Exploring Vertical Transmission of Bifidobacteria from Mother to Child

Passage through the birth canal and consequent exposure to the mother's microbiota is considered to represent the initiating event for microbial colonization of the gastrointestinal tract of the newborn. However, a precise evaluation of such suspected vertical microbiota transmission has yet to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied and Environmental Microbiology 2015-10, Vol.81 (20), p.7078-7087
Main Authors: Milani, Christian, Mancabelli, Leonardo, Lugli, Gabriele Andrea, Duranti, Sabrina, Turroni, Francesca, Ferrario, Chiara, Mangifesta, Marta, Viappiani, Alice, Ferretti, Pamela, Gorfer, Valentina, Tett, Adrian, Segata, Nicola, van Sinderen, Douwe, Ventura, Marco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacterial infections
Bifidobacteriales Infections - transmission
Bifidobacterium - classification
Bifidobacterium - genetics
Bifidobacterium - isolation & purification
Bifidobacterium breve
Bifidobacterium longum
Disease transmission
DNA, Bacterial - chemistry
DNA, Bacterial - genetics
Feces - microbiology
Genome, Bacterial
Genomics
Humans
Infectious Disease Transmission, Vertical
Maternal & child health
Microbial Ecology
Microbiology
Microbiota
Milk, Human - microbiology
Molecular Sequence Data
Polymerase Chain Reaction
Sequence Analysis, DNA
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Summary:Passage through the birth canal and consequent exposure to the mother's microbiota is considered to represent the initiating event for microbial colonization of the gastrointestinal tract of the newborn. However, a precise evaluation of such suspected vertical microbiota transmission has yet to be performed. Here, we evaluated the microbiomes of four sample sets, each consisting of a mother's fecal and milk samples and the corresponding infant's fecal sample, by means of amplicon-based profiling supported by shotgun metagenomics data for two key samples. Notably, targeted genome reconstruction from microbiome data revealed vertical transmission of a Bifidobacterium breve strain and a Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum strain from mother to infant, a notion confirmed by strain isolation and genome sequencing. Furthermore, PCR analyses targeting unique genes from these two strains highlighted their persistence in the infant gut at 6 months. Thus, this study demonstrates the existence of specific bifidobacterial strains that are common to mother and child and thus indicative of vertical transmission and that are maintained in the infant for at least relatively short time spans.
ISSN:0099-2240
1098-5336
1098-6596
DOI:10.1128/aem.02037-15