Mining the microbiome for modulatory effects on the murine intestinal transcriptome

Within the human gut reside diverse microbes coexisting with the host in a mutually advantageous relationship. We comprehensively identified the modulatory effects of phylogenetically diverse human gut microbes on the murine intestinal transcriptome. Gene-expression profiles were generated from the whole-tissue intestinal RNA of mice colonized with various single microbial strains. The selection of microbe-specific effects, from the transcriptional response, yielded only a small number of transcripts, indicating that symbiotic microbes have only limited effects on the gut transcriptome overall. Moreover, none of these microbe-specific transcripts was uniformly induced by all microbes. Interestingly, these responsive transcripts were induced by some microbes but repressed by others, suggesting different microbes can have diametrically opposed consequences.

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Geva-Zatorsky N, Sefik E, Kua L, Pasman L, Tan TG, Ortiz-Lopez A, Yanortsang TB, Yang L, Jupp R, Mathis D, Benoist C, Kasper DL