Browsing by Subject "Wastewater"

Dietary data is essential in creating dietary guidelines and interventions, but the traditional data collection methods can be biased and costly. Wastewater metagenomes present a potential new way to collect dietary data with the utilization of microbial markers. In this study, potential microbial markers for fiber and meat intake were identified from literature. The abundances of these markers and their associations with the corresponding dietary data were analyzed using a previously published global wastewater metagenome dataset covering 58 countries. Majority of these potential markers were detected in the analysed wastewater metagenomes. Of the identified markers, Prevotella and Prevotella copri showed significant associations with whole grain intake, Alistipes and Alistipes putredinis showed significant associations with processed meat intake, and Faecalibacterium showed significant association with red meat intake. In addition, associations between dietary data and both taxonomic and functional annotations of the metagenomes were determined to identify any additional potential markers. Multiple additional species, genera and gene families showed significant associations with red meat and processed meat intakes. Future research should include finer resolution data to validify these results and further investigate the potential of these taxa and genes as markers. In conclusion, microbial markers present a promising way to collect dietary data from wastewater metagenomes.