The gut microbiome is intimately related to human health, but it is not yet known which functional activities are driven by specific microorganisms' ecological configurations or transcription. We report a large-scale investigation of 372 human faecal metatranscriptomes and 929 metagenomes from a subset of 308 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. We identified a metatranscriptomic 'core' universally transcribed over time and across participants, often by different microorganisms. In contrast to the housekeeping functions enriched in this core, a 'variable' metatranscriptome included specialized pathways that were differentially expressed both across participants and among microorganisms. Finally, longitudinal metagenomic profiles allowed ecological interaction network reconstruction, which remained stable over the six-month timespan, as did strain tracking within and between participants. These results provide an initial characterization of human faecal microbial ecology into core, subject-specific, microorganism-specific and temporally variable transcription, and they differentiate metagenomically versus metatranscriptomically informative aspects of the human faecal microbiome.

中文翻译：

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成年男性队列中人类粪便微生物群落的转录组。

肠道微生物组与人类健康密切相关，但尚不清楚哪些功能活动是由特定微生物的生态构型或转录驱动的。我们报告了在Health Professionals跟进研究中对308名男性的372个人类粪便转录组和929个基因组进行的大规模调查。我们确定了一个转录组学的“核心”，该核心通常随着时间的推移和参与者之间的转录而普遍转录，通常是由不同的微生物引起的。与在此核心中丰富的管家功能相反，“可变”元转录组包括专门的途径，该途径在参与者之间以及在微生物之间均差异表达。最后，纵向宏基因组图谱可以重建生态相互作用网络，在六个月的时间跨度内保持稳定，参与者内部和参与者之间的应变跟踪也是如此。这些结果提供了人类粪便微生物生态学初步表征为核心的，受试者特异性的，微生物特异性的和随时间变化的转录，并且它们区分了人类粪便微生物组在宏基因组学和元转录组学方面的信息方面。