Zhang Heping's team from Inner Mongolia Agricultural University published the cover article of Nature Microbiology

Recently, the research results of "A high-quality genome compendium of the human gut microbiome of Inner Mongolians" completed by Inner Mongolia Agricultural University were published as a cover article in Nature Microbiology (2023, 8: 150-161)
。 The first author of this paper is Jin Hao, a 2018 doctoral student from the School of Food Science and Engineering, Quan Kejian and He Qiuwen, a 2022 doctoral student, are co-first authors, and Professor Zhang Heping and Sun Zhihong are the corresponding authors
.

A large number of data have confirmed that the gut microbiota plays an important role
in human health and disease.
However, more than 99 percent of Earth's microbes remain uncultured, known as "dark matter," posing a major challenge
to microbiome research.
In recent years, metagenomic sub-box technology based on non-culture strategy has provided reference genomes for a large number of uncultured microorganisms in various natural niches, which makes it possible to have a basic understanding
of these "dark matter".
However, the current uneven genomic quality and lack of samples from atypical regional populations greatly limit the deeper understanding
of dark matter.

Based on a probiotic (Probio-M8) fermented milk population intervention experiment, the study used ultra-deep mixed metagenomic sequencing to assemble the Probio-M8 genome directly from the gut microbiome of volunteers, thereby evaluating the accuracy of assembly and establishing a high-quality genome assembly process
。 Based on the metagenomic analysis strategy and method of binning, the Inner Mongolian Intestinal High-quality Genome Database (IMGG) was constructed, including 802 circular and complete genomes (CMAG) and 5927 high-quality genomes, which significantly improved the resolution and quality of genomic elements, including ribosomal RNA operons (rrns), metabolic gene clusters, prebacteriophages and insertion sequences (IS), and reported the rrn copy number of uncultured species for the first time.
As well as more than 12,000 unknown intestinal prephages and their functional characteristics, the distribution of IS elements in intestinal bacteria re-recognizes the potential importance of these seriously underestimated regions in the study of the gut microbiome, and lays a data foundation
for the intestinal flora and health of Inner Mongolians.

Screenshot of the published paper