There is a difference between athletes’ gut microbial communities and sedentary people with respect to diversity and the presence of certain species. It is still unclear how much is the difference between the gut microbial community patterns of non-elite and elite athletes or whether the athletes’ potential can be successfully measured by using microbiota. 306 fecal samples were taken from 19 individuals, who were divided into three cohorts: adult elite athletes (AE), youth elite athletes (YE), and youth non-elite athletes (YNE) (YN). Different cohorts’ gut microbiomes were studied, and their relationships with dietary determinants, physical features, and athletic performance were investigated. Elite athletes’ microbial diversity was higher than that of non-elite youth athletes. AE, YE, and YN had considerably distinct taxonomic, functional, and phenotypic components. In addition, 3 distinct enterotypes were discovered in athlete feces, with the bulk of elite athletes falling into enterotype 3. And athlete performance is closely linked to this enterotype-dependent gut microbiota. These differences in athlete gut microbiotaf led to the development of a random forest classifier based on taxonomic and functional biomarkers that can accurately distinguish elite athletes from non-elite athletes. Finally, the versatility of athlete microbial communities was discovered to be linked to dietary determinants and physical traits, which together can account for 41% of the variance in the gut microbiome.
Link:www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2020.1842991
