DOE Joint Genome Institute

  • COVID-19
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Our Science
    • DOE Mission Areas
    • Science Programs
    • Science Highlights
    • Scientists
    A vertical tree stump outdoors with about a dozen shiitake mushrooms sprouting from its surface.
    Tracing the Evolution of Shiitake Mushrooms
    Understanding Lentinula genomes and their evolution could provide strategies for converting plant waste into sugars for biofuel production. Additionally, these fungi play a role in the global carbon cycle.

    More

    Soil Virus Offers Insight into Maintaining Microorganisms
    Through a collaborative effort, researchers have identified a protein in soil viruses that may promote soil health.

    More

    Data yielded from RIViT-seq increased the number of sigma factor-gene pairs confirmed in Streptomyces coelicolor from 209 to 399. Here, grey arrows denote previously known regulation and red arrows are regulation identified by RIViT-seq; orange nodes mark sigma factors while gray nodes mark other genes. (Otani, H., Mouncey, N.J. Nat Commun 13, 3502 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31191-w)
    Streamlining Regulon Identification in Bacteria
    Regulons are a group of genes that can be turned on or off by the same regulatory protein. RIViT-seq technology could speed up associating transcription factors with their target genes.

    More

  • Our Projects
    • Search JGI Projects
    • DOE Metrics/Statistics
    • Approved User Proposals
    • Legacy Projects
    The switchgrass diversity panel growing at the Kellogg Biological Station in Michigan. (David Lowry)
    Mapping Switchgrass Traits with Common Gardens
    The combination of field data and genetic information has allowed researchers to associate climate adaptations with switchgrass biology.

    More

    Artist rendering of genome standards being applied to deciphering the extensive diversity of viruses. (Illustration by Leah Pantea)
    Expanding Metagenomics to Capture Viral Diversity
    Along with highlighting the viruses in a given sample, metagenomics shed light on another key aspect of viruses in the environment — their sheer genetic diversity.

    More

    Photograph of a stream of diatoms beneath Arctic sea ice.
    Polar Phytoplankton Need Zinc to Cope with the Cold
    As part of a long-term collaboration with the JGI Algal Program, researchers studying function and activity of phytoplankton genes in polar waters have found that these algae rely on dissolved zinc to photosynthesize.

    More

  • Data & Tools
    • IMG
    • Data Portal
    • MycoCosm
    • PhycoCosm
    • Phytozome
    • GOLD
    Abstract image of gold lights and squares against a black backdrop
    Silver Age of GOLD Introduces New Features
    The Genomes OnLine Database makes curated microbiome metadata that follows community standards freely available and enables large-scale comparative genomics analysis initiatives.

    More

    Graphical overview of the RNA Virus MetaTranscriptomes Project. (Courtesy of Simon Roux)
    A Better Way to Find RNA Virus Needles in the Proverbial Database Haystacks
    Researchers combed through more than 5,000 data sets of RNA sequences generated from diverse environmental samples around the world, resulting in a five-fold increase of RNA virus diversity.

    More

    HPCwire Editor's Choice Award (logo crop) for Best Use of HPC in the Life Sciences
    JGI Part of Berkeley Lab Team Awarded Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences
    The HPCwire Editors Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences went to the Berkeley Lab team comprised of JGI and ExaBiome Project team, supported by the DOE Exascale Computing Project for MetaHipMer, an end-to-end genome assembler that supports “an unprecedented assembly of environmental microbiomes.”

    More

  • User Programs
    • Calls for Proposals
    • Special Initiatives & Programs
    • Product Offerings
    • User Support
    • Policies
    • Submit a Proposal
    Digital ID card with six headshots reads: Congratulations to our 2022 Function Genomics recipients!
    Final Round of 2022 CSP Functional Genomics Awardees
    Meet the final six researchers whose proposals were selected for the 2022 Community Science Program Functional Genomics call.

    More

    CSP New Investigators FY23 R1
    JGI Announces First Round of 2023 New Investigator Awardees
    Twice each year we look for novel research projects aligned with DOE missions and from PIs who have not led any previously-accepted proposals through the CSP New Investigator call.

    More

    screencap from Amundson and Wilkins subsurface microbiome video
    Digging into Microbial Ecosystems Deep Underground
    JGI users and microbiome researchers at Colorado State University have many questions about the microbial communities deep underground, including the role viral infection may play in other natural ecosystems.

