Exposure to known and emerging groundwater contaminants significantly alters poultry microbiome and metabolome

ABSTRACT:

The exposome represents a summation of exposures which influence an individual’s health over their lifetime. Understanding the exposome will aid in determining the environmental factors that contribute to disease states. Due to the biological complexity of the exposome and the resulting high dimensionality of the data, it is relatively difficult to predict adverse health outcomes resulting from a summation of environmental exposures. Therefore, accurate and relevant exposome criteria for biological assays is the first step toward addressing the current knowledge gaps for exposome research. This study aims to assess the presence of and health effects from exposure to contaminants in Wisconsin groundwater. We focused on three co-occurring chemicals that were detected at concentrations exceeding groundwater standards (i.e., nitrate, atrazine and imidacloprid) and the emerging contaminant, microplastics (i.e., polyethylene fiber). The agricultural chemical mixture of nitrate, atrazine and imidacloprid represent a known and ecologically relevant contaminant because each chemical individually has health risk levels established. Microplastics (MPs) are plastic fragments less than 5 mm in diameter that have been implicated in intestinal toxicity, altered metabolites, and other adverse health outcomes following exposure. In recent years, MPs have increasingly been found in locations where there could be interaction with other environmental contaminants such as pesticides. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the impacts of MPs on health of terrestrial species sources such as poultry. In this study, broilers were exposed to two ternary chemical mixtures or polyethylene microplastics (PE MPs) for 49 days. We observed significant perturbations to the cecal microbiome and metabolome of broiler in all exposure groups. We observed that both ternary mixtures and PE fiber MPs significantly altered the cecal microbiomes as determined by the enrichment of genera, Fournierella, Ruminococcus and an unclassified genus in the family Coriobacteriaceae. Perturbations to cecal microbial activity were also confirmed via modulation of pathways such as the pentose phosphate pathway, Vitamin B metabolism and metabolism of xenobiotics by cytochrome P450. The data presented here will aid in improving current groundwater regulations for agricultural chemical mixtures and microplastics. 

INSTRUMENT(S): Liquid Chromatography MS - positive - reverse phase

PROVIDER: MTBLS11958 | MetaboLights | 2025-07-04

REPOSITORIES: MetaboLights