Journal
FEMS MICROBIOLOGY ECOLOGY
Volume 98, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/femsec/fiac005
Keywords
host-microbe interactions; gut microbiome; community disturbance; fecal transplants; antibiotics; plant secondary compounds
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [DEB-1342615, IOS 1656497]
- American Society of Mammalogists
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We found that disturbances to the gut microbial community caused by plant secondary compounds or antibiotics can facilitate the establishment of foreign microbes in animals with intact microbiomes.
Fecal transplants are a powerful tool for manipulating the gut microbial community, but how these non-native communities establish in the presence of an intact host gut microbiome is poorly understood. We explored the microbiome of desert woodrats (Neotoma lepida) to determine whether disrupting existing microbial communities using plant secondary compounds (PSCs) or antibiotics increases the establishment of foreign microbes. We administered two fecal transplants between natural populations of adult woodrats that harbor distinct gut microbiota and have different natural dietary exposure to PSCs. First, we administered fecal transplants to recipients given creosote resin, a toxin found in the natural diet of our donor population, and compared the gut microbial communities to animals given fecal transplants and control diet using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Second, we disrupted the gut microbial community of the same recipients with an antibiotic prior to fecal transplants. We found that gut microbial communities of woodrats disrupted with PSCs or antibiotics resembled that of donors more closely than control groups. PSC treatment also enriched microbes associated with metabolizing dietary toxins in transplant recipients. These results demonstrate that microbial community disturbances by PSCs or antibiotics are sufficient to facilitate establishment of foreign microbes in animals with intact microbiomes.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available