Project description:Bacteroides fragilis is an anaerobic commensal in the human gut which can act as opportunistic pathogen when leaving its intestinal niche to reach other body sites. Bacteroides infections have a high lethality and must be treated by antimicrobial chemotherapy. Metronidazole is one of the most frequently administered antimicrobials in the treatment of Bacteroides infections and is highly reliable. However, metronidazole resistance does occur, favoring fatal disease outcomes. Most of the resistant isolates harbor a nim gene (12 are currently known, i.e. nimA to nimL), a transferable resistance determinant for metronidazole. Previous research suggested that Nim proteins might affect the cellular physiology by changing the activity of key enzymes like pyruvate:ferredoxin oxidoreductase (PFOR). In this study we wanted to assess the impact of the nimA gene on protein expression in a standard B. fragilis isolate, 638R, and compared overall protein expression in 638R with and without a nim gene and with the nimA gene in a proteomic study. Further, high-level metronidazole resistance was induced in both strains and the protein expression profiles of resulting resistant daughter strains were also compared with their respective parent strains. We found that comparably few proteins displayed altered expression in 638R with the nimA gene, but flavodiiron protein FprA was repeatedly found upregulated. FprA is often found in anaerobes and reduces molecular oxygen to water and/or nitric oxide to nitrous oxide. After induction of metronidazole resistance, a far higher number of proteins were found to be differentially expressed in 638R without nimA than in 638R with nimA. In the former, factors for the import of hemin were strongly downregulated, indicating impaired iron import, whereas in the latter the observed changes were not only less numerous but also less specific. Based on the results of this study we present a novel hypothetic model of metronidazole resistance and Nim function.
Project description:Symbiotic bacteria inhabiting the distal human gut have evolved under intense pressure to utilize complex carbohydrates, predominantly plant cell wall glycans abundant in our diets. These substrates are recalcitrant to depolymerization by digestive enzymes encoded in the human genome, but are efficiently targeted by some of the ~103-104 bacterial species that inhabit this niche. These species augment our comparatively narrow carbohydrate digestive capacity by unlocking otherwise unusable sugars and fermenting them into host-absorbable forms, such as short-chain fatty acids. We used phenotype profiling, whole-genome transcriptional analysis and molecular genetic approaches to investigate complex glycan utilization by two fully sequenced and closely related human gut symbionts: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Bacteroides ovatus. Together these species target all of the common glycosidic linkages found in the plant cell wall, as well as host polysaccharides, but each species exhibits a unique ‘glycan niche’: in vitro B. thetaiotaomicron targets plant cell wall pectins in addition to linkages contained in host N- and O-glycans; B. ovatus uniquely targets hemicellulosic polysaccharides along with several pectins, but is deficient in host glycan utilization. Growth of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron in vitro in minimal medium plus different purified complex glycans. Observation of increased gene expression was used to determine genes that are involved in metabolism of each glycan. Two biological replicates each.
Project description:Dietary fiber degradation is a key function of the human gut microbiota. The aim of this study was to increase our knowledge on the degradation of plant cell wall polysaccharide degradation by a prominent human gut bacterial species, Bacteroides xylanisolvens. The transcriptome analysis of B. xylanisolvens XB1AT revealed the existence of six and two genomic loci dedicated to the degradation of pectins and xylan, respectively. These loci or PUL ("Polysaccharide Utilization Loci") are known to encode enzyme systems in Bacteroides that are specific to a particular polysaccharide.
Project description:Symbiotic bacteria inhabiting the distal human gut have evolved under intense pressure to utilize complex carbohydrates, predominantly plant cell wall glycans abundant in our diets. These substrates are recalcitrant to depolymerization by digestive enzymes encoded in the human genome, but are efficiently targeted by some of the ~103-104 bacterial species that inhabit this niche. These species augment our comparatively narrow carbohydrate digestive capacity by unlocking otherwise unusable sugars and fermenting them into host-absorbable forms, such as short-chain fatty acids. We used phenotype profiling, whole-genome transcriptional analysis and molecular genetic approaches to investigate complex glycan utilization by two fully sequenced and closely related human gut symbionts: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Bacteroides ovatus. Together these species target all of the common glycosidic linkages found in the plant cell wall, as well as host polysaccharides, but each species exhibits a unique ‘glycan niche’: in vitro B. thetaiotaomicron targets plant cell wall pectins in addition to linkages contained in host N- and O-glycans; B. ovatus uniquely targets hemicellulosic polysaccharides along with several pectins, but is deficient in host glycan utilization. Bacteroides ovatus bacteria were grown either in vitro on defined complex glycan sources, or in vivo in the intestinal tract of gnotobiotic mice fed variable diets. Increased in vitro gene expression was used to indicate the genes required for metabolism of complex glycans and compared to in vivo transcriptional activity to determine expression in the mouse gut.