    Read more

  • News & Publications
    • News
    • Blog
    • Podcasts
    • Webinars
    • Publications
    • Newsletter
    • Logos and Templates
    • Photos
    2022 JGI-UC Merced interns (Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)
    Exploring Possibilities: 2022 JGI-UC Merced Interns
    The 2022 UC Merced intern cohort share how their summer internship experiences have influenced their careers in science.

    More

    Using Team Science to Build Communities Around Data
    As the data portals grow and evolve, the research communities further expand around them. But with two projects, communities are forming to generate high quality genomes to benefit researchers.

    More

    Cow Rumen and the Early Days of Metagenomics
    Tracing a cow rumen dataset from the lab to material for a hands-on undergraduate research course at CSU-San Marcos that has since expanded into three other universities.

    More

News & Publications
Home › News Releases › Making up the gut microbiome is a host-driven project

November 16, 2010

Making up the gut microbiome is a host-driven project

Baking sourdough bread requires a starter, and so do mammalian guts, which are first colonized by microbial communities from the mother and then acquire more microbes over time. These gut microbial communities are important for maintaining health and combating disease, and it’s why the Human Microbiome Project launched by the National Institutes of Health in 2008 is studying the microbial communities that populate the human body by sequencing them and assembling a reference catalog, a project that involves researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI).

gorilla

Photo: G. beringei by rbleib

While the HMP was getting off the ground, DOE JGI collaborator Howard Ochman of the University of Arizona was focusing on a separate but related question: that of determining if gut microbiomes are more heavily influenced by the host or by environmental factors such as diet. In the study published online November 16 in PLoS Biology, Ochman and his colleagues, including former DOE JGI scientist Phil Hugenholtz, now director of the Australian Center for Ecogenomics at the University of Queensland, Australia, studied the gut microbial communities in several primates and compared them to the gut microbiomes of two humans. The results showed that the host, rather than environmental factors such as diet or geography, has the biggest influence over the makeup of these microbial communities.

Using fecal samples collected from their home territories in Africa, Ochman and his colleagues sequenced the microbial communities found in the guts of several primates — eastern and western lowland gorillas, bonobo, and three chimpanzee subspecies — to determine their compositional makeup and compared the results to those from samples collected from humans. They found that the gut microbial communities are species-specific, and have tracked with their hosts over evolutionary timescales. This evolutionary signal appears to be discernable even when gut communities are disturbed by such factors as disease.

“Host phylogeny is the overriding factor determining the microbial composition of the great ape gut microbiota,” Ochman and his colleagues concluded in their study, adding that the finding “contrasts with previous notions that diet is the most important factor governing the gut microbiotae within primates.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is committed to advancing genomics in support of DOE missions related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization and cleanup. JGI provides integrated high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis that enable systems-based scientific approaches to these challenges. Follow @jgi on Twitter.

DOE’s Office of Science is the largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.

Filed Under: News Releases

More topics:

  • COVID-19 Status
  • News
  • Science Highlights
  • Blog
  • Webinars
  • CSP Plans
  • Featured Profiles

Related Content:

Supercharging SIP in the Fungal Hyphosphere

Green plant matter grows from the top, with the area just beneath the surface also visible as soil, root systems and a fuzzy white substance surrounding them.

New Research Sheds Light on Diversity in the Deep Sea

A photo taken in the deep sea. Black clouds billow out of hydrothermal vents.

Sequencing Sphagnum Leads to Discovery of Sex Chromosomes

A photo of two sphagnum species: S. divinum (red) and S. angustifolium (green)]

Busting the Unbreakable Lignin

Pictured is a micrograph of Neocallimastix californiae.

Tracing the Evolution of Shiitake Mushrooms

A vertical tree stump outdoors with about a dozen shiitake mushrooms sprouting from its surface.

JGI announces final round of 2022 Functional Genomics awardees

Digital ID card with six headshots reads: Congratulations to our 2022 Function Genomics recipients!
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • User Meeting
  • MGM Workshops
  • Internal
  • Disclaimer
  • Credits
  • Policies
  • Emergency Info
  • Accessibility / Section 508 Statement
  • Flickr
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Biosciences Area
A project of the US Department of Energy, Office of Science

JGI is a DOE Office of Science User Facility managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

© 1997-2023 The Regents of the University of California