Project description:Dietary intake of fruits and vegetables (FV) has been inversely associated with lower risk of ulcerative colitis. A pig model was used to evaluate the impact of feeding FV on the host response to dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis. Methods: Six-week-old pigs were fed a grower diet alone or supplemented with lyophilized FV equivalent to the half (half-FV) or full (full-FV) daily levels recommended for humans by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Pigs were fed a 1) grower diet alone (negative control), 2) grower diet and orally treated with 4% DSS for 10 days to induce colitis (positive control), 3) half-FV diet treated with 4% DSS or 4) full-FV diet treated with 4% DSS. Pigs were monitored for the development of clinical signs of colitis. Proximal colon (PC) contents and mucosa (PCM) were collected for gut metagenome, tissue transcriptome and histopathological analysis. Results: Pigs fed the full-FV diet did not exhibit diarrhea, showed less fecal occult blood (FOB), PCM crypt hyperplasia but with no differential expressed genes (DEG) or changes in PC microbiome diversity (p < 0.05). Pigs within the half-FV group exhibited increased group FOB and DEG associated with tissue remodeling, crypt and goblet cell hyperplasia in the PCM and no changes in PC microbiome diversity and two pigs exhibiting diarrhea (p < 0.05). Pigs within the DSS positive control group exhibited a reduced DEG involved with intestinal immune response and PC microbiome diversity with altered metagenome, increased group PCM erosion and FOB with persistent diarrhea in one pig (p < 0.05) Conclusions: Overall, our results showed that pigs fed a three-week full-FV supplemented diet, were resistant to DSS-induced colitis with a differential dose-dependent protective effect on host intestinal tissue and gut metagenome when exposed to an inflammatory challenge.
Project description:Metagenome data from soil samples were collected at 0 to 10cm deep from 2 avocado orchards in Channybearup, Western Australia, in 2024. Amplicon sequence variant (ASV) tables were constructed based on the DADA2 pipeline with default parameters.
Project description:Marine sponges are essential for coral reefs to thrive and harbour a diverse microbiome that is thought to contribute to host health. Although the overall function of sponge symbionts has been increasingly described, in-depth characterisation of each taxa remains challenging, with many sponge species hosting up to 3,000 distinct microbial species. Recently, the sponge Ianthella basta has emerged as a model organism for symbiosis research, hosting only three dominant symbionts: a Thaumarchaeotum, a Gammaproteobacterium, and an Alphaproteobacterium and a range of other minor taxa. Here, we retrieved metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) for >90% of I. basta’s microbial community which allowed us to make a complete metabolic reconstruction of the sponge’s microbiome, identifying metabolic complementarity between microbes, as well as the importance of symbionts present in low abundance. We also mined the metagenomes for putative viral sequences, highlighting the contribution of viruses to the overall metabolism of the sponge, and complement this data with metaproteomic sequencing to identify active metabolic pathways in both prokaryotes and viruses. This data now allows us to use I. basta as a model organism for studying host-microbe interactions and provides a basis for future (genomic) manipulative experiments.
Project description:Host-microbiome-dietary interactions play crucial roles in regulating human health, yet direct functional assessment of their interplays, cross-regulations and downstream disease impacts remains challenging. We adopted metagenome-informed metaproteomics (MIM), in both mice and humans, to simultaneously explore host, dietary, and species-level microbiome interactions across diverse scenarios, including commensal and pathogen colonization, nutritional modifications, and antibiotic-induced perturbations. Implementation of MIM in murine auto-inflammation and in human IBD characterized a ‘compositional dysbiosis’ and a concomitant, species-specific ‘functional dysbiosis’ driven by suppressed commensal responses to inflammatory host signals. Microbiome transfers unraveled early-onset kinetics of these host-commensal cross-responsive patterns, while predictive analyses identified candidate fecal host-microbiome IBD biomarker protein pairs outperforming S100A8/S100A9 (calprotectin). Importantly, a simultaneous fecal nutrient assessment enabled determination of IBD-related consumption patterns, dietary treatment compliance and small-intestinal digestive aberrations. Collectively, a parallelized dietary-bacterial-host MIM assessment functionally uncovers trans-kingdom interactomes shaping gastrointestinal ecology, while offering personalized diagnostic and therapeutic insights into microbiome-associated disease.
Project description:Host-microbiome-dietary interactions play crucial roles in regulating human health, yet direct functional assessment of their interplays, cross-regulations and downstream disease impacts remains challenging. We adopted metagenome-informed metaproteomics (MIM), in both mice and humans, to simultaneously explore host, dietary, and species-level microbiome interactions across diverse scenarios, including commensal and pathogen colonization, nutritional modifications, and antibiotic-induced perturbations. Implementation of MIM in murine auto-inflammation and in human IBD characterized a ‘compositional dysbiosis’ and a concomitant, species-specific ‘functional dysbiosis’ driven by suppressed commensal responses to inflammatory host signals. Microbiome transfers unraveled early-onset kinetics of these host-commensal cross-responsive patterns, while predictive analyses identified candidate fecal host-microbiome IBD biomarker protein pairs outperforming S100A8/S100A9 (calprotectin). Importantly, a simultaneous fecal nutrient assessment enabled determination of IBD-related consumption patterns, dietary treatment compliance and small-intestinal digestive aberrations. Collectively, a parallelized dietary-bacterial-host MIM assessment functionally uncovers trans-kingdom interactomes shaping gastrointestinal ecology, while offering personalized diagnostic and therapeutic insights into microbiome-associated disease.