Perpustakaan Digital ITB

The gut microbiome plays a critical physiological role in the human body. The involvement of the gut microbiome in performing this role is also determined by its composition. Unfortunately, the composition of the gut microbiome and the influencing factors are still unknown in some populations, such as in children from Pidie regency, Aceh. This lack of knowledge could be a hindrance in learning about the gut microbiome, especially in its perturbation caused by a disease. Therefore, this study aimed to gain knowledge on the unique characteristics of the gut microbiome of healthy children from Pidie regency, Aceh in terms of composition and its influencing factors. This was performed by analyzing the next-generation sequencing (NGS) data from the previous work at the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Laboratory of School of Pharmacy. This data, in the form of 16S rRNA gene DNA sequence, was derived from 21 samples taken from healthy children and processed using the Illumina Novaseq 6000 instrument. The data was then processed using the software QIIME 2 through an initial raw data analysis pipeline to obtain the files needed for taxa profile, alpha and beta diversity, and relative abundance analyses. These files were analyzed based on their respective processes and the results were visualized using RStudio. These results showed that the Pidie population had a unique composition of gut microbiome due to the abundance and presence of Bacteroidota, Euryarchaeota, Spirochaetota, and Proteobacteria at the phylum level as well as Prevotella, Faecalibacterium, Alloprevotella, Subdoligranulum, Holdemanella, and Agathobacter at the genus level compared to other studies especially in Indonesia. It was also discovered that the most influential factor was sex differences, followed by start age of formula feeding, birth weight, age of solid food introduction, age, body mass index, and mode of delivery. In conclusion, the gut microbiome of children from Pidie, Aceh showed a unique characteristic in the composition and influencing factors and this result should be incorporated into further studies as a baseline characteristic for this population.