a Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University , Atlanta , GA , USA.
b Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Center for Inflammation, Immunity & Infection, Georgia State University , Atlanta , GA , USA.
Gut Microbes. 2018 Jan 2;9(1):13-25. doi: 10.1080/19490976.2017.1356557. Epub 2017 Aug 11.
Brattleboro rats harbor a spontaneous deletion of the arginine-vasopressin (Avp) gene. In addition to diabetes insipidus, these rats exhibit low levels of anxiety and depressive behaviors. Recent work on the gut-brain axis has revealed that gut microbiota can influence anxiety behaviors. Therefