The athlete microbiome project: integrating deep learning to reveal microbial associations of physical fitness
Abstract
Regular physical training improves human fitness and health through direct effects on muscle and metabolism and indirect effects via alterations in gut microbiome composition. To determine whether athletes harbor a distinct gut microbiome and whether microbiome composition associates with established markers of physical fitness, maximum oxygen uptake (Vo2max) and percent fat-free mass, we conducted a secondary analysis of amplicon sequencing data and metadata from published human microbiota studies across three continents. Participants were categorized as athletes (n = 656) or nonathletes (n = 199). Using multivariate statistics, random forest models, and a multilayer perceptron neural network, we identified structured differences in gut microbiome composition associated with fitness metrics and athletic status. Random forest regression models explained up to 63% of the variance in percent fat-free mass and 45% in Vo2max, with taxa such as Faecalibacterium, Megamonas, Bifidobacterium, and Blautia ranking among the most informative predictive features across analyses. Classification models further demonstrated that athletic status could be predicted from microbiome composition: a mixed-effects-informed random forest achieved a balanced accuracy of 71%, whereas a multilayer perceptron captured coordinated, multivariate microbial patterns and achieved stable performance across stratified fivefold cross-validation and an independent held-out test set comprising 20% of samples…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Understanding the factors influencing fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda J.E. Smith) damage in African smallholder maize fields and quantifying its impact on yield. A case study in Eastern Zimbabwe
- Alarming situation of emerging H5 and H7 avian influenza and effective control strategies
- Livestock and food security: vulnerability to population growth and climate change
- Atmosphere–ocean oxygen and productivity dynamics during early animal radiations
- Characterization of the global distribution and diversified plasmid reservoirs of the colistin resistance gene mcr-9
- The global seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in pigs: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.