Dataset Information

Variable Colonization after Reciprocal Fecal Microbiota Transfer between Mice with Low and High Richness Microbiota.

ABSTRACT: Several associations have been made between characteristics of the resident gut microbiota and human health and disease susceptibility. Animal models provide the means to test these correlations prospectively and evaluate causality. Experimental fecal microbiota transfer (FMT), or the intentional transplantation of gut microbes into recipient mice depleted of their autochthonous microbes with antibiotics, is a commonly used method of testing these relationships. The true completeness of microbial transfer through such procedures is poorly documented in the literature, particularly in the context of reciprocal transfer of microbes between recipient and donor mice harboring microbial populations of differing richness and diversity. Moreover, it is unclear whether the use of frozen fecal contents or cecal contents would confer any difference in the outcomes of transfer. Herein, groups of mice colonized with distinct gut microbiota of differing richness and composition were used in a reciprocal FMT study, with different groups receiving transfer of material prepared from fresh cecal contents, fresh feces, or frozen feces. Targeted 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing was used at intervals throughout the study to characterize the microbiota. Notably, despite comparable depletion of the microbiota in recipient mice prior to transfer, donor-specific taxa reliably colonized recipients only when relatively rich donor material was transferred to mice originally colonized with a simpler microbiota. It is unclear whether these differences were due to differences in the endogenous recipient microbiota or host factors induced in early life by microbial factors. These findings are of practical import for researchers using FMT to prospectively assess the influence of the gut microbiota in mouse models, and to those studying host-microbial interactions and their influence on gut barrier function.

SUBMITTER: Ericsson AC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5322181 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Variable Colonization after Reciprocal Fecal Microbiota Transfer between Mice with Low and High Richness Microbiota.

Ericsson Aaron C AC Personett Alexa R AR Turner Giedre G Dorfmeyer Rebecca A RA Franklin Craig L CL

Frontiers in microbiology 20170223

Several associations have been made between characteristics of the resident gut microbiota and human health and disease susceptibility. Animal models provide the means to test these correlations prospectively and evaluate causality. Experimental fecal microbiota transfer (FMT), or the intentional transplantation of gut microbes into recipient mice depleted of their autochthonous microbes with antibiotics, is a commonly used method of testing these relationships. The true completeness of microbia ...[more]

PMID: 28280484

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Project description:BackgroundThrough the rapid development in DNA sequencing methods and tools, microbiome studies on a various number of species were performed during the last decade. This advance makes it possible to analyze hundreds of samples from different species at the same time in order to obtain a general overview of the microbiota. However, there is still uncertainty on the variability of the microbiota of different animal orders and on whether certain bacteria within a species are subject to greater fluctuations than others. This is largely due to the fact that the analysis in most extensive comparative studies is based on only a few samples per species or per study site. In our study, we aim to close this knowledge gap by analyzing multiple individual samples per species including two carnivore suborders Canoidea and Feloidea as well as the orders of herbivore Perissodactyla and Artiodactyla held in different zoos. To assess microbial diversity, 621 fecal samples from 31 species were characterized by sequencing the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene using Illumina MiSeq.ResultsWe found significant differences in the consistency of microbiota composition and in fecal microbial diversity between carnivore and herbivore species. Whereas the microbiota of Carnivora is highly variable and inconsistent within and between species, Perissodactyla and Ruminantia show fewer differences across species boundaries. Furthermore, low-abundance bacterial families show higher fluctuations in the fecal microbiota than high-abundance ones.ConclusionsOur data suggest that microbial diversity is significantly higher in herbivores than in carnivores, whereas the microbiota in carnivores, unlike in herbivores, varies widely even within species. This high variability has methodological implications and underlines the need to analyze a minimum amount of about 10 samples per species. In our study, we found considerable differences in the occurrence of different bacterial families when looking at just three and six samples. However, from a sample number of 10 onwards, these within-species fluctuations balanced out in most cases and led to constant and more reliable results.

Dataset Information

Variable Colonization after Reciprocal Fecal Microbiota Transfer between Mice with Low and High Richness Microbiota.

Publications

Variable Colonization after Reciprocal Fecal Microbiota Transfer between Mice with Low and High Richness Microbiota.

Similar Datasets

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