The forces that shape human microbial ecology are complex. It is likely that human microbiota, similarly to other microbiomes, use antibiotics as one way to establish an ecological niche. In this study, we use functional metagenomics to identify human microbial gene clusters that encode for antibiotic functions. Screening of a metagenomic library prepared from a healthy patient stool sample led to the identification of a family of clones with inserts that are 99% identical to a region of a virulence plasmid found in avian pathogenic Escherichia coli. Characterization of the metagenomic DNA sequence identified a colicin V biosynthetic cluster as being responsible for the observed antibiotic effect of the metagenomic clone against E. coli. This study presents a scalable method to recover antibiotic gene clusters from humans using functional metagenomics and highlights a strategy to study bacteriocins in the human microbiome which can provide a resource for therapeutic discovery.

中文翻译：

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通过对人类微生物组元基因组文库进行功能筛选来鉴定Colicin V细菌素基因簇

塑造人类微生物生态的力量是复杂的。与其他微生物群落类似，人类微生物群落可能使用抗生素作为建立生态位的一种方法。在这项研究中，我们使用功能宏基因组学来识别编码抗生素功能的人类微生物基因簇。从健康患者粪便样品中制备的宏基因组文库的筛选导致鉴定了一个克隆家族，其插入片段与禽病原性大肠杆菌中发现的毒力质粒区域具有99％的同一性。宏基因组DNA序列的鉴定表明，大肠菌素V生物合成簇是导致宏基因组克隆针对大肠杆菌观察到的抗生素作用的原因。 这项研究提出了使用功能宏基因组学从人类中回收抗生素基因簇的可扩展方法，并着重研究了研究人类微生物组中细菌素的策略，该策略可为治疗发现提供资源。