Project description:The increasing prevalence of obesity and related metabolic disorders represents a growing public health concern. Despite advances in other areas of medicine, a safe and effective drug treatment for obesity has been elusive. Obesity has repeatedly been linked to reorganization of the gut microbiome 1-4 , yet to this point obesity therapeutics have been targeted exclusively toward the human host. Here we show that gut microbe-targeted inhibition of the metaorganismal trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) pathway protects mice against the metabolic disturbances associated with diet-induced obesity (DIO) or leptin deficiency (ob/ob). Selective small molecule inhibition of the gut microbial enzyme choline TMA-lyase (CutC) does not significantly reduce food intake, but instead is associated with beneficial remodeling of the gut microbiome, improvement in glucose tolerance, and enhanced energy expenditure. Leveraging untargeted metabolomics we discovered that CutC inhibition is associated with reorganization of host circadian control of both phosphatidylcholine and energy metabolism. Collectively, this study underscores the close relationship between microbe and host metabolism, and provides evidence that gut microbe-derived trimethylamine (TMA) is a key regulator of the host circadian clock. This work also demonstrates that gut microbe-targeted enzyme inhibitors can have profound effects on host energy metabolism, and have untapped potential as anti-obesity therapeutics.
Project description:Although gut microbiomes are generally symbiotic or commensal, some of microbiomes become pathogenic under certain circumstances, which is one of key processes of pathogenesis. However, the factors involved in these complex gut-microbe interactions are largely unknown. Here we show that bacterial nucleoside catabolism using gut luminal uridine is required to boost inter-bacterial communications and gut pathogenesis in Drosophila. We found that uridine-derived uracil is required for DUOX-dependent ROS generation on the host side, whereas uridine-derived ribose induces quorum sensing and virulence gene expression on the bacterial side. Importantly, genetic ablation of bacterial nucleoside catabolism is sufficient to block the commensal-to-pathogen transition in vivo. Furthermore, we found that major commensal bacteria lack functional nucleoside catabolism, which is required to achieve gut-microbe symbiosis. The discovery of a novel role of bacterial nucleoside catabolism will greatly help to better understand the molecular mechanism of the commensal-to-pathogen transition in different contexts of host-microbe interactions.
Project description:The opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus is carried asymptomatically by about one-third of the human population. Body sites known to be colonized by S. aureus are the skin, nasopharynx and gut. In particular, the mechanisms that allow S. aureus to pass the gut epithelial barrier and to invade the bloodstream are poorly understood. Therefore, our present study was aimed at investigating possible differences between gut-colonizing and bacteremia isolates of S. aureus. To this end, 74 gut-colonizing isolates from healthy individuals and 144 blood-culture isolates were characterized by whole-genome sequencing. Subsequently, the cellular and extracellular proteomes of six representative isolates were examined by mass spectrometry. Lastly, the virulence potential of these isolates was evaluated using infection models based on human gut epithelial cells, blood cells, and a small animal infection model. Intriguingly, our results show that gut-colonizing and bacteremia isolates with the same sequence type (ST1 or ST5) are very similar at the genomic and proteomic levels. Nonetheless, they display differences in virulence, but gut-colonizing isolates may be more virulent than bacteremia isolates and vice versa. Importantly, we show that the main decisive factor preventing infection of gut epithelial cells in vitro is the presence of a tight barrier. Based on our present observations, we propose that the integrity of the gut epithelial layer, rather than the pathogenic potential of a gut-colonizing S. aureus strain, is the main decisive factor that determines whether this colonizer will become an invasive pathogen.