The Mucin degrader Akkermansia muciniphila is an abundant resident of the human intestinal tract

Abstract

A 16S rRNA-targeted probe, MUC-1437, was designed and validated in order to determine the presence and numbers of cells of Akkermansia muciniphila, a mucin degrader, in the human intestinal tract. As determined by fluorescent in situ hybridization, A. muciniphila accounted more than 1% of the total fecal cells and was shown to be a common bacterial component of the human intestinal tract.

FIG. 1.

Phylogenetic tree showing the position of A. muciniphila and the clone sequences in the Verrucomicrobia phylum. The numbers after the commas are accession numbers. Bar = 10% sequence divergence.

FIG. 2.

Quantification of A. muciniphila (log cells/g [wet weight] of feces) in feces from Finnish (F) babies and adults and Dutch (D) adults, with the results represented by box and whisker plots. Each box extends from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile, and a line indicates the median. The whiskers show the highest and lowest values after exclusion of the outliers, which are represented by dots.