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Bakdrive: Identifying the Minimum Set of Bacterial Driver Species across Multiple Microbial Communities

The impact of microbiota on human health

Microbes form a complex and dynamic system

Disruption of microbial communities observed in many diseases,

e.g. recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (rCDI),

inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)

Popular treatment for dysbiosis

e.g., fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), probiotics

Exploring microbial communities with control theory

Control theory : a discipline of design strategies aimed at controlling dynamical systems

  • e.g. system characterization, control optimization etc.

Desired Target State

Characterizing metagenomic states with microbial abundance profiles

Metagenomic states are characterized by abundance profiles .

Abundance Profiles

Angulo, Moog, and Liu, “A Theoretical Framework for Controlling Complex Microbial Communities.” (2019)

Characterizing underlying mechanisms of microbial communities

Ecological network (bacterial interaction network)

  • Node: species x

  • Edge: interspecies interaction

The abundance of each species changes following the GeneralizedLotka-Voltera(GLV) model

Lotka-Voltera model

Goal & Challenges

Goal

Find the minimum number of driver species (driver nodes), whose control can shift microbial communities from diseased to healthy states

Challenges

  1. How to infer bacterial interactions?

  2. How to find driver species?

  3. Different metagenomic samples have different ecological networks. How to find a common set of driver species that works for multiple metagenomic samples ?

Flux balance analysis (FBA) is utilized to infer bacterial interactions

How to infer bacterial interactions?

  • FBA: Calculate the flow of metabolites through genome-scale metabolic models, thereby to predict the growth rates of organisms

  • Competitive (negative): consume same resources

  • Cooperative (positive): consume metabolites produced by another species

  • Software: MICOM

Christian Diener, Sean M. Gibbons, and OsbaldoResendis-Antonio, “MICOM: Metagenome-Scale Modeling To Infer Metabolic Interactions in the Gut Microbiota,” MSystems 5, no. 1 (February 25, 2020),https://doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.00606-19.

Ecological Network

Minimum dominant set (MDS)-based approach is employed to detect driver species

How to find driver species?

  • minimum dominant set (MDS) of nodes

the minimum number of nodes, which directly connect all the other nodes in the network.

A set of metagenomic samples are characterized as a multilayer ecological networks

Different metagenomic samples have different ecological networks. How to find a common set of driver species that works for multiple metagenomic samples?

  • multilayer MDS (MDSM) algorithm

minimize no. of driver nodes

Subject to

driver nodes & their neighbors cover thewholenetwork

Jose C.Nacheret al., “Finding andAnalysingthe Minimum Set of Driver Nodes Required to Control Multilayer Networks,” Scientific Reports 9, no. 1 (January 24, 2019): 576,https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-37046-z.

Bakdrive Pipeline

Driver species

(Probiotics)

1,3,6,7

Results Outline

Simulated Data

recurrent C. difficile infection

Known ecological networks & target species

Real Data

recurrent C. difficile infection

Unknown ecological networks & target pathogens

rCDI and FMT Simulation

*GLV: generalizedLotka–Volterra

Pool of 100 species

Select no. of species

bowel cleansing

YandongXiao et al., “An Ecological Framework to Understand the Efficacy of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation,” Nature Communications 11, no. 1 (July 3, 2020): 3329,https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17180-x.

Part1 Simulated Data Case1 Universal microbial dynamics

Part1 Simulated Data Case1 Universal microbial dynamics

Shifts of microbial communities from diseased to healthy state

PCoAbased on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity

Part2 Real Data C. difficile infection

rCDI(n=19), donors (n=26) , FMT samples

12 patients with a single does of successful FMT

The most abundant genera:

- Klebsiella and Escherichia (Disease)

  • Actinobacteria, Clostridia, Bacteroidia (Donor)

Bakdrive real data analysis

Part2 Real Data Case1 rCDI

Identify 8 driver species from 26 donor samples

Campylobacter jejuni and Streptococcus agalactiae are pathogens (removed from driver species transplantation)

Agreement = % species in therCDIsamples with the same shift between driver species transplantation (simulated data) & after-FMT (real data)

Section Summary Controlling Biological System

Limitations and Future Work:

Take the directionality and strength of ecological networks into consideration.

Apply Bakdrive in real clinical setting

Bakdrive is the first ready-to-use pipeline that detect driver species and customize probiotic cocktail

Bakdrive can directly take abundance profiles as input

  • Does not require known ecological networks

  • Does not require known target pathogens

Bakdrive takes host variations into consideration

Bakdrive catalyzes the development of target metagenomic-based treatment