Studies | Unique Samples per Visibility Status | Public Samples per Data Type | Users | Jobs |
---|---|---|---|---|
public: 737 private: 171 sandbox: 2,594 submitted to EBI: 838 |
public: 390,559 private: 115,579 sandbox: 539,152 submitted to EBI: 307,807 submitted to EBI (prep): 364,171 |
16S: 359,907 18S: 11,982 ITS: 14,640 Metagenomic: 64,696 Full Length Operon: 803 Metatranscriptomic: 11,764 Metabolomic: 407 Genome Isolate: 1,131 |
12,986 | 754,611 |
Upon delivery, the neonate is exposed for the first time to a wide array of microbes from a variety of sources, including maternal bacteria. Although prior studies have suggested that delivery mode shapes the microbiota's establishment and, subsequently, its role in child health, most researchers have focused on specific bacterial taxa or on a single body habitat, the gut. Thus, the initiation stage of human microbiome development remains obscure. The goal of the present study was to obtain a community-wide perspective on the influence of delivery mode and body habitat on the neonate's first microbiota. We used multiplexed 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing to characterize bacterial communities from mothers and their newborn babies, four born vaginally and six born via Cesarean section. Mothers skin, oral mucosa, and vagina were sampled 1 h before delivery, and neonates' skin, oral mucosa, and nasopharyngeal aspirate were sampled less than 5 min, and meconium less than 24 h, after delivery. We found that in direct contrast to the highly differentiated communities of their mothers, neonates harbored bacterial communities that were undifferentiated across multiple body habitats, regardless of delivery mode. Our results also show that vaginally delivered infants acquired bacterial communities resembling their own mother's vaginal microbiota, dominated by Lactobacillus, Prevotella, or Sneathia spp., and C-section infants harbored bacterial communities similar to those found on the skin surface, dominated by Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, and Propionibacterium spp. These findings establish an important baseline for studies tracking the human microbiome's successional development in different body habitats following different delivery modes, and their associated effects on infant health.