What this means
Researchers re-analyzed existing gut bacteria and cell data from many past studies. They found fewer queuine-making bacteria in people with inflammatory bowel disease. This does not show that these bacteria cause the disease or that changing them would help.
Plain-English summary written by an AI model from the abstract. The original is below.
- Who it was tested in
- Re-analysis of 9 gut microbiome datasets, 15 single-cell datasets, and 1 metabolic dataset; 3146 samples across the lifespan
- Kind of research
- Early results, not yet checked by other scientists
The science
- Original title
- Disrupted microbial queuosine biosynthesis contributes to dysbiosis of human inflammatory bowel disease
- Authors
- An, Y., Xia, Y., Sun, J.
- Journal
- medRxiv (preprint, not yet peer reviewed)
- Published
- Oct 14, 2026
- Study type
- Preprint
Abstract
Background and Aims: As a microbiome/diet-derived vitamin, queuine (q) is a micronutrient that eukaryotes acquire from microbiota or diet. Vitamin q, the free base form of queuosine (Q), is used for Q-modification of transfer RNA (tRNA). Although tRNA-Q-modification in regulating eukaryotic cell physiology is recognized, the relationship between Q-tRNA-modification and the human microbiome in health and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) remains unknown. Which bacteria produce q and how the q-producing bacteria contributing to human health and IBD are not explored. Here, we hypothesize that disrupted microbial Q-biosynthesis contributes to the dysbiosis of human IBD. We performed comprehensive multi-omics integrative analyses using publicly available datasets. Specifically, we re-analyzed publicly available shotgun metagenomic, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), metabolic datasets, and completed meta-analysis. Methods: To systematically investigate microbial Q-biosynthesis in healthy individuals and IBD patients, we performed a systematic secondary analysis by integrating 9 publicly available metagenomic datasets, 15 scRNA-seq datasets and one metabolic dataset published prior to 2026. We present a novel secondary bioinformatic reanalysis of sequence outputs mapped to the latest microbial taxonomy, functional pathways and microbial Q-related genes. Longitudinal study of shotgun metagenomics across the human lifespan (3146 samples) enabled taxonomic and functional profiling. Results: We first identified key q-producing bacteria (e.g., Bacteroides and Alistipes) in healthy populations. We then found that patients with IBD had significantly reducation of q-producing bacteria and a coordinated downregulation of the Q-related pathways, including Q, preQ0, de novo guanosine ribonucleotide biosynthesis and de novo guanosine deoxyribonucleotide biosynthesis pathways. This functional impairment was primarily driven by reduced contributions from Bacteroides, Alistipes and Akkermansia. The longitudinal stability of the q-producing bacteria community across the human lifespan (1638 samples). We observed a significant negative correlation between host age and the abundance of q-producing bacteria in patients with UC. Moreover, Queuine tRNA-ribosyltransferase 1 (QTRT1) expression in human intestinal epithelial cells was significantly reduced in patients with IBD compared to healthy controls. Conclusions: Our study used multi-omics datasets to define a novel functional dysbiosis characterized by a reduction of microbial Q-biosynthesis in patients with IBD. Vitamin q and its tRNA modification is lesser-recognized in human IBD. Understanding the cellular and organismal mechanisms of this microbiome-dependent micronutrient will advance the prevention of IBD and improve the quality of life of patients with IBD.
An, Y., Xia, Y., Sun, J. Disrupted microbial queuosine biosynthesis contributes to dysbiosis of human inflammatory bowel disease. medRxiv. 2026. doi:10.64898/2026.10.12.26365231. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.12.26365231