International Journal of Molecular Sciences · 5 authors, 4 centres
This summary was generated by AI from a single paper. It has not been reviewed by a clinician and is not clinical advice. Verify against the source before acting on it.
This longitudinal study analyzed the saliva and stool microbiota and metabolome of five men during an 8-month Antarctic expedition, a terrestrial analogue for space travel. It found that salivary bacterial load and diversity increased during the expedition, while stool microbiota and metabolite fingerprints in all biofluids maintained strong individual differences, suggesting resilience to environmental stress.
This study investigated the impact of prolonged extreme environmental and physiological stress on the human microbiota and metabolome, relevant to long-duration space travel. The five-person crew of the Trans-Antarctic Winter Traverse provided saliva, stool, and plasma samples over an 8-month period, which was divided into outward traversing, stationary, and return traversing phases. Metataxonomic sequencing of 16S rRNA genes showed that the salivary microbiota exhibited significant increases in both bacterial load and diversity (Shannon metric) during the expedition compared to baseline, with differences observed between activity periods (R²=0.31, p<0.001). In contrast, the stool microbiota showed no significant activity-related changes in diversity or load, but maintained significant individual differences (R²=0.56, p<0.001). FTIR and metabolite fingerprinting of saliva, stool, and plasma also revealed minimal activity-associated shifts, with strong maintenance of individual participant profiles throughout the expedition. Multi-omic correlation analysis identified links between different microbial taxa across oral and gut sites and between microbial features and metabolites, particularly in stool. The study's primary limitations are the very small, all-male cohort and the lack of a non-stressed control group, which prevents direct causal inferences. The findings suggest that while the oral microbiome shows stress-related changes, the gut microbiome and systemic metabolome are more resilient, highlighting the importance of considering multi-site responses and individual baselines in studies of extreme isolation.
