Project description:Although dietary vitamin D supplementation has been used in the clinical setting for decades, the effect of supplementary vitamin D consumption on the structure of the microbiome has not been studied in humans in fine scale or with concomitant adjustment for dietary intake. Understanding the interaction of vitamin D with the microbiome in humans could lead to important advancements in the understanding of how vitamin D together with diet impacts the microbiome composition, and ultimately, risk of EOCRC. This study has the potential to lay the ground work for an adjunctive therapy to manipulate the microbiome to reduce risk of EOCRC. This proposed study is designed to evaluate the effect of vitamin D supplementation on the normal structure of the microbiome and data will not be used to diagnose, prevent, cure or treat disease.
Project description:Low vitamin D status has been implicated in the progression of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This study used interleukin (IL)-10 knockout (KO) mice, that develop an intestinal inflammation when housed in a non-sterile environment, to determine if supplementation with vitamin D throughout life impacts colonic gene expression. Results provide important information on the intestinal response to vitamin D in inflamed mice.
Project description:It is well known that host-microbes and immunity interactions are influenced by dietary patterns, as well as daily environmental light-dark (LD) cycles that entrain circadian rhythms in the host. Emerging data has highlighted the importance of diet patterns and timing on the interaction among circadian rhythms, gut microbiome, and immunity, however, their impacts on LD cycles are less reported. Therefore, we aim to study how LD cycles regulate the homeostatic crosstalk between gut microbiome, hypothalamic and hepatic circadian clock oscillations and immunity. We hypothesized that different environmental LD cycles: (1) constant darkness, LD0/24; (2) short light, LD8/16; (3) normal LD cycle, LD12/12; (4) long light, LD16/8; and (5) constant light, LD24/0, may affect immunity and metabolism to varying degrees. Therefore, 240 mice were managed with chow diets (CD) and antibiotics treatments (ABX) under five different LD cycles for 42 days. The colonic (co) and cecum (ce) contents were obtained for studying their impacts on gut microbiome using 16S rRNA sequencing.
Project description:Gastrointestinal microbes modulate peristalsis and stimulate the enteric nervous system (ENS), whose development, as in the central nervous system (CNS), continues into the murine postweaning period. Given that adult CNS function depends on stimuli received during critical periods of postnatal development, we hypothesized that adult ENS function, namely motility, depends on microbial stimuli during similar critical periods. We gave fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) to germ-free mice at weaning or as adults and found that only the mice given FMT at weaning recovered normal transit, while those given FMT as adults showed limited improvements. RNAseq of colonic muscularis propria revealed enrichments in neuron developmental pathways in mice exposed to gut microbes earlier in life, while mice exposed later – or not at all – showed exaggerated expression of inflammatory pathways. These findings highlight a microbiota-dependent sensitive period in ENS development, pointing to potential roles of the early life microbiome in later life dysmotility.
Project description:We assessed the effects of supplementing milk fat globules (MFG) on the growth and development of the skeleton in rats fed a Western unbalanced diet (UBD). The UBD is high in sugar and fat, low in protein, fiber, and micronutrients, and negatively impacts health. The MFG—a complex structure secreted in milk—has a unique proteome and lipidome, and differs significantly from isolated dietary ingredients. Rats consuming the UBD exhibited growth retardation and disrupted bone structural and mechanical parameters; these were improved by supplementation with small MFG. The addition of small MFG increased the efficiency of protein utilization for growth, and improved trabecular and cortical bone parameters. Furthermore, consumption of UBD led to a decreased concentration of saturated fatty acids and increased levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), particularly omega-6 PUFA, in the serum, liver, and adipose tissue. The addition of small MFG restored PUFA concentration and the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 PUFA in bone marrow and adipose tissue. Finally, large but not small MFG supplementation affected the cecal microbiome in rats. Overall, our results suggest that natural structure MFG supplementation can improve metabolism and bone development in rats fed an UBD, with the effects depending on MFG size, whereas the detrimental effects of an UBD on the microbiome were not mitigated by MFG supplementation.
Project description:The by-product of deer skin, which has mostly been used as a decorative material, is rich in collagen and amino acids that could bind to Ca2+. Therefore, the preparation process, stability, antioxidant activity and calcium transport capacity of deer skin collagen peptide calcium chelate (Ca-DSCP) were investigated. In addition, the structure of the new chelate was characterized. The preparation process of Ca-DSCP was optimized using one-way experiments and response surface methodology. The ideal conditions were pH 9, 48 °C, and a peptide-to-calcium mass ratio of 5:1. The chelation rate was (60.73 ± 1.54)%. Zeta potential, XRD, UV-vis and FTIR analyses yielded that deer skin collagen peptides (DSCP) underwent a chelating reaction with calcium ions to form new structures. The stability of Ca-DSCP and the fraction of bioavailability of calcium ions were determined using in vitro gastrointestinal digestion and a Caco-2 cell monolayer model. The results showed that fraction of bioavailability and stability of DSCP were improved by influencing the structural characterization. The antioxidant activities of DSCP and Ca-DSCP were evaluated by measuring relevant oxidative stress indicators, DPPH radical scavenging capacity and hydroxyl radical scavenging capacity. Finally, bioinformatics and molecular docking techniques were utilized to screen and study the antioxidant mechanism of DSCP.
Project description:Quantitative metaproteomics is a relatively new research field by applying proteomics technique to study microbial proteins of microbiome, and holds the great potential to truly quantify the functional proteins actually expressed by microbes in the biological environment such as gastrointestinal tract. The significant association between arsenic exposure and gut microbiome perturbations has been reported; however, metaproteomics has not yet been applied to study arsenic induced proteome changes of microbiome. Most importantly, to our knowledge, isobaric-labeling based large-scale metaproteomics has not been reported using the advanced database search approaches such as MetaPro-IQ and matched metagenome database search strategies to provide high quantification accuracy and less missing quantification values. In the present study, a new experimental workflow coupled with isobaric labeling and MetaPro-IQ was demonstrated for metaproteomics study of arsenic induced gut microbiome perturbations. The advantages of this workflow were also discussed. For all 18 fecal samples analyzed, 7,611 protein groups were quantified without any missing values. The consistent results of expression profiles were observed between 16S rRNA gene sequencing and metaproteomics. This isobaric labeling based workflow demonstrated the significant improvement of quantitative metaproteomics for gut microbiome study.
Project description:Difference in gut microbiome is linked with health, disease and eventually host fitness, however, the molecular mechanisms by which this variation affects the host fitness are not well characterized. Here, we modified the fish gut microbiota by using antibiotic and probiotic to address the effect of host microbiome on gene expression pattern by using transcriptome.