Mapping Pesticide-Induced Metabolic Alterations in Human Gut Bacteria.

Abstract

Pesticides can modulate gut microbiota (GM) composition, but their specific effects on GM remain largely elusive. Our study demonstrated that pesticides inhibit or promote growth in various GM species, even at low concentrations, and can accumulate in GM to prolong their presence in the host. Meanwhile, the pesticide induced changes in GM composition are associated with significant alterations in gut bacterial metabolism that reflected by the changes of hundreds of metabolites. We generated a pesticide-GM-metabolites (PMM) network that not only reveals pesticide-sensitive gut bacteria species but also report specific metabolic changes in 306 pesticide-GM pairs (PGPs). Using an in vivo mice model, we further demonstrated a PGP's interactions and verified the inflammation-inducing effects of pesticides on the host through dysregulated lipid metabolism of microbes. Taken together, our findings generate a PMM interactions atlas, and shed light on the molecular level of how pesticides impact host health by modulating GM metabolism.