ArticleMolecular systems biology2017
Subspecies in the global human gut microbiome.
Article in Molecular systems biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 84 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
84 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 167 citations in OpenAlex.
- Global Microbiome: Core and Unique Signatures Across Diverse Populations.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Pooled it
- Fecal microbiota transplantation plus pembrolizumab and axitinib in metastatic renal cell carcinoma: the randomized phase 2 TACITO trial.Nature medicine · 2026Trial
- Prevention of Radiotherapy-Induced Enteropathy by Probiotics (PREP): Double-Blind Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2024Trial
- Microbiome connections with host metabolism and habitual diet from 1,098 deeply phenotyped individuals.Nature medicine · 2021Trial
- Five-country analysis of geographic and dietary drivers of gut microbiome composition and genomic variation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Strain transmission links human microbiomes along the oral-gut axis and across cohabiting individuals.Cell press blue · 2026Article
- Article
- Gut microbiome composition and strain-sharing in multiplex autism spectrum disorder families.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A Review of Global Patterns in Gut Microbiota Composition, Health and Disease: Locating South Africa in the Conversation.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Tips and tricks for gut microbiota investigation using scanning electron microscopy (SEM): going from sample preparation to imaging and landscape analysis.Gut microbes · 2025Article
- Large diversity in the O-chain biosynthetic cluster within populations of Pelagibacterales.mBio · 2025Article
- Subspecies phylogeny in the human gut revealed by co-evolutionary constraints across the bacterial kingdom.Cell systems · 2025Article
- Inference of the Demographic Histories and Selective Effects of Human Gut Commensal Microbiota Over the Course of Human History.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Quantifying Metagenomic Strain Associations from Microbiomes with Anpan.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Morphological differences in populations of Jacobaea erucifolia: Genetic differentiation, phenotypic plasticity or ecotypes?PloS one · 2025Article
- Segatella clades adopt distinct roles within a single individual's gut.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2024Article
- Lightweight taxonomic profiling of long-read metagenomic datasets with Lemur and Magnet.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Genome-resolved metagenomics: a game changer for microbiome medicine.Experimental & molecular medicine · 2024Review
- Genome plasticity shapes the ecology and evolution of Phocaeicola dorei and Phocaeicola vulgatus.Scientific reports · 2024Article
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Population genomics of prokaryotes has been studied in depth in only a small number of primarily pathogenic bacteria, as genome sequences of isolates of diverse origin are lacking for most species. Here, we conducted a large-scale survey of population structure in prevalent human gut microbial species, sampled from their natural environment, with a culture-independent metagenomic approach. We examined the variation landscape of 71 species in 2,144 human fecal metagenomes and found that in 44 of these, accounting for 72% of the total assigned microbial abundance, single-nucleotide variation clearly indicates the existence of sub-populations (here termed subspecies). A single subspecies (per species) usually dominates within each host, as expected from ecological theory. At the global scale, geographic distributions of subspecies differ between phyla, with Firmicutes subspecies being significantly more geographically restricted. To investigate the functional significance of the delineated subspecies, we identified genes that consistently distinguish them in a manner that is independent of reference genomes. We further associated these subspecies-specific genes with properties of the microbial community and the host. For example, two of the three
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.