Gut-derived Flavonifractor species variants are differentially enriched during in vitro incubation with quercetin
Flavonoids are a common component of the human diet with widely reported health-promoting properties. The gut microbiota transforms these compounds affecting the overall metabolic outcome of their consumption. Flavonoid-degrading bacteria are often studied in isolation under culture conditions that do not resemble the conditions in the colon and that eliminate the multiple interactions that take place in complex communities. In this study, a comparative metataxonomic analysis of fecal communities supplemented with the flavonoid quercetin led us to identify a potential competitive exclusion interaction between two sequence variants related to the flavonoid-degrading species, Flavonifractor plautii, that belong to the same genus but different species. During incubation of fecal slurries with quercetin, the relative abundance of these two variants was inversely correlated; one variant, ASV_65f4, increased in relative abundance in half of the libraries and the other variant, ASV_a45d, in the other half. This pattern was also observed with 6 additional fecal samples that were transplanted into germ-free mice fed two different diets. Mouses diet did not change the pattern of dominance of either variant, and initial relative abundances did not predict which one ended up dominating. Potential distinct metabolic capabilities of these two Flavonifractor-related species were evidenced, as only one variant, ASV_65f4, became consistently enriched in complex communities supplemented with acetate but no quercetin. Genomic comparison analysis of the close relatives of each variant revealed that ASV_65f4 may be an efficient ethanolamine-utilizing bacterium which may increase its fitness in media with no quercetin compared to ASV_a45d. Other discordant features between ASV_65f4- and ASV_a45d-related groups may be the presence of flagellar and galactose-utilization genes, respectively. Overall, we showed that the Flavonifractor genus harbors variants that present a pattern of negative co-occurrence and that may have different metabolic and structural traits, whether these differences affect the dynamic of quercetin degradation warrants further investigation.