Marsha C Wibowo, Zhen Yang, Maxime Borry, Alexander Hübner, Kun D Huang, Braden T Tierney, Samuel Zimmerman, Francisco Barajas-Olmos, Cecilia Contreras-Cubas, Humberto García-Ortiz, Angélica Martínez-Hernández, Jacob M Luber, Philipp Kirstahler, Tre Blohm, Francis E Smiley, Richard Arnold, Sonia A Ballal, Sünje Johanna Pamp, Julia Russ, Frank Maixner, Omar Rota-Stabelli, Nicola Segata, Karl Reinhard, Lorena Orozco, Christina Warinner, Meradeth Snow, Steven LeBlanc, Aleksandar D Kostic
Loss of gut microbial diversity1-6 in industrial populations is associated with chronic diseases7 , underscoring the importance of studying our ancestral gut microbiome. However, relatively little is known about the composition of pre-industrial gut microbiomes. Here we performed a large-scale de novo assembly of microbial genomes from palaeofaeces. From eight authenticated human palaeofaeces samples (1,000-2,000 years old) with well-preserved DNA from southwestern USA and Mexico, we reconstructed 498 medium- and high-quality microbial genomes...
June 2021: Nature