Effect of a Humanized Diet Profile on Colonization Efficiency and Gut Microbial Diversity in Human Flora-Associated Mice

Abstract

Human flora-associated (HFA) mouse models allow us to design interventions for human disease research to test specific hypotheses and explore the complex commensal microbiome while avoiding the ethical limitations of using humans as models to directly study intestinal flora diseases. However, few studies have investigated the effect of a humanized diet profile (coarse-feed diet; CFD) on colonization efficiency and gut microbial diversity in HFA mice. We tested the colonization efficiency and gut microbial diversity in germ-free Kunming (KM) mice fed a CFD or a purified feed diet (PFD) at 1, 2, and 4 weeks. Although the colonization efficiencies differed significantly (67.50–70.00% vs. 72.69–85.96%) in the HFA mice, the colonization efficiency of the PFD-fed HFA mice (85.96%) was significantly higher than that of the CFD-fed mice (69.61%) at 2 weeks. At 4 weeks, the colonization efficiency of the PFD-fed mice (72.69%) was comparable to that of the CFD-fed mice (70.00%). Additionally, the gut microbial diversity of the CFD-fed HFA mice was similar to that of a human fecal donor. Regarding the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes colonic microbiota metabolic pathways, the CFD-fed HFA mice showed more similarities to the human donor than to the PFD-fed mice in amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism, biosynthesis of amino acids, carbon metabolism, purine metabolism, and phosphotransferase systems. In conclusion, the humanized diet profiles of the CFD and PFD could help establish human microbiotas in mice. Constructing HFA mouse models fed a CFD for 4 weeks may be useful in researching human-derived intestinal diseases.

Correlation between the regulation of intestinal bacteriophages by green tea polyphenols and the flora diversity in SPF mice

“…71–73 Our previous study reported the effects of GTP interference on intestinal microflora and lipid metabolism in human flora-associated (HFA) mice. 17,32 Future research must consider how GTP dynamically modulates the gut microflora of HFA mice colonized with specific bacteriophages and host bacteria at different times.…”

“…The analysis of the fecal 16S rRNA gene (the hypervariable V3–V4 region) was performed as previously described. 32 Briefly, the purified PCR products were pooled in equimolar amounts and paired-end sequenced using an Illumina Novaseq platform (Illumina, San Diego, USA).…”

Effect of Lactobacillus plantarum BFS1243 on a female frailty model induced by fecal microbiota transplantation in germ-free mice

“…For a successful FMT experiment, fecal homogenate preparation was performed as in our previous study. 29 Before fecal homogenate preparation, the frozen samples were thawed in a thermostatic water bath at 37.5 °C for 10 minutes. Then, the thawed samples were suspended in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS, pH: 7.2-7.4), filtered step by step to remove undigested foods and particulate matters, washed, and resuspended using a vortex oscillator.…”

The gut microbiota mediates triptolide-induced liver injury via the gut-liver axis

“…However, there are many challenges for the entry of exogenous microorganisms into the host, e.g., the gut environment (pH gradient, oxygen concentration) of the host (Evans et al 1988;Albenberg et al 2014), and rejection by the host immune system (Belkaid and Hand 2014). In addition, the host genotype and microbiota also affect the colonization capacity of foreign microorganisms (Dong et al 2021). Moreover, the gut microbiota of mice that were not treated with antibiotics was resistant to colonization by human fecal species, resulting in the reduced abundance and taxonomic diversity of transplanted fecal species .…”