Abstract
Obesity can be caused by microbes producing metabolites; it is thus important to determine the correlation between gut microbes and metabolites. This study aimed to identify gut microbiota-metabolomic signatures that change with a high-fat diet and understand the underlying mechanisms. To investigate the profiles of the gut microbiota and metabolites that changed after a 60% fat diet for 8 weeks, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomic analyses were performed. Mice belonging to the HFD group showed a significant decrease in the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes but an increase in the relative abundance of Firmicutes compared to the control group. The relative abundance of Firmicutes, such as Lactococcus, Blautia, Lachnoclostridium, Oscillibacter, Ruminiclostridium, Harryflintia, Lactobacillus, Oscillospira, and Erysipelatoclostridium, was significantly higher in the HFD group than in the control group. The increased relative abundance of Firmicutes in the HFD group was positively correlated with fecal ribose, hypoxanthine, fructose, glycolic acid, ornithine, serum inositol, tyrosine, and glycine. Metabolic pathways affected by a high fat diet on serum were involved in aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, cysteine and methionine metabolism, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism, and phenylalanine, tyrosine, and trypto-phan biosynthesis. This study provides insight into the dysbiosis of gut microbiota and metabolites altered by HFD and may help to understand the mechanisms underlying obesity mediated by gut microbiota.
Highlights
Obesity is defined as the excessive accumulation of fat and it results from an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure [1,2]
The levels of total cholesterol (TCHO-P III) and glucose (GLU-P III) in the serum were significantly increased in the high-fat diet (HFD) group (Figure 1B,C)
There was a significant increase in adipose tissue weight in the HFD group (Figure 1D). These results show that 8 weeks of HFD induced obesity
Summary
Obesity is defined as the excessive accumulation of fat and it results from an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure [1,2]. It is associated with substantial health risks, such as type 2 diabetes, strokes, arthritis, and several types of cancers [3]. It is well known that obesity is a complex multifactorial disease that is influenced by genetic and environmental factors [5]. Gut microbiota has drawn considerable attention from the scientific community over the last decade because of its ability to directly affect the health or disease status of an individual. In a human translation of this result, association between the Firmicutes/Bacterioidetes ratio and obesity has been controversial [12]
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