Abstract
The human gut microbiome plays a central role in human health, and has been implicated in the development of a number of chronic gastrointestinal and systemic diseases. For example, microorganisms can serve as microbial endocrine mediators and can respond to stimuli and produce neurochemicals, ultimately influencing the brain-gut-microbiome axis of their host, a bidirectional communication system between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract, especially during developmental stages. To begin to explore potential dynamic changes of the gut microbiome, we characterized gut microbiota in adolescent rats that underwent a fixed period of restraint stress, examined whether the gut microbial population and their metabolic functions were changed by stress, and if such changes during adolescence persist or recover in young adulthood. Integrated 16S ribosomal DNA sequencing and liquid chromatography coupled tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) based metabolic profiling were utilized to discover any significant differences in gut microbial genus and microbial metabolites immediately at the end of the chronic restraint stress and three weeks after the stress treatment, compared to control rats that did not receive stress treatment. Interestingly, while adolescent chronic stress-induced differences in relative microbial abundance (i.e., microbial species and distribution) disappeared three weeks after the stress treatment ended, the differences in microbial metabolic profiles persisted into adulthood. In addition, a number of significantly altered metabolites and their correlated gut microbes detected in our study facilitated a possible connection between gut microbiota and host stress response, which can be further investigated in the future to study the causal relationship between gut microbial metabolites and their impact on human health.
Highlights
The human gut microbiome plays a central role in human health, and has been implicated in the development of a number of chronic gastrointestinal and systemic diseases
We characterized gut microbiota and their metabolites in adolescent rats that underwent restraint stress through integrated 16S ribosomal DNA sequencing, liquid chromatography coupled tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) based metabolic profiling, and correlative microbe–metabolite analysis to gain a better understanding of how gut microbiota respond under conditions of chronic host stress
We hypothesized that the gut microbial population and their metabolic functions would be changed by stress in adolescent rats, and such changes during adolescence might persist into adulthood
Summary
The human gut microbiome plays a central role in human health, and has been implicated in the development of a number of chronic gastrointestinal and systemic diseases. Microorganisms can serve as microbial endocrine mediators and can respond to stimuli and produce neurochemicals, influencing the brain-gut-microbiome axis of their host, a bidirectional communication system between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract, especially during developmental stages. We characterized gut microbiota and their metabolites in adolescent rats that underwent restraint stress through integrated 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequencing, liquid chromatography coupled tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) based metabolic profiling, and correlative microbe–metabolite analysis to gain a better understanding of how gut microbiota respond under conditions of chronic host stress. LC-MS/MS has been utilized as the state-of-the-art approach to measure the metabolic composition of biological samples for metabolic profiling studies[24,25] Interrogation of both the microbial population and metabolites of the intestinal environment using these technical approaches provide valuable insight into gut microbe-host interactions
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