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Human Gut Four-Member Proteome-Complementarity Consortium

Community ID CommunityMech:000317
Ecological State ENGINEERED
Environment laboratory anaerobic co-culture
ENVO:01001405
Modeled Environment human gut
ENVO:2100002

A defined four-member consortium of metabolically distinct human gut anaerobes — Eubacterium hallii, Roseburia intestinalis, Marvinbryantia formatexigens and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii — assembled in all pairwise combinations and as the full community, on distinct carbon sources, and profiled by species-resolved proteomics. The finding is regulatory rather than compositional: bacteria modulate protein abundance in response to specific partners, and those partner-specific shifts reduce functional overlap between members and are frequently associated with increased community productivity. Biotic interactions, not the carbon source, dominated proteomic variation. The record captures a community whose members divide labour by changing what they express in each other's presence, so metabolic complementarity is an outcome of regulation rather than a fixed property of the members.

Taxonomy

Taxon Ontology ID Functional Roles Abundance
Eubacterium hallii NCBITaxon:39488 N/A
  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "Eubacterium hallii is a versatile anaerobe that ferments glucose and lactate into butyrate and hydrogen, and can utilize glycerol to produce 1,3-propanediol"
Roseburia intestinalis NCBITaxon:166486 N/A
  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "Roseburia intestinalis degrades hemicellulose and starch, producing butyrate as a terminal metabolite, and is frequently associated with dietary fibre metabolism"
Marvinbryantia formatexigens NCBITaxon:168384 N/A
  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "Marvinbryantia formatexigens specializes in degrading amorphous cellulose and produces formate and acetate as fermentation end products"
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii NCBITaxon:853 N/A
  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is a prominent butyrate producer with proposed anti-inflammatory effects"

Ecological Interactions

Ecological interaction network for Human Gut Four-Member Proteome-Complementarity Consortium Bipartite graph where circle nodes represent taxa and each ecological interaction is drawn as a distinct non-circular symbol, with colour repeating the same distinction (niche partitioning).
Taxon
Niche partitioning

Partner-Specific Proteome Remodelling Reduces Functional Overlap

NICHE_PARTITIONING

Metabolites: butyrate (CHEBI:17968), formate (CHEBI:15740), acetate (CHEBI:30089)

Evidence

  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "These interactions led to reproducible, partner-specific expression shifts that significantly reduced functional overlap and were frequently associated with increased community productivity"
  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "We found that biotic interactions, rather than abiotic conditions, were the dominant drivers of proteomic variation"

Environmental Factors

Factor Value Unit
Distinct carbon sources N/A
  • PMID:42032280 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "Using synthetic gut-derived consortia exposed to distinct carbon sources"

Growth Media

YCFA with wheat straw fibre, anaerobic Hungate tubes

Temperature 37.0 CELSIUS
Atmosphere ANAEROBIC

Composition

Component Concentration Unit CHEBI
Yeast casitone fatty acids (YCFA) medium N/A N/A N/A
wheat straw fibre 0.5 % N/A

Preparation notes: The fibre arm of the two-carbon-source design. Stability came from serial transfer - fresh medium every 24 h over five transfers - rather than from a single long incubation. Extracted from the cached open-access full text; #183 listed this record as lacking growth conditions because they are Methods-level.

Evidence

PMID:42032280

"Bacteria were grown anaerobically in Hungate tubes containing yeast casitone fatty acids (YCFA) medium"

PMID:42032280

"supplemented with 0.5% wheat straw fibre (collected at the Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, Israel) or 0.5% fructose as carbon sources for 24 h at 37 °C"

PMID:42032280

"the cultures were transferred to fresh media every 24 h over a span of 5 transfers"

YCFA with fructose, anaerobic Hungate tubes

Temperature 37.0 CELSIUS
Atmosphere ANAEROBIC

Composition

Component Concentration Unit CHEBI
Yeast casitone fatty acids (YCFA) medium N/A N/A N/A
fructose 0.5 % N/A

Preparation notes: The soluble-sugar arm, run in parallel with the fibre arm above. Kept as its own entry because the carbon source is the experimental variable, not an incidental detail.

Evidence

PMID:42032280

"or 0.5% fructose as carbon sources for 24 h at 37 °C"