> Originally published in Science Express on 22 May 2008
> Science 20 June 2008:
> Vol. 320. no. 5883, pp. 1647 - 1651
> DOI: 10.1126/science.1155725
>
> Evolution of Mammals and Their Gut Microbes
> Ruth E. Ley, Micah Hamady, Catherine Lozupone, Peter J. Turnbaugh, Rob Roy
> Ramey, J. Stephen Bircher, Michael L. Schlegel, Tammy A. Tucker, Mark D.
> Schrenzel, Rob Knight, Jeffrey I. Gordon
> Mammals are metagenomic in that they are composed of not only their own gene
> complements but also those of all of their associated microbes. To
> understand the coevolution of the mammals and their indigenous microbial
> communities, we conducted a network-based analysis of bacterial 16S
> ribosomal RNA gene sequences from the fecal microbiota of humans and 59
> other mammalian species living in two zoos and in the wild. The results
> indicate that host diet and phylogeny both influence bacterial diversity,
> which increases from carnivory to omnivory to herbivory; that bacterial
> communities codiversified with their hosts; and that the gut microbiota of ...