Unraveling the gut microbiome of the long-lived naked mole-rat

Abstract

The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is a subterranean mouse-sized African mammal that shows astonishingly few age-related degenerative changes and seems to not be affected by cancer. These features make this wild rodent an excellent model to study the biology of healthy aging and longevity. Here we characterize for the first time the intestinal microbial ecosystem of the naked mole-rat in comparison to humans and other mammals, highlighting peculiarities related to the specific living environment, such as the enrichment in bacteria able to utilize soil sulfate as a terminal electron acceptor to sustain an anaerobic oxidative metabolism. Interestingly, some compositional gut microbiota peculiarities were also shared with human gut microbial ecosystems of centenarians and Hadza hunter-gatherers, considered as models of a healthy gut microbiome and of a homeostatic and highly adaptive gut microbiota-host relationship, respectively. In addition, we found an enrichment of short-chain fatty acids and carbohydrate degradation products in naked mole-rat compared to human samples. These data confirm the importance of the gut microbial ecosystem as an adaptive partner for the mammalian biology and health, independently of the host phylogeny.

Faecal bacterial communities from Mediterranean loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta)

“…Results were confirmed by repeating the same analysis on the second sample subset, that is, the farthest from the capture date (Adonis for both unweighted and weighted UniFrac, p = 0.003). Interestingly, the relative abundance of [Mogibacteriaceae] is correlated with the CCL value (Kendall tau = 0.39, p < 0.001; Spearman rho = 0.54, p < 0.001), highlighting the worthiness of exploring in future studies the functionality of this subdominant fraction of the gut microbiota, which seems to be curiously associated with long‐living animals and humans (Biagi et al ., ; Debebe et al ., ).…”

“…The most abundant OTUs assigned to this family (OTU36311, 19545, 10381, 80355) are listed as unclassified after Greengenes taxonomy assignment; the subsequent BLAST analysis assigned all of them to the species Emergencia timonensis (93%-98% of sequence identity), recently isolated from healthy human faeces (Bessis et al, 2016). Curiously, this bacterial family, which is not frequently reported as abundant in the faecal microbiome of other vertebrates, was detected in the microbiome of an animal that is as known for its longevity as the sea turtle (Castanet, 1994), the naked mole rat (Debebe et al, 2017).…”

“…Black arrow is obtained by fitting the CCL values for each sample within the ordination space (function envfit of the vegan R package). seems to be curiously associated with long-living animals and humans Debebe et al, 2017).…”

Aging Gut Microbiota at the Cross-Road between Nutrition, Physical Frailty, and Sarcopenia: Is There a Gut–Muscle Axis?

“…For example, the reduced representation of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii —a well-known SCFA producer and metabolic modulator—in frail subjects supports the hypothesis of gut microbiota involvement in the onset of physical frailty [ 78 ]. It is also noteworthy that animal models of healthy aging and longevity exhibit a wide representation of SCFA producers and species that are able to degrade complex carbohydrates in their gut microbiome, whose composition is similar to that detected in human centenarians [ 79 ]. Similarly, recent studies have demonstrated that some microbiome-derived indoles are able to extend health span irrespective of longevity in animal models of aging [ 80 ].…”

31° South: The physiology of adaptation to arid conditions in a passerine bird

“…The presence of the latter bacteria may contribute to nitrogen budget as the Karoo scrub-robin has been found to supplement its diet with plant items , which are low in nitrogen. Although our integrative approach would have benefited from larger sample sizes, we contend our results provide solid-ground to further explore whether the observed bacterial turnover have functional consequences, namely in energy homeostasis (e.g., Debebe et al, 2017).…”