Analysis of microbial and metabolic diversity in Jiangshui from Northwest China

Abstract

Jiangshui is a traditional fermented food in Northwest China with high nutritional value and special pharmacological effects. To study the microbial community structure and differences in the main metabolic pathways and metabolites in naturally fermented Jiangshui, the microbial diversity and nontargeted metabolomics analyses were performed on 18 samples of Jiangshui from three different production areas, namely, Tianshui, Gansu, Guyuan, Ningxia, and Ankang, Shaanxi. First, the microbial diversity was analyzed using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. Lactobacillus was the dominant bacterial genus in the three regions, and the relative abundance of the samples in each region ranged from 72.69% to 99.95%. The dominant fungal genus was Dipodascus, with a relative abundance > 40%. Second, untargeted metabolomics was used to analyze the differences among metabolites in Jiangshui samples. Significant differences were found in 761 different metabolites detected in Jiangshui from the three different regions. Based on ESI⁺, 78 significantly different metabolites were screened using variable importance projection (VIP) value > 1, fold change (FC) < 1, and P-value < 0.05. Finally, based on joint analysis, the microbiome and metabolite groups of Jiangshui samples from the three different regions were evenly and closely clustered, and the microorganisms and metabolites were highly correlated. The results provide theoretical basis and reference for Jiangshui in other regions.

Keywords:
Jiangshui; diversity microorganisms; metabolomics