R. China
Bibliography Journal of Microbiology, 49(2),186-192, 2011,
DOI
Key Words intestinal microflora, elderly people, DGGE, redundancy analysis, age, living region
Abstract Bama County (Guangxi, China) is famous for its longevous population. In this study, intestinal microflora of 17 healthy elderly subjects of different ages and from different regions (rural and urban) in Bama, were analyzed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). Significant effects of age and living region on the whole intestinal bacterial communities were observed by redundancy analysis (RDA). A total of 11 bacterial strains that were correlated with age and living region were identified using a t-value biplot combined with band sequencing. Four bacterial strains were correlated with both age and living region of the elderly in Bama. Two Bacteroides strains and one Ruminococcaceae strain were abundant in the rural, younger elderly; conversely, one Desulfovibrio strain was high in the urban, older elderly. Another Bacteroidetes strain was only correlated with the participant’s age, and its abundance increased with the age of the elderly. The richness of one Clostridium sordellii strain, which was only correlated with the elderly living region, was high in the urban elderly. The study also found five other novel bacterial strains that were correlated with the age or living region of the elderly in Bama. These results expand our understanding of age- and region-effects on the intestinal microflora of the elderly and raise the possibility of developing probiotics originating from centenarians.