Lactobacillus crispatus and Lactobacillus iners are common inhabitants of the healthy human vagina. These two species are closely related and are thought to perform similar ecological functions in the vaginal environment. Temporal data on the vaginal microbiome has shown that non-transient instances of co-occurrence are uncommon while transitions from an L. iners dominated community to one dominated by L. crispatus, and vice versa, occur often. This suggests that there is substantial overlap in the fundamental niche of these species. Given this apparent niche overlap, it is unclear how they have been maintained as common inhabitants of the human vagina. In this study we characterized and compared the genomes of L. iners and L. crispatus to gain insight into possible mechanisms driving the maintenance of this species diversity. Our results highlight differences in the genomes of these two species that may facilitate the partitioning of their shared niche space. Many of the identified differences may impact the protective benefits provided to the host by these two species.
The microbial communities that inhabit the human vagina play a critical role in the maintenance of vaginal health through the production of lactic acid and lowering the environmental pH. This precludes the growth of nonindigenous organisms and protects against infectious disease. The two most common types of vaginal communities are dominated by either Lactobacillus iners or Lactbacillus crispatus, while some communities alternate between the two over time. We combined ecological theory with state of the art genome analyses to characterize how they these two species might partition their shared niche space in the vagina. We show that the genomes of L. iners and L. crispatus differ in many respects, several of which may drive differences in their competitive abilities in the vagina. Our results provide insight to factors that drive the complicated temporal dynamics of the vaginal microbiome and demonstrate how closely related microbial species partition shared fundamental niche space.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 January 2026.
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Outputs of similar age from Applied and Environmental Microbiology
#29
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Altmetric has tracked 34,115,020 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 22,672 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.1. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its peers.
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