Project description:Gut microbiome research is rapidly moving towards the functional characterization of the microbiota by means of shotgun meta-omics. Here, we selected a cohort of healthy subjects from an indigenous and monitored Sardinian population to analyze their gut microbiota using both shotgun metagenomics and shotgun metaproteomics. We found a considerable divergence between genetic potential and functional activity of the human healthy gut microbiota, in spite of a quite comparable taxonomic structure revealed by the two approaches. Investigation of inter-individual variability of taxonomic features revealed Bacteroides and Akkermansia as remarkably conserved and variable in abundance within the population, respectively. Firmicutes-driven butyrogenesis (mainly due to Faecalibacterium spp.) was shown to be the functional activity with the higher expression rate and the lower inter-individual variability in the study cohort, highlighting the key importance of the biosynthesis of this microbial by-product for the gut homeostasis. The taxon-specific contribution to functional activities and metabolic tasks was also examined, giving insights into the peculiar role of several gut microbiota members in carbohydrate metabolism (including polysaccharide degradation, glycan transport, glycolysis and short-chain fatty acid production). In conclusion, our results provide useful indications regarding the main functions actively exerted by the gut microbiota members of a healthy human cohort, and support metaproteomics as a valuable approach to investigate the functional role of the gut microbiota in health and disease.
Project description:In order to gain a better understanding of MAP infection in immature macrophages, high-throughput sequencing technology was used to perform an analysis of mRNAs profiles of bovine monocyte derived macrophages upon MAP infection. The total numbers of raw reads collected from the MAP-infected and control MDM cells were 93.6 and 102 million raw reads per library. After removing low-quality sequences, Adaptor sequences and sequences containing more than 5% N (N means that base information cannot be determined), 91.7 and 100 million clean reads were obtained respectively. The analyses of differential expression revealed 618 DE mRNAs in MDM challenged with MAP compared to the control MDM, Among the DE mRNAs, 322 were upregulated and 296 were downregulated.Furthermore, The GO and KEGG pathway enrichment of these mRNA targets were performed.