A Short-Term Feeding of Dietary Casein Increases Abundance of Lactococcus lactis and Upregulates Gene Expression Involving Obesity Prevention in Cecum of Young Rats Compared With Dietary Chicken Protein

Abstract

Casein and chicken are assessed to contain high quality proteins, which are essential for human health. Studies have shown that ingestion of the two dietary proteins resulted in distinct effects on physiology, liver transcriptome and gut microbiota. However, its underlying mechanism is not fully understood, in particular for a crosstalk between gut microbiota and host under a specific diet intervention. We fed young rats with a casein or a chicken protein-based diet (CHPD) for 7 days, and characterized cecal microbiota composition and cecal gene expression. We found that a short-term intervention with a casein-based diet (CAD) induced a higher relative abundance of beneficial bacterium Lactococcus lactis as well as Bifidobacterium pseudolongum, which upregulated galactose metabolism of the microbiome compared with a CHPD. The CAD also upregulated gene expression involved in obesity associated pathways (e.g., Adipoq and Irs1) in cecal tissue of rats. These genes and the bacterial taxon were reported to play an important role in protecting development of obesity. Furthermore, the differentially represented bacterial taxon L. lactis was positively associated with these differentially expressed genes in the gut tissue. Our results provide a new insight into the crosstalk between gut microbiota and host in response to dietary proteins, indicating a potential mechanism of obesity prevention function by casein.

Compositional Changes of the High-Fat Diet-Induced Gut Microbiota upon Consumption of Common Pulses

“…Other bacteria that decreased upon pulse consumption, possibly owing to casein reduction, are Lactococcus sp. [56][57][58].…”

Polymorphisms of CRELD1 and DNAJC30 and their relationship with chicken carcass traits

“…Chicken consumption has become one of the most widespread meat in the world ( Zhao et al., 2019 ). Carcass traits are one kind of the most important traits that have a great impact on the development of the domestic chicken industry ( Santos et al, 2021 ).…”

Myoglobin diet affected the colonic mucus layer and barrier by increasing the abundance of several beneficial gut bacteria

“…In other words, casein contains high number of bonds that are favored by pepsin and chymotrypsin, increasing protein digestibility. 22 Pancreatin is a protease mixture with more cleavage sites, mainly including trypsin (tending to cleave carboxyl groups in Arg and Lys residues) and chymotrypsin (tending to cleave carboxyl groups in phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan). 23 Arginine and lysine in myoglobin are exposed to hydrophilic surfaces and expected to bind well to pancreatin, while phenylalanine with high content in myoglobin can be cleaved by chymotrypsin.…”