Project description:We found that mainstream cigarette smoking (4 cigarettes/day, 5 days/week for 2 weeks using Kentucky Research Cigarettes 3R4F) resulted in >20% decrease in the percentage of normal Paneth cell population in Atg16l1 T300A mice but showed minimal effect in wildtype littermate control mice, indicating that Atg16l1 T300A polymorphism confers sensitivity to cigarette smoking-induced Paneth cell damage. We performed cohousing experiments to test if Paneth cell phenotype is horizontally transmissible as is microbiota. Atg16l1 T300A and littermate controls that were exposed to cigarette smoking were used as microbiota donors, and these donor mice were exposed to smoking for 2 weeks prior to cohousing. Separate groups of Atg16l1 T300A and littermate controls that were not exposed to cigarette smoking were used as microbiota recipients. The microbiota recipients were co-housed with microbiota donors of the same genotype for 4 weeks, during this period the donors continued to be exposed to cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoking was performed using smoking chamber with the dosage and schedule as described above. At the end of the experiment, the fecal microbiota composition was analyzed by 16S rRNA sequencing.
