Abstract
Sodium benzoate is one of the widely used food preservatives and its metabolism in the human body has been studied only with the host perspective. Despite the human gut microbiome being considered as a virtual human organ, its role in benzoate metabolism is yet to be elucidated. The current study uses a multi-omic approach to rationalize the role of human gut microbes in benzoate metabolism. Microbial diversity analysis with multiple features synchronously indicates the dominance of Bacteroidetes followed by Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Proteobacteria. Metagenomic exploration highlights the presence of benzoate catabolic protein features. These features were mapped on to the aerobic and anaerobic pathways of benzoate catabolism. Benzoate catabolism assays identified statistically significant metabolites (P < 0.05) associated with the protocatechuate branch of the beta-ketoadipate pathway of the benzoate metabolism. Analysis of the 201 human gut metagenomic datasets across diverse populations indicates the omnipresence of these features. Enrichment of the benzoate catabolic protein features in human gut microbes rationalizes their role in benzoate catabolism, as well as indicates food-derived microbiome evolution.
Highlights
Sodium benzoate is one of the widely used food preservatives and its metabolism in the human body has been studied only with the host perspective
Human gut microbiome composition based on metagenomic RNA and Protein features
Phylogenetic analysis based on RNA features, the majority of identified protein features (99.22 ± 0.51%) shared homology with the protein affiliated within the eubacterial domain followed by Archaea (0.48 ± 0.35%), Eukaryota (0.23 ± 0.13%), Viruses (0.06 ± 0.03%), and others (0.0015 ± 0.001%) (Fig. 1b)
Summary
Sodium benzoate is one of the widely used food preservatives and its metabolism in the human body has been studied only with the host perspective. These microbes were identified to catabolize benzoate either with aerobic or anaerobic m echanisms[13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] Gene products for these pathways were identified from gram-positive, as well as gram-negative microorganisms, indicating their invariable presence within the microbial clade[13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. All this information generates a strong possibility for the presence of efficient catabolic machinery among human gut microbes to counter the antimicrobial effect of the sodium benzoate. This information could be harnessed to take forward the concept of microbiome therapeutics for human healthcare
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