Development of HuMiChip for functional profiling of human microbiomes

PLoS One. 2014 Mar 4;9(3):e90546. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0090546. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Understanding the diversity, composition, structure, function, and dynamics of human microbiomes in individual human hosts is crucial to reveal human-microbial interactions, especially for patients with microbially mediated disorders, but challenging due to the high diversity of the human microbiome. Here we have developed a functional gene-based microarray for profiling human microbiomes (HuMiChip) with 36,802 probes targeting 50,007 protein coding sequences for 139 key functional gene families. Computational evaluation suggested all probes included are highly specific to their target sequences. HuMiChip was used to analyze human oral and gut microbiomes, showing significantly different functional gene profiles between oral and gut microbiome. Obvious shifts of microbial functional structure and composition were observed for both patients with dental caries and periodontitis from moderate to advanced stages, suggesting a progressive change of microbial communities in response to the diseases. Consistent gene family profiles were observed by both HuMiChip and next generation sequencing technologies. Additionally, HuMiChip was able to detect gene families at as low as 0.001% relative abundance. The results indicate that the developed HuMiChip is a useful and effective tool for functional profiling of human microbiomes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Gastrointestinal Tract / microbiology*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / instrumentation
  • Humans
  • Metagenome
  • Microbiota*
  • Mouth / microbiology*
  • Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / instrumentation*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) through the Oklahoma Applied Research Support (OARS) Project AR11-035, ENIGMA- Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Program of China (grant number: 2011DFA30940), the National Basic Research Program of China (“973 Pilot Research Program”, Grant Number: 2011CB512108), National Key Technologies R&D Program of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (grand 2012BAI07B03), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81170959, 30901689 and 81172579), and the Sichuan Provincial Department of science and technology project(2013SZ0039). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.