Nucleotide 9-mers Characterize the Type II Diabetic Gut Metagenome

TL;DR

This study identifies specific nucleotide 9-mers with differing frequencies in the gut microbiome of diabetic versus healthy individuals, proposing a new potential biomarker approach for early T2D detection.

Contribution

It introduces the novel use of short nucleotide 9-mers as biomarkers for type II diabetes in gut metagenomes, a first in this research area.

Findings

Nucleotide 9-mers differ significantly between diabetic and healthy gut microbiomes.

Short DNA fragment analysis may be more feasible than traditional phylogenetic methods.

Potential for developing new diagnostic tools based on nucleotide frequency patterns.

Abstract

Discoveries of new biomarkers for frequently occurring diseases are of special importance in today's medicine. While fully developed type II diabetes (T2D) can be detected easily, the early identification of high risk individuals is an area of interest in T2D, too. Metagenomic analysis of the human bacterial flora has shown subtle changes in diabetic patients, but no specific microbes are known to cause or promote the disease. Moderate changes were also detected in the microbial gene composition of the metagenomes of diabetic patients, but again, no specific gene was found that is present in disease-related and missing in healthy metagenome. However, these fine differences in microbial taxon- and gene composition are difficult to apply as quantitative biomarkers for diagnosing or predicting type II diabetes. In the present work we report some nucleotide 9-mers with significantly differing frequencies in diabetic and healthy intestinal flora. To our knowledge, it is the first time such short DNA fragments have been associated with T2D. The automated, quantitative analysis of the frequencies of short nucleotide sequences seems to be more feasible than accurate phylogenetic and functional analysis, and thus it might be a promising direction of diagnostic research.