Project description:FLORINASH - The role of intestinal microflora in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) EU FP7-HEALTH, project number 241913<br>Florinash examined the role on the gut microbiota in NAFLD. Metagenomic, proteomic, metabolomic and transcriptomic data were integrated to give provide a systems biology approach to disease-associated studies. Liver biopsies were obtained from patients undergoing bariatric surgery; one was used to diagnose NAFLD, the other was used to examine the host transcriptome in NAFLD. This dataset is part of the TransQST collection.
Project description:Distal gut bacteria play a pivotal role in the digestion of dietary polysaccharides by producing a large number of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) that the host otherwise does not produce. We report here the design of a high density custom microarray that we used to spot non-redundant DNA probes for more than 6,500 genes encoding glycoside hydrolases and lyases selected from 174 reference genomes from distal gut bacteria. The custom microarray was tested and validated by the hybridization of bacterial DNA extracted from the stool samples of lean, obese and anorexic individuals. Our results suggest that a microarray-based study can detect genes from low-abundance bacteria better than metagenomic-based studies. A striking example was the finding that a gene encoding a GH6-family cellulase was present in all subjects examined, whereas metagenomic studies have consistently failed to detect this gene in both human and animal gut microbiomes. In addition, an examination of eight stool samples allowed the identification of a corresponding CAZome core containing 46 families of glycoside hydrolases and polysaccharide lyases, which suggests the functional stability of the gut microbiota despite large taxonomical variations between individuals.
Project description:We applied metagenomic shotgun sequencing to investigate the effects of ZEA exposure on the change of mouse gut microbiota composition and function.