With a world population living longer as well as marked disparities in life expectancy, understanding the determinants of longevity is one of the priority research agendas in 21st century life sciences. To this end, the blind mole-rat (Spalax leucodon), a subterranean mammalian, has emerged as an exceptional model organism due to its astonishing features such as remarkable longevity, hypoxia and hypercapnia tolerance, and cancer resistance. The microbiome has been found to be a vital parameter for cellular physiology and it is safe to assume that it has an impact on life expectancy. Although the unique characteristics of Spalax make it an ideal experimental model for longevity research, there is limited knowledge of the bacterial composition of Spalax microbiome, which limits its in-depth utilization. In this study, using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, we report the gut and skin bacterial structure of Spalax for the first time. The diversity between fecal and skin samples was manifested in the distant clustering, as revealed by beta diversity analysis. Importantly, the longevity-linked Muribaculaceae bacterial family was found to be the dominating bacterial taxa in Spalax fecal samples. These new findings contribute toward further development of Spalax as a model for longevity research and potential linkages between microbiome composition and longevity.

中文翻译：

---

微生物组和长寿：长寿啮齿动物Spalax leucodon 肠道中与长寿相关的Muribaculaceae 的高丰度。

随着世界人口寿命的延长以及预期寿命的显着差异，了解长寿的决定因素是 21 世纪生命科学的优先研究议程之一。为此，盲鼹鼠（Spalax leucodon）是一种地下哺乳动物，由于其惊人的特征，如长寿、耐缺氧和高碳酸血症以及抗癌性，已成为一种特殊的模式生物。微生物组已被发现是细胞生理学的一个重要参数，可以安全地假设它对预期寿命有影响。尽管Spalax的独特特性使其成为长寿研究的理想实验模型，但对Spalax细菌组成的了解有限微生物组，这限制了其深入利用。在这项研究中，我们使用 16S rRNA 扩增子测序，首次报告了Spalax的肠道和皮肤细菌结构。正如β多样性分析所揭示的那样，粪便和皮肤样本之间的多样性体现在远处的聚类中。重要的是，发现与长寿相关的 Muribaculaceae 细菌家族是Spalax粪便样本中的主要细菌分类群。这些新发现有助于进一步开发Spalax作为长寿研究模型以及微生物组组成与长寿之间的潜在联系。