The trillions of microorganisms residing in the human body display varying degrees of compositional and functional diversities within and between individuals and contribute significantly to host physiology and susceptibility to disease. Microbial species present in the vaginal milieu of reproductive age women showed a large personal component and varies widely in different ethnic groups at the taxonomic, genomic, and functional levels. Lactobacillus iners, L. crispatus, L. gasseri, L. jensenii, and L. johnsonii are most frequently detected bacterial species in the vaginal milieu of reproductive age women. However, we currently lack (i) an understanding of the baseline vaginal microbiota of reproductive age Indian women, (ii) the extent of taxonomic and functional variations of vaginal microbiota between individuals and (iii) the genomic repertoires of the dominant vaginal microbiota associated with the Indian subjects. In our study, we analyzed the metagenome of high vaginal swab (HVS) samples collected from 40 pregnant Indian women enrolled in the GARBH-Ini cohort. Composition and abundance of bacterial species was characterized by pyrosequencing 16S rRNA gene. We identified 3067 OTUs with ≥ 10 reads from four different bacterial phyla. Several species of lactobacilli were clustered into three community state types (CSTs). L. iners, L. crispatus, L. gasseri, and L. jensenii are the most frequently detected Lactobacillus species in the vaginal environment of Indian women. Other than Lactobacillus, several species of Halomonas were also identified in the vaginal environment of most of the women sampled. To gain genomic and functional insights, we isolated several Lactobacillus species from the HVS samples and explored their whole genome sequences by shotgun sequencing. We analyzed the genome of dominant Lactobacillus species, L. iners, L. crispatus, L. gasseri, and L. paragesseri to represent the CSTs and identify functions that may influence the composition of complex vaginal microbial ecology. This study reports for the first time the vaginal microbial ecology of Indian women and genomic insights into L. iners, L. crispatus, L. gasseri, and L. paragesseri commonly found in the genital tract of reproductive age women.

人体中存在的数万亿种微生物在个体内部和个体之间表现出不同程度的成分和功能多样性，并极大地促进了宿主生理和疾病易感性。生殖年龄妇女的阴道环境中存在的微生物物种显示出很大的个人成分，并且在分类，基因组和功能水平上在不同种族中差异很大。乳杆菌iners，卷曲乳杆菌，加氏乳杆菌，简氏乳杆菌，和氏乳杆菌是育龄妇女阴道环境中最常检测到的细菌种类。但是，我们目前尚缺乏（i）对印度育龄妇女基线阴道菌群的了解，（ii）个体之间阴道菌群的分类学和功能变异的程度，以及（iii）与之相关的主要阴道菌群的基因组库印度人。在我们的研究中，我们分析了来自GARBH-Ini队列的40名印度孕妇的高阴道拭子（HVS）样本的基因组。通过焦磷酸测序16S rRNA基因来表征细菌种类的组成和丰度。我们从四个不同的细菌门系中识别出3067个OTU，其中≥10个读数。几种乳酸菌被分为三种社区状态类型（CST）。L. iners，卷曲乳杆菌，加氏乳杆菌，和氏乳杆菌是最常检测到的乳酸杆菌在印度妇女的阴道内环境的物种。除乳杆菌外，在大多数抽样妇女的阴道环境中还发现了数种嗜盐单胞菌。为了获得基因组和功能方面的见识，我们从HVS样品中分离了几种乳酸杆菌，并通过shot弹枪测序探索了它们的全基因组序列。我们分析主导的基因组中乳酸杆菌的物种，属iners，卷曲乳杆菌，加氏乳杆菌和L. paragesseri来代表CST，并确定可能影响复杂阴道微生物生态组成的功能。这是第一次印度妇女和基因组洞察阴道微生物生态学研究报告L. iners，卷曲乳杆菌，加氏乳杆菌和L. paragesseri育龄妇女的生殖道很常见。