Dog and human gut microbiomes have more similar genes and responses to diet than we previously thought, according to a study published in the open access journal, Microbiome. 最近发表在开放获取期刊《微生物组》（Microbiome）上的一项研究显示，狗和人类肠道菌群的基因、饮食反应，可能比我们之前认为的更加相似。
Dr Luis Pedro Coelho and colleagues from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, in collaboration with Nestlé Research, evaluated the gut microbiome of two dog breeds and found that the gene content of the dogs microbiome showed many similarities to the human gut microbiome, and was more similar to humans than the microbiome of pigs or mice. 来自欧洲分子生物学实验室的Luis Pedro Coelho博士团队与雀巢研究院合作，评估了两种狗狗肠道微生物组的情况，发现这些微生物的基因组成和人类肠道微生物的基因组成有很多相似点，相似程度高于猪或老鼠与人类的相似程度。
Dr Luis Pedro Coelho, corresponding author of the study, commented:“We found many similarities between the gene content of the human and dog gut microbiomes. The results of this comparison suggest that we are more similar to man’s best friend than we originally thought.” 研究的通讯作者Luis Pedro Coelho博士说：“我们发现人类和狗的肠道菌群在基因组成上有许多相似之处，这个比较的结果表明我们与‘人类最好的朋友’之间的相似程度比我们以前认为的更高。”
The researchers found that changes in the amount of protein and carbohydrates in the diet had a similar effect on the microbiota of dogs and humans, independent of the dog’s breed or sex. The microbiomes of overweight or obese dogs were found to be more responsive to a high protein diet compared to microbiomes of lean dogs; this is consistent with the idea that healthy microbiomes are more resilient. 研究者们发现，饮食中蛋白质和碳水化合物的量的变化，对狗和人类的肠道菌群产生的影响是类似的，其中对狗的影响不因品种或性别而改变。与较苗条的狗相比，超重或肥胖狗狗的肠道菌群对高蛋白饮食反应更为剧烈，这与一贯认为的健康的肠道菌群恢复能力更强、更稳定是一致的。 Dr Luis Pedro Coelho, commented:
“These findings suggest that dogs could be a better model for nutrition studies than pigs or mice and we could potentially use data from dogs to study the impact of diet on gut microbiota in humans, and humans could be a good model to study the nutrition of dogs. “Many people who have pets consider them as part of the family and like humans, dogs have a growing obesity problem. Therefore, it is important to study the implications of different diets.” Luis Pedro Coelho博士说：“这些发现表明，在进行营养学研究时，狗可能是比猪或鼠更好的模式动物，我们可能可以用狗的数据来研究饮食对人类肠道菌群的影响，同样人类也可以成为研究犬类营养学的好模型。”
The researchers investigated how diet interacted with the dog gut microbiome with a randomized controlled trial using a sample of 64 dogs, half of which were beagles and half were retrievers, with equal numbers of lean and overweight dogs. The dogs were all fed the same base diet of commercially available dog food for four weeks then they were randomized into two groups; one group consumed a high protein, low carb diet and the other group consumed a high carb, low protein diet for four weeks. A total of 129 dog stool samples were collected at four and eight weeks. The researchers then extracted DNA from these samples to create the dog gut microbiome gene catalogue containing 1,247,405 genes. The dog gut gene catalogue was compared to existing gut microbiome gene catalogues from humans, mice and pigs to assess the similarities in gene content and how the gut microbiome responds to changes in diet. 研究者们用64只狗狗做了随机对照试验，其中一半是比格犬，一半是寻回犬，体型较瘦和超重的各半，来研究饮食和狗狗肠道菌群的相互作用。狗狗们先是吃了4周外面可以买到的狗粮，然后随机分成2组，一组进行高蛋白、低碳水饮食，另一组进行高碳水、低蛋白饮食，如此持续4周。研究者们在第四周和第八周时一共采集了129份狗狗的粪便样本，并从样本中提取DNA，最终得到了一个包含1,247,405个基因的肠道菌群基因列表。他们将这个列表与现存的人类、小鼠和猪的肠道菌群基因列表进行比较，以了解基因组成的相似程度，以及肠道菌群随饮食改变的变化情况。
The authors caution that while humans and dogs host very similar microbes, they are not exactly the same microbes, but very closely related strains of the same species. 作者们提醒说，虽然人类和狗体内的微生物很相似，但并非完全一样，而是同一个种当中亲缘关系较近的不同菌株。
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Notes to editor附注:
1. Research article原文:
Similarity of the dog and human gut microbiomes in gene content and response to diet
Coelho et al. Microbiome 2018
DOI: 10.1186/s40168-018-0450-3
When the embargo lifts the article will be available at: 限制令解除后，原文链接如下： https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-018-0450-3
Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BMC's open access policy. 报道时请提及期刊名称《微生物组》（Microbiome）。如果您是为网站写作稿件，请附上原文链接。由于BMC的开放获取政策，本刊所有文章都可以免费阅读。
2. The central purpose of Microbiome is to unite investigators conducting microbiome research in environmental, agricultural, and biomedical arenas. Topics broadly addressing the study of microbial communities, such as, microbial surveys, bioinformatics, meta-omics approaches and community/host interaction modeling will be considered for publication. Through this collection of literature Microbiome hopes to integrate researchers with common scientific objectives across a broad cross-section of sub-disciplines within microbial ecology. 《微生物组》（Microbiome）的宗旨是将环境学界、农学界和生物医学界的微生物组研究者集合起来。期刊发表的主题广泛涵盖微生物领域的研究，如微生物调查、生物信息学、宏组学研究方法和菌群/寄主相互作用模型。《微生物组》希望通过这些研究，可以将研究微生物生态学不同分支学科但具有共同的科学目标的研究者们集合到一起。
3. A pioneer of open access publishing, BMC has an evolving portfolio of high quality peer-reviewed journals including broad interest titles such as BMC Biology and BMC Medicine, specialist journals such as Malaria Journal and Microbiome, and the BMC series. At BMC, research is always in progress. We are committed to continual innovation to better support the needs of our communities, ensuring the integrity of the research we publish, and championing the benefits of open research. BMC is part of Springer Nature, giving us greater opportunities to help authors connect and advance discoveries across the world. BMC作为开放获取出版的先锋，不断推出一系列高质量的同行评议期刊，这包括了BMC Biology 和BMC Medicine等涵盖范围较广的期刊，以及Malaria Journal、Microbiome和BMC系列期刊等专门刊物。BMC认为，科研永不止步。因此，我们致力于不断创新，以更好地满足科学共同体的需要，确保所发表的科研成果的完整性，并推广开放研究的益处。BMC是施普林格∙自然旗下机构，这让我们更有机会帮助世界各地的作者相互沟通并促进科学发现。
This paper is the first from BMC to upload it’s associated software to Code Ocean, allowing the code used in the article to be run and viewed without any downloading required; this ‘code capsule’ is referenced in the paper.本文是BMC发表的文章中第一个将相关软件上传到Code Ocean的，如此一来文章中所使用的代码无需下载就可以运行和查看。生成的这个“代码胶囊”在文中有提及。
Journal
Microbiome