The CIAMIB: a Large and Metabolically Diverse Collection of Inflammation-Associated Bacteria from the Murine Gut
Erin Oi-Yan Wong, Emma Brownlie, Katharine M. Ng, Sornnujah Kathirgamanathan, Feiqiao Brian Yu, Bryan D. Merrill, Kerwyn Casey Huang, Alberto Martín, Carolina Tropini, William Wiley Navarre
Abstract
Attempts to explore the role of the microbiota in animal physiology have resulted in large-scale efforts to cultivate the thousands of microbes that are associated with humans. In contrast, relatively few lab mouse-associated bacteria have been isolated, despite the fact that the overwhelming number of studies on the microbiota use laboratory mice that are colonized with microbes that are quite distinct from those in humans. Here, we report the results of a large-scale isolation of bacteria from the intestines of laboratory mice either prone to or suffering from gut inflammation. This collection comprises dozens of novel isolates, many of which represent the only cultured representatives of their genus or species. We report their basic growth characteristics and genomes and are making them widely available to the greater research community.