Project description:The gut microbiome shapes local and systemic immunity. The liver is presumed to be a protected sterile site. As such, a hepatic microbiome has not been examined. Here, we show that the liver hosts a robust microbiome in mice and humans that is distinct from the gut and is enriched in Proteobacteria. It undergoes dynamic alterations with age and is influenced by the environment and host physiology. Fecal microbial transfer experiments revealed that the liver microbiome is populated from the gut in a highly selective manner. Hepatic immunity is dependent on the microbiome, specifically Bacteroidetes species. Targeting Bacteroidetes with oral antibiotics reduced the hepatic immune cell infiltrate by ~90%, prevented APC maturation, and mitigated adaptive immunity. Mechanistically, presentation of Bacteroidetes-derived glycosphingolipids to NKT cells promotes CCL5 signaling, which drives hepatic leukocyte expansion and maturation. Collectively, we reveal a microbial – glycosphingolipid – NKT – CCL5 axis that underlies hepatic immunity.
Project description:The gut microbiome is significantly altered in inflammatory bowel diseases, but the basis of these changes is not well understood. We have combined metagenomic and metatranscriptomic profiling of the gut microbiome to assess changes to both bacterial community structure and transcriptional activity in a mouse model of colitis. Gene families involved in microbial resistance to oxidative stress, including Dps/ferritin, Fe-dependent peroxidase and glutathione S-transferase, were transcriptionally up-regulated in colitis, implicating a role for increased oxygen tension in gut microbiota modulation. Transcriptional profiling of the host gut tissue and host RNA in the gut lumen revealed a marked increase in the transcription of genes with an activated macrophage and granulocyte signature, suggesting the involvement of these cell types in influencing microbial gene expression. Down-regulation of host glycosylation genes further supports a role for inflammation-driven changes to the gut niche that may impact the microbiome. We propose that members of the bacterial community react to inflammation-associated increased oxygen tension by inducing genes involved in oxidative stress resistance. Furthermore, correlated transcriptional responses between host glycosylation and bacterial glycan utilisation support a role for altered usage of host-derived carbohydrates in colitis. Complementary transcription profiling data from the mouse hosts have also been deposited at ArrayExpress under accession number E-MTAB-3590 ( http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/experiments/E-MTAB-3590/ ).
Project description:Despite the uniform mortality in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC), clinical disease heterogeneity exists with limited genomic differences. A highly aggressive tumor subtype termed basal-like was identified to show worse outcomes and higher inflammatory responses. Here, we focus on the microbial effect in PDAC progression and present a comprehensive analysis of the tumor microbiome in different PDAC subtypes. Tumors from 62 resectable PDAC patients were subjected to metagenomic sequencing and RNA-seq.
Project description:On going efforts are directed at understanding the mutualism between the gut microbiota and the host in breast-fed versus formula-fed infants. Due to the lack of tissue biopsies, no investigators have performed a global transcriptional (gene expression) analysis of the developing human intestine in healthy infants. As a result, the crosstalk between the microbiome and the host transcriptome in the developing mucosal-commensal environment has not been determined. In this study, we examined the host intestinal mRNA gene expression and microbial DNA profiles in full term 3 month-old infants exclusively formula fed (FF) (n=6) or breast fed (BF) (n=6) from birth to 3 months. Host mRNA microarray measurements were performed using isolated intact sloughed epithelial cells in stool samples collected at 3 months. Microbial composition from the same stool samples was assessed by metagenomic pyrosequencing. Both the host mRNA expression and bacterial microbiome phylogenetic profiles provided strong feature sets that clearly classified the two groups of babies (FF and BF). To determine the relationship between host epithelial cell gene expression and the bacterial colony profiles, the host transcriptome and functionally profiled microbiome data were analyzed in a multivariate manner. From a functional perspective, analysis of the gut microbiota's metagenome revealed that characteristics associated with virulence differed between the FF and BF babies. Using canonical correlation analysis, evidence of multivariate structure relating eleven host immunity / mucosal defense-related genes and microbiome virulence characteristics was observed. These results, for the first time, provide insight into the integrated responses of the host and microbiome to dietary substrates in the early neonatal period. Our data suggest that systems biology and computational modeling approaches that integrate “-omic” information from the host and the microbiome can identify important mechanistic pathways of intestinal development affecting the gut microbiome in the first few months of life. KEYWORDS: infant, breast-feeding, infant formula, exfoliated cells, transcriptome, metagenome, multivariate analysis, canonical correlation analysis 12 samples, 2 groups
Project description:Mammalian species have co-evolved with intestinal microbial communities that can shape development and adapt to environmental changes, including antibiotic perturbation or nutrient flux. In humans, especially children, microbiota disruption is common, yet the dynamic microbiome recovery from early-life antibiotics is still uncharacterized. Using a mouse model mimicking pediatric antibiotic use, we found that therapeutic-dose pulsed antibiotic treatment (PAT) with a beta-lactam or macrolide altered both host and microbiota development. Early-life PAT accelerated total mass and bone growth, and resulted in progressive changes in gut microbiome diversity, population structure, and metagenomic content, with microbiome effects dependent on the number of courses and class of antibiotic. While control microbiota rapidly adapted to a change in diet, PAT slowed the ecological progression, with delays lasting several months in response to the macrolide. This study identifies key markers of disturbance and recovery, which may help provide therapeutic targets for microbiota restoration following antibiotic treatment. C57BL/6J mice received three antibiotic courses: at days 10-15, 28-31, and 37-40 of life, amoxicillin or tylosin.Livers were collected at age 22 weeks, RNA was extracted, and transcriptional differences were measured by microarray analysis.
Project description:Evaluation of short-read-only, long-read-only, and hybrid assembly approaches on metagenomic samples demonstrating how they affect gene and protein prediction which is relevant for downstream functional analyses. For a human gut microbiome sample, we use complementary metatranscriptomic, and metaproteomic data to evaluate the metagenomic-based protein predictions.