Responses of the microbiota to diet are highly personalized but mechanistically not well understood because many metabolic capabilities and interactions of human gut microorganisms are unknown. Here we show that sulfoquinovose (SQ), a sulfonated monosaccharide omnipresent in green vegetables, is a selective yet relevant substrate for few but ubiquitous bacteria in the human gut. In human feces and in defined co-culture, Eubacterium rectale and Bilophila wadsworthia used recently identified pathways to cooperatively catabolize SQ with 2,3-dihydroxypropane-1-sulfonate as a transient intermediate to hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), a key intestinal metabolite with disparate effects on host health. SQ-degradation capability is encoded in almost half of E. rectale genomes but otherwise sparsely distributed among microbial species in the human intestine. However, re-analysis of fecal metatranscriptome datasets of four human cohorts showed that SQ degradation (mostly from E. rectale and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii) and H₂S production (mostly from B. wadsworthia) pathways were expressed abundantly across various health states, demonstrating that these microbial functions are core attributes of the human gut. The discovery of green-diet-derived SQ as an exclusive microbial nutrient and an additional source of H₂S in the human gut highlights the role of individual dietary compounds and organosulfur metabolism on microbial activity and has implications for precision editing of the gut microbiota by dietary and prebiotic interventions.

微生物群对饮食的反应是高度个性化的，但由于人类肠道微生物的许多代谢能力和相互作用是未知的，因此在机制上尚不清楚。在这里，我们表明磺基奎诺糖 (SQ) 是一种普遍存在于绿色蔬菜中的磺化单糖，它是人体肠道中少数但普遍存在的细菌的选择性但相关底物。在人类粪便和确定的共培养中，直肠真杆菌和Bilophila wadsworthia使用最近确定的途径将 SQ 与 2,3-二羟基丙烷-1-磺酸盐协同分解代谢为硫化氢 (H 2 S) 的瞬时中间体，硫化氢 (H ₂ S) 是一种关键的肠道代谢物对宿主健康有不同的影响。SQ 降级能力以几乎一半的形式编码E.直肠基因组，但在人类肠道的微生物物种中稀疏分布。然而，对四个人类队列的粪便宏转录组数据集的重新分析表明，SQ 降解（主要来自E. rectale和Faecalibacterium prausnitzii）和 H ₂ S 产生（主要来自B. wadsworthia）途径在各种健康状态下大量表达，表明这些微生物功能是人体肠道的核心属性。发现绿色饮食衍生的 SQ 作为独有的微生物营养素和 H _{2的额外来源}人体肠道中的 S 突出了个体膳食化合物和有机硫代谢对微生物活性的作用，并对通过膳食和益生元干预对肠道微生物群的精确编辑产生了影响。