Project description:Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in American men and women with ≥130,000 new cases each year. Several dietary patterns have been associated with CRC risk but underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Researchers thus propose to integrate dietary patterns and metabolomics data to comprehensively investigate biological pathways linking dietary patterns and CRC risk.
Project description:5 human fecal gut samples, collected and prepared for standard MudPIT data collection from healthy volunteers, searched with the ComPIL database. x3 replicates each
Project description:The goal of this study is to characterize the human immune responses to the live attenuated Herpes zoster vaccine Zostavax, to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms that lead to antibody production and T cell induction, and to understand the difference between young and elderly healthy adults. The overall data collection included antigen specific assays, flow cytometric profiling of innate and adaptive cell populations, measurement of serum cytokines, and transcriptomic and metabolomics signatures. Zostavax induced robust antigen-specific antibody responses, and significant T cell responses. A number of gene pathways were upregulated after vaccination. Using our previously developed blood transcription modules, we also identified transcriptomic correlates to antibody response. Furthermore, this study revealed strong association between PBMC transcriptomics and plasma metabolomics. Integrative analysis of orthogonal datasets from metabolomics, transcriptomic and immune profiling facilitated a temporal reconstruction of Zostavax induced biological networks culminating in antibody responses , and the delineation of novel molecular correlates of vaccine immunity.
Project description:Erythromycin (ERY) is a commonly used antibiotic that can be found in wastewater effluents globally. Due to the mechanisms by which they kill and prevent bacterial growth, antibiotics can have significant unwanted impacts on the fish gut microbiome. The overall objective of this project was to assess the effects of erythromycin and an antibiotic mixture on fish gut microbiomes. The project was split into two experiments to assess gut microbiome in response to exposure with ERY alone or in mixture with other common antibiotics. The objectives of experiment 1 were to understand uptake and depuration of ERY in juvenile rainbow trout (RBT) over a 7 d uptake followed by a 7 d depuration period using three concentrations of ERY. Furthermore, throughout the study changes in gut microbiome response were assessed. In experiment 2, a follow-up study was conducted using an identical experimental design to assess the impacts of an antibiotic-mixture (ERY, ampicillin, metronidazole, and ciprofloxacin at 100 µg/g each). Here, three matrices were analyzed, with gut collected for 16s metabarcoding, plasma for untargeted metabolomics, and brain for mRNA-seq analysis. ERY was depurated from the fish relatively quickly and gut microbiome dysbiosis was observed at 7 d after exposure, with a slight recovery after the 7 d depuration period. A greater number of plasma metabolites was dysregulated at 14 d compared to 7 d revealing temporality compared to gut microbiome dysbiosis. Furthermore, several transformation products of antibiotics and biomarker metabolites were observed in plasma due to antibiotic exposure. Brain transcriptome revealed only slight alterations due to antibiotic exposure. The results of these studies will help inform aquaculture practitioners and risk assessors when assessing the potential impacts of antibiotics in fish feed and the environment, with implications for host health.
Project description:Background: More than 100 million Americans are living with metabolic syndrome, increasing their propensity to develop heart disease– the leading cause of death worldwide. A major contributing factor to this epidemic is caloric excess, often a result of consuming low cost, high calorie fast food. Several recent seminal studies have demonstrated the pivotal role of gut microbes contributing to cardiovascular disease in a diet-dependent manner. Given the central contributions of diet and gut microbiota to cardiometabolic disease, we hypothesized that novel microbial metabolites originating postprandially after fast food consumption may contribute to cardiometabolic disease progression. Methods: To test this hypothesis, we gave conventionally raised or antibiotic-treated mice a single oral gavage of a fast food slurry or a control rodent chow diet slurry and sacrificed the mice four hours later. Here, we coupled untargeted metabolomics in portal and peripheral blood, 16S rRNA gene sequencing, targeted liver metabolomics, and host liver RNA sequencing to identify novel fast food-derived microbial metabolites. Results: We successfully identified several metabolites that were enriched in portal blood, increased by fast food feeding, and essentially absent in antibiotic-treated mice. Strikingly, just four hours post-gavage, we found that fast food consumption resulted in rapid reorganization of the gut microbial community structure and drastically altered hepatic gene expression. Importantly, diet-driven reshaping of the microbiome and liver transcriptome was dependent on a non-antibiotic ablated gut microbial community. Conclusions: Collectively, these data suggest that single fast food meal is sufficient to reshape the gut microbial community yielding a unique signature of food-derived microbial metabolites. Future studies are warranted to determine if these metabolites are causally linked to cardiometabolic disease.
Project description:Sample Collection
Samples used for this study were obtained as part of the HoloFish project (Norwegian Seafood Research Fund, project no. 901436). This cohort has been described previously 19. Briefly, we sampled 460 ready-to-harvest Atlantic salmon from a commercial production site close to Bergen, Norway, owned by Leroy Seafood Group in April 2018. Samples were obtained from two groups reared in separate sea pens and fed two different standard commercial diets. These diets have been anonymised but were manufactured respectively by BioMar and EWOS in 2018.
Six biological samples were taken from each fish, including muscle tissue for fatty acid profiling, gill tissue for host genomics, gut epithelia for host transcriptomics, gut epithelial cell scrapes for 16S metabarcoding and two gut content samples for metagenomics and metabolomics.
Approximate 100 mg distal gut content for each individual was sampled for metabolomics. Gut content for metabolomics was preserved at -80 degrees Celsius. All the sampling tools and equipment used for each sample were sterile.
Extraction
Gut content samples were cryo-homogenised in 25% water, 25% methanol and 50% dichloromethane in a 1:15 sample: solvent ratio (w:v). Homogenisation was carried out using an OMNI Bead Ruptor 24, using liquid nitrogen to keep homogenised samples below 0 degrees Celsius to minimise degradation of metabolites during extraction. Homogenates were centrifuged at 20,000 g (0 degrees Celsius) and the polar phase from all samples was concentrated using SpeedVac (ThermoFisher Scientific) and resuspended in 200 microL 5% methanol. Four procedural blanks were included in homogenisation. A volume of 100 microL of all samples was collected into a Quality Control sample used for normalisation to enhance the detection of metabolites.
Chromatography
Samples were measured on a nano-flow ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry analysis.
Mass spectrometry
Metabolites were detected using a Q Exactive HF Hybrid Quadrupole-Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer (ThermoFisher Scientific) operated in positive ion data-dependent acquisition mode.
Data Transformation
ThermoFisher Scientific UHPLC-Orbitrap-MS/MS RAW files were converted into mzML files using Proteo Wizard. For an increased deciphering of molecular spectres, MZmine2 was applied for mass detection of MS1 and MS2 spectres, followed by chromatogram detection and deconvolution. Subsequently, detected isotopes and features were grouped according to a tolerance of mass-charges (5 ppm for m/z) and retention time (6 sec.) and the features were further aligned according to retention time and m/z. Lastly, only features with an MS2 spectrum were kept for further substructural analysis and in silico analysis.
Project description:The interplay between pathogens and hosts has been studied for decades using targeted approaches such as the analysis of mutants and host immunological responses. Although much has been learned from such studies, they focus on individual pathways and fail to reveal the global effects of infection on the host. To alleviate this issue, high-throughput methods such as transcriptomics and proteomics have been used to study host-pathogen interactions. Recently, metabolomics was established as a new method to study changes in the biochemical composition of host tissues. We report a metabolomics study of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium infection. We used Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry with Direct Infusion to reveal that dozens of host metabolic pathways are affected by Salmonella in a murine infection model. In particular, multiple host hormone pathways are disrupted. Our results identify unappreciated effects of infection on host metabolism and shed light on mechanisms used by Salmonella to cause disease, and by the host to counter infection. Female C57BL/6 mice were infected with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium SL1344 cells by oral gavage. Feces and livers were collected and metabolites extracted using acetonitrile. For experiments with feces, samples were collected from 4 mice before and after infection. For liver experiments, 11 uninfected and 11 infected mice were used. Samples were combined into 3 groups of 3-4 mice each, resulting in the analysis of 3 group samples of uninfected and 3 of infected mice. Extracts were infused into a 12-T Apex-Qe hybrid quadrupole-FT-ICR mass spectrometer equipped with an Apollo II electrospray ionization source, a quadrupole mass filter and a hexapole collision cell. Raw mass spectrometry data were processed as described elsewhere (Han et al. 2008. Metabolomics. 4:128-140 [PMID 19081807]). To identify differences in metabolite composition between uninfected and infected samples, we filtered the list of masses for metabolites which were present on one set of samples but not the other. Additionally, we calculated the ratios between averaged intensities of metabolites from uninfected and infected mice. To assign possible metabolite identities, monoisotopic neutral masses of interest were queried against MassTrix (http://masstrix.org). Masses were searched against the Mus musculus database within a mass error of 3 ppm. Data were analyzed by unpaired t tests with 95% confidence intervals.