Amato Katherine R, Ulanov Alexander, Ju Kou-San, Garber Paul A
Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Roy J. Carver Metabolomics Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois.
Am J Primatol. 2017 Apr;79(4):1-10. doi: 10.1002/ajp.22616. Epub 2016 Dec 9.
In addition to macronutrients, foods consist of a complex set of chemical compounds that can influence dietary selectivity and consumer physiology. Metabolomics allow us to describe this complexity by quantifying all small molecules, or metabolites, in a food item. In this study we use GC-MS based metabolomics to describe the metabolite profiles of foods consumed by one population of Mexican black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) over a 10-month period. Our data indicate that each food exhibited a distinct metabolite profile, and the average weekly intake of metabolites such as neochlorogenic acid and serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) was correlated with the consumption of certain plant parts. We speculate that these patterns result in temporal changes in howler monkey physiology such as food retention time. In contrast, variation in the weekly intake of metabolites such as oxalic acid was 70% less than variation in the concentration of the same metabolites across food items, suggesting that howler monkeys regulated the intake of these metabolites, possibly to avoid physiological consequences such as kidney stone formation. Finally, seasonal variation in the consumption of individual nutrient and non-nutrient metabolites were correlated with changes in the relative abundances of associated gut microbial taxa, implying indirect effects of food item metabolites on howler monkey nutritional ecology that likely drive foraging decisions. While additional research is needed to validate these findings, the patterns we report serve as important baseline data for understanding the effects of plant metabolites on the food choice in primates.
除了大量营养素外，食物还包含一组复杂的化合物，这些化合物会影响饮食选择性和消费者的生理机能。代谢组学使我们能够通过量化食物中的所有小分子或代谢物来描述这种复杂性。在本研究中，我们使用基于气相色谱-质谱联用仪（GC-MS）的代谢组学来描述一群墨西哥黑吼猴（Alouatta pigra）在10个月期间所食用食物的代谢物谱。我们的数据表明，每种食物都呈现出独特的代谢物谱，新绿原酸和血清素（5-羟色胺）等代谢物的平均每周摄入量与某些植物部位的消耗量相关。我们推测，这些模式会导致吼猴生理机能随时间发生变化，比如食物停留时间。相比之下，草酸等代谢物的每周摄入量变化比不同食物中相同代谢物浓度的变化少70%，这表明吼猴会调节这些代谢物的摄入量，可能是为了避免诸如肾结石形成等生理后果。最后，个体营养和非营养代谢物消耗的季节性变化与相关肠道微生物类群相对丰度的变化相关，这意味着食物代谢物对吼猴营养生态学有间接影响，这可能驱动觅食决策。虽然需要更多研究来验证这些发现，但我们报告的这些模式是理解植物代谢物对灵长类动物食物选择影响的重要基础数据。
