Johannes Zimmermann, Agnes Piecyk, Michael Sieber, Carola Petersen, Julia Johnke, Lucas Moitinho-Silva, Sven Künzel, Lena Bluhm, Arne Traulsen, Christoph Kaleta, Hinrich Schulenburg
UNLABELLED: The microbiome expresses a variety of functions that influence host biology. The range of functions depends on the microbiome's composition, which can change during the host's lifetime due to neutral assembly processes, host-mediated selection, and environmental conditions. To date, the exact dynamics of microbiome assembly, the underlying determinants, and the effects on host-associated functions remain poorly understood. Here, we used the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and a defined community of fully sequenced, naturally associated bacteria to study microbiome dynamics and functions across a major part of the worm's lifetime of hosts under controlled experimental conditions...
April 18, 2024: MBio