Western Indian rural gut microbial diversity in extreme Prakriti endo-phenotypes reveals signature microbes

Background:

In the contemporary era, heterogeneity amongst healthy individuals at genomic level is being widely acknowledged. This in turn translates into differential response to environmental cues and treatment regimens, necessitating the need for personalized/stratified therapy. We intend to unravel the molecular determinants of Ayurvedic way of endo-phenotyping individuals into distinct Prakriti types, which forms the basis of subsequent personalized treatment.

Results:

In this study, we explored and analyzed the healthy human gut microbiome structure within predominant Prakriti individuals from a genetically homogenous cohort to discover differentially abundant taxa, using 16S rRNA gene based microbial community profiling. We found Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes as major gut microbial components in varying composition, albeit in a similar trend across three Prakriti groups. Multiple species of the core microbiome showed differential abundance within Prakriti types, with gender specific signature taxons. Our study reveals that despite overall uniform composition of gut microbial community, healthy individuals belonging to different Prakriti groups have enrichment of specific bacteria.

Conclusions:

This study highlights the importance of Prakriti based endo-phenotypes to explain the variability amongst healthy individuals in gut microbial flora that have important consequences in an individual’s health, disease and treatment.