Journal
NATURE MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 1, Issue 9, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/NMICROBIOL.2016.93
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Funding
- Danish Council for Strategic Research (Center for Gut, Grain and Greens) [11-116163]
- Technical University of Denmark
- personal Danisco Award
- Novo Nordisk Foundation
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Little is known about how colonic transit time relates to human colonic metabolism and its importance for host health, although a firm stool consistency, a proxy for a long colonic transit time, has recently been positively associated with gut microbial richness. Here, we show that colonic transit time in humans, assessed using radio-opaque markers, is associated with overall gut microbial composition, diversity and metabolism. We find that a long colonic transit time associates with high microbial richness and is accompanied by a shift in colonic metabolism from carbohydrate fermentation to protein catabolism as reflected by higher urinary levels of potentially deleterious protein-derived metabolites. Additionally, shorter colonic transit time correlates with metabolites possibly reflecting increased renewal of the colonic mucosa. Together, this suggests that a high gut microbial richness does not per se imply a healthy gut microbial ecosystem and points at colonic transit time as a highly important factor to consider in microbiome and metabolomics studies.
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