Human gut archaea collection from Estonian population

Abstract

While microbiota plays a crucial role in maintaining overall health, archaea, a component of microbiota, remain relatively unexplored. Here, we present a newly assembled set of archaeal metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from 1,887 fecal microbiome samples. These archaeal MAGs were recovered for the first time from the Estonian population, specifically from the Estonian Microbiome Deep (EstMB-deep) cohort. In total, we identified 273 archaeal MAGs, representing 21 species and 144 strains ("EstMB MAGdb Archaea-273" MAGs collection). Of these 21 species, 12 species belonged to the order Methanobacteriales and Methanomassilicicoccales, other 9 species from Methanomassiliicoccales were novel. Notably, 7 of the 9 new species belonged to the UBA71 genus. Given that the latest version of the Unified Human Gastrointestinal Genome (UHGG v2.0.2) database includes 27 archaeal species, we expanded the known archaeal diversity at the species level by 30%.