NDLI: Strain-level analysis reveals the vertical microbial transmission during the life cycle of bumblebee

Content Provider	Springer Nature : BioMed Central
Author	Su, Qinzhi Wang, Qinglin Mu, Xiaohuan Chen, Hao Meng, Yujie Zhang, Xue Zheng, Li Hu, Xiaosong Zhai, Yifan Zheng, Hao
Abstract	Background Microbial acquisition and development of the gut microbiota impact the establishment of a healthy host-microbes symbiosis. Compared with other animals, the eusocial bumblebees and honeybees possess a simple, recurring, and similar set of gut microbiota. However, all bee gut phylotypes have high strain-level diversity. Gut communities of different bee species are composed of host-specific groups of strains. The variable genomic regions among strains of the same species often confer critical functional differences, such as carbon source utilization, essential for the natural selection of specific strains. The annual bumblebee colony founded by solitary queens enables tracking the transmission routes of gut bacteria during development stages. Results Here, we first showed the changes in the microbiome of individual bumblebees across their holometabolous life cycle. Some core gut bacteria persist throughout different stages of development. Gut microbiota of newly emerged workers always resembles those of their queens, suggesting a vertical transmission of strains from queens to the newborn workers. We then follow the dynamic changes in the gut community by comparing strain-level metagenomic profiles of queen-worker pairs longitudinally collected across different stages of the nest development. Species composition of both queen and worker shifts with the colony’s growth, and the queen-to-worker vertical inheritance of specific strains was identified. Finally, comparative metagenome analysis showed clear host-specificity for microbes across different bee hosts. Species from honeybees often possess a higher level of strain variation, and they also exhibited more complex gene repertoires linked to polysaccharide digestion. Our results demonstrate bacterial transmission events in bumblebee, highlighting the role of social interactions in driving the microbiota composition. Conclusions By the community-wide metagenomic analysis based on the custom genomic database of bee gut bacteria, we reveal strain transmission events at high resolution and the dynamic changes in community structure along with the colony development. The social annual life cycle of bumblebees is key for the acquisition and development of the gut microbiota. Further studies using the bumblebee model will advance our understanding of the microbiome transmission and the underlying mechanisms, such as strain competition and niche selection. Video Abstract
Related Links	https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s40168-021-01163-1.pdf
Ending Page	14
Page Count	14
Starting Page	1
File Format	HTM / HTML
ISSN	20492618
DOI	10.1186/s40168-021-01163-1
Journal	Microbiome
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	9
Language	English
Publisher	BioMed Central
Publisher Date	2021-11-04
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Medical Microbiology Bioinformatics Microbial Ecology Microbiology Microbial Genetics and Genomics Virology Bombus terrestris Apis mellifera Apis cerana Gut microbiota Strain diversity Vertical transmission CAZyme
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)
Journal Impact Factor	13.8/2023
5-Year Journal Impact Factor	17.9/2023

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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