Project description:Bacterial cultures of three Bacteroides species were grown over night in technical triplicate, then their supernatants were analyzed by LC-MS3 based proteomics.
Project description:Analysis of the Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron(BT) transcriptome during co-culture with Caco-2 intestinal epithelial cells To identify potential bacterial protein(s) involved in the anti-inflammatory effect of BT in colitis, BT was incubated with Caco-2 human intestinal epithelial cells for 2 hours, and bacterial gene expression was assessed on a Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI-5482 specific microarray. Forty-three BT genes were up-regulated by five-fold or more and of these, twenty genes encoded hypothetical proteins.
Project description:Symbiotic bacteria inhabiting the distal human gut have evolved under intense pressure to utilize complex carbohydrates, predominantly plant cell wall glycans abundant in our diets. These substrates are recalcitrant to depolymerization by digestive enzymes encoded in the human genome, but are efficiently targeted by some of the ~103-104 bacterial species that inhabit this niche. These species augment our comparatively narrow carbohydrate digestive capacity by unlocking otherwise unusable sugars and fermenting them into host-absorbable forms, such as short-chain fatty acids. We used phenotype profiling, whole-genome transcriptional analysis and molecular genetic approaches to investigate complex glycan utilization by two fully sequenced and closely related human gut symbionts: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Bacteroides ovatus. Together these species target all of the common glycosidic linkages found in the plant cell wall, as well as host polysaccharides, but each species exhibits a unique ‘glycan niche’: in vitro B. thetaiotaomicron targets plant cell wall pectins in addition to linkages contained in host N- and O-glycans; B. ovatus uniquely targets hemicellulosic polysaccharides along with several pectins, but is deficient in host glycan utilization.
Project description:Symbiotic bacteria inhabiting the distal human gut have evolved under intense pressure to utilize complex carbohydrates, predominantly plant cell wall glycans abundant in our diets. These substrates are recalcitrant to depolymerization by digestive enzymes encoded in the human genome, but are efficiently targeted by some of the ~103-104 bacterial species that inhabit this niche. These species augment our comparatively narrow carbohydrate digestive capacity by unlocking otherwise unusable sugars and fermenting them into host-absorbable forms, such as short-chain fatty acids. We used phenotype profiling, whole-genome transcriptional analysis and molecular genetic approaches to investigate complex glycan utilization by two fully sequenced and closely related human gut symbionts: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Bacteroides ovatus. Together these species target all of the common glycosidic linkages found in the plant cell wall, as well as host polysaccharides, but each species exhibits a unique ‘glycan niche’: in vitro B. thetaiotaomicron targets plant cell wall pectins in addition to linkages contained in host N- and O-glycans; B. ovatus uniquely targets hemicellulosic polysaccharides along with several pectins, but is deficient in host glycan utilization.
Project description:Dietary fiber degradation is a key function of the human gut microbiota. The aim of this study was to increase our knowledge on the degradation of plant cell wall polysaccharide degradation by a prominent human gut bacterial species, Bacteroides xylanisolvens. The transcriptome analysis of B. xylanisolvens XB1AT revealed the existence of six and two genomic loci dedicated to the degradation of pectins and xylan, respectively. These loci or PUL ("Polysaccharide Utilization Loci") are known to encode enzyme systems in Bacteroides that are specific to a particular polysaccharide. Simple two-way comparisons between pectin or xylan sources (treatment) and glucose or xylose (control), collected during mid- and late-log phase. Three replicates per condition.
Project description:Purpose: Examining the transcriptome of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI-5482 challenged with Bacteroides phage to assess surface molecule expression changes Methods: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron was grown in BPRM in vitro or Germ-Free mice were monocolonized with Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and gavaged with ARB25 phage. Fold change was calculated as live phage versus heat-killed phage treated samples with n=3 biological replicates. Once cells reached an optical density corresponding to mid-log phase growth (absorbance between 0.4-0.5), RNA was isolated and rRNA depleted. Samples were multiplexed for sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq platform at the University of Michigan Sequencing Core. Data was analyzed using Arraystar software (DNASTAR, Inc.) using DEseq2 normalization with default parameters. Genes with significant up- or down-regulation were determined by the following criteria: genes with an average fold-change >5-fold and with at least 2/3 biological replicates with a normalized expression level >1% of the overall average, and a p-value < 0.05 (t test with Benjamini-Hochberg correction) Results: Specific capsule expression was increased in wild-type B. thetaiotaomicron during phage infection in vitro and in vivo. Many corresponding in vivo genes were upregulated as well as other surface layer proteins.