Inter-species transplantation of gut microbiota from human to pigs

Abstract

Direct research on gut microbiota for understanding its role as 'an important organ' in human individuals is difficult owing to its vast diversity and host specificity as well as ethical concerns. Transplantation of human gut microbiota into surrogate hosts can significantly facilitate the research of human gut ecology, metabolism and immunity but rodents-based model provides results with low relevance to humans. A new human flora-associated (HFA) piglet model was hereby established taking advantage of the high similarity between pigs and humans with respect to the anatomy, physiology and metabolism of the digestive system. Piglets were delivered via cesarean section into a SPF-level barrier system and were inoculated orally with a whole fecal suspension from one healthy 10-year-old boy. The establishment and composition of the intestinal microbiota of the HFA piglets were analyzed and compared with that of the human donor using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus sequence-PCR fingerprinting-based community DNA hybridization, group-specific PCR-temperature gradient gel electrophoresis and real-time PCR. Molecular profiling demonstrated that transplantation of gut microbiota from a human to germfree piglets produced a donor-like microbial community with minimal individual variation. And the microbial succession with aging of those ex-germfree piglets was also similar to that observed in humans. This HFA model provides a significantly improved system for research on gut ecology in human metabolism, nutrition and drug discovery.

<i>Salmonella</i> Contamination in Layer Farms in China: Detection and Genetic Analysis

“…In this study, two Salmonella-positive overshoe samples collected from one person on farm A yielded an identical gel pattern, further demonstrating the reliability and accuracy of the ERIC-PCR. The technique has been successfully applied to the typing of numerous bacterial strains (Dorneles et al, 2014;Silva et al, 2014) and to diversity analyses of bacterial communities, including Salmonella (Pang et al, 2007;Cao et al, 2008). In the present study, ERIC-PCR was used for tracing down the source of the contaminations.…”

Use of pigs as a potential model for research into dietary modulation of the human gut microbiota

“…However, in rodents, due to the apparent differences in anatomy and physiology compared with humans, some key members of the human gut microbiota such as bifidobacteria do not colonise the rodent gut. Therefore, according to Pang et al (220) , results based on the use of rodent models often appear to be hardly relevant for humans. On the contrary, Pang et al (220) successfully used the pig as a HFA animal model.…”

Fatal Infection in Human Flora-Associated Piglets Caused by the Opportunistic Pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae from an Apparently Healthy Human Donor

“…Our laboratory successfully developed an HFA piglet model by oral inoculation with whole fecal flora from a healthy human donor in 2003 [15]. All our experimental animal studies were approved by the ethical committee of the College of Agriculture and Biology of our university and followed our national animal welfare regulations.…”

“…Because of individual variation and ethical problems in the study of human microbiota in humans, animal models are required for research of human microbiota. Human flora-associated (HFA) piglets, in which human gut flora are transplanted, would be a useful model for studying the human gut ecology and metabolism in vivo because humans and piglets have similar anatomy and physiology in relation to the digestive tract [15].…”