Spatial distribution of microbial communities in the cystic fibrosis lung - PubMed (original) (raw)

Spatial distribution of microbial communities in the cystic fibrosis lung

Dana Willner et al. ISME J. 2012 Feb.

Abstract

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a common fatal genetic disorder with mortality most often resulting from microbial infections of the lungs. Culture-independent studies of CF-associated microbial communities have indicated that microbial diversity in the CF airways is much higher than suggested by culturing alone. However, these studies have relied on indirect methods to sample the CF lung such as expectorated sputum and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). Here, we characterize the diversity of microbial communities in tissue sections from anatomically distinct regions of the CF lung using barcoded 16S amplicon pyrosequencing. Microbial communities differed significantly between different areas of the lungs, and few taxa were common to microbial communities in all anatomical regions surveyed. Our results indicate that CF lung infections are not only polymicrobial, but also spatially heterogeneous suggesting that treatment regimes tailored to dominant populations in sputum or BAL samples may be ineffective against infections in some areas of the lung.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Relative abundance of microbial OTUs in the ex-plant and postmortem lungs. Each row represents a different OTU, and the abundance as a percentage of the total population is indicated by color. Phyla are indicated on the left, and a subset of OTU classifications is indicated on the right. A complete list of OTU classification appears in Supplementary Table 2. Lung regions are abbreviated as RUL for right upper lobe, RML for right middle lobe, RLL for right lower lobe, LUL for left upper lobe, Ling for left lingula and LLL for left lower lobe. LLLA indicates the left lower lobe anterior and LLLP indicates the left lower lobe posterior. Trach indicates the tracheal sample.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Spatial clustering of microbial communities in the CF lungs. Communities were compared using the weighted Unifrac distance metric, and clustered using average linkage. Node labels indicate jackknife support values, and the bar below the tree represents a weighted Unifrac distance of 0.01. Shaded boxes indicate communities that were not significantly different from each other, but were significantly different from all other communities as determined by XIPE.

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