Gut Bacteria Types

People may be distinguished by one of three gut "enterotypes."
The New York Times (4/21, A17, Zimmer, Subscription Publication) reports that in the "early 1900s, scientists discovered that each person belonged to one of four blood types." Now according to a study in the journal Nature, scientists say there are "just three distinct ecosystems in the guts of people," and each of the types "makes a unique balance of enzymes."
According to the Los Angeles Times (4/21, Brown) "Booster Shots" blog, "Bioinformatics expert Peer Bork of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany," the senior author of the paper, said that finding the three enterotypes "was 'a big surprise...we expected more variation.'" When the researchers took "stool samples from 22 European individuals, extracted the DNA, and then attempted to determine the composition of the DNA," they discovered that the three "distinct microbe combinations appeared throughout the samples."
Bloomberg News (4/21, Vannucci) reports that the three enterotypes "were classified into groups named for the predominant bacteria in the cluster: Bacteroides, Prevotella and Ruminococcus." The researchers "noted some differences in vitamin production among the groups." People in the Bacteroides group had "microbes that produced more vitamin C, B2, B5 and H," whereas the Prevotella group had "more B1 and folic-acid producing bacteria."