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:We investigated the effect of feeding mice a Total Western Diet formulated using the 50th percentile daily intake levels for macro and micronutrients from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) with 0, 2, 5, or 10% added raw potato starch on the cecal microbiome (16S) and cecum, proximal and distal colon gene expression by RNASeq analysis.
Project description:We investigated the effect of feeding mice a Total Western Diet formulated using the 50th percentile daily intake levels for macro and micronutrients from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) with 0, 2, 5, or 10% added raw potato starch on the cecal microbiome (16S) and cecum, proximal and distal colon gene expression by RNASeq analysis.
Project description:We investigated the effect of feeding mice a Total Western Diet formulated using the 50th percentile daily intake levels for macro and micronutrients from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) with 0, 2, 5, or 10% added raw potato starch on the cecal microbiome (16S) and cecum, proximal and distal colon gene expression by RNASeq analysis.
Project description:Pu-erh tea has attracted increasing attention worldwide because of its special flavor and health effects, but its impact on composition and function of the gut microbiota remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate effects of aqueous extracts of fermented (ripe) and non-fermented (raw) Pu-erh teas on the composition and function of intestinal microbiota of rats with diet-induced obesity. We conducted a comparative metagenomic and metaproteomic investigation of the microbial communities in cecal samples taken from obese rats administrated with or without extracts of raw and ripe Pu-erh tea. By analyzing the composition and diversity of 16S rRNA amplicons and expression profiles of 814 distinct proteins, we found that, despite differences in the chemical compositions of the raw and ripe Pu-erh tea, administration of either at two different doses (0.15 and 0.40 g/Kg body weight), significantly (P<0.05) increased community diversity, and changed the composition of the cecal microbiota by increasing the relative abundances of Firmicutes and decreasing those of Bacteroidetes. Community metabolic processes including sucrose metabolism, glycolysis, syntheses of proteins, rRNA and antibiotics were significantly (P<0.05), or had a tendency (0.10<P<0.05) to be, promoted by enriching relevant enzymes. Furthermore, evidences from population, molecular and metabolic levels have shown that polyphenols of raw Pu-erh tea and their metabolites can promote potentially the growth of Akkermansia municiphila by stimulating the type II and III secretion system protein, elongation factor Tu, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. This study has provided new evidences for the prebiotic effects of Pu-erh tea.
Project description:Despite the existence of a number of studies investigating the effect of insect meal on the growth performance of broilers, knowledge about the metabolic effects of insect meal in broilers is still scarce. Thus, the present study investigated the effect of partial replacement of soybean meal with Hermetia illucens (HI) larvae meal on the liver transcriptome, the plasma metabolome and the cecal microbiome in broilers. For the study, 72 male one-day-old Cobb 500 broilers were divided into three groups (n = 12) and fed three different diets with either 0% (HI0), 7.5% (HI7.5) or 15% (HI15) defatted HI meal for 35 d. While body weight (BW) gain, feed intake, and feed:gain ratio did not differ between groups, breast muscle weight, carcass yield and apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of 12 amino acids were higher in group HI15 than in group HI0 (P > 0.05). Indicators of α-diversity (Chao1 and Observed) in the cecal digesta were higher in groups HI15 and HI7.5 than in group HI0 (P < 0.05). The abundance of 5 families and 18 genera, all of which belonged to the Firmicutes phylum, in the cecal digesta differed among groups (P < 0.05). Concentrations of butyric acid, valeric acid and isobutyric acid in the cecal digesta were lower in group HI15 than in the other two groups (P > 0.05), whereas those of total and other short-chain fatty acids were not different between groups. Liver transcriptomics revealed a total of 70 and 61 differentially expressed transcripts between groups HI15 vs. HI0 and between groups HI7.5 vs HI0, respectively, (P > 0.05). Targeted metabolomics identified 138 metabolites, most of which were triglyceride species, being different between the three groups (FDR < 0.05). According to this study, dietary inclusion of HI larvae meal has no detrimental impact but increases breast muscle weight and carcass weight in broilers suggesting that HI larvae meal can be recommended as a sustainable alternative protein source for broilers.