Dynamics of Gut Metabolome and Microbiome Maturation during Early Life

Abstract Early-life gut microbiome-metabolome crosstalk has a pivotal role in the maintenance of host physiology. However, our understanding on early-life gut microbiome-metabolome maturation trajectories in humans remains limited. This study aims to explore the longitudinal patterns of gut metabolites during early life, and how they are related to gut microbiota composition in birth cohort samples of n = 670 children collected at 2.5 (n=272), 6 (n=232), 14 (n=289), and 30 months (n=157) of age. Factor analysis showed that breastfeeding has an effect on several metabolites including secondary bile acids. We found that the prevalent gut microbial abundances were associated with metabolite levels, especially in the 2.5 months-olds. We also demonstrated that the prevalent early colonizers Bacteroides, Escherichia and Bifidobacterium abundances associated with microbial metabolites bile acids especially in the breastfed infants. Taken together, our results suggests that as the microbiome matures during the early-life there is an association with the metabolome composition in an analogous fashion to how the genome information mature during early life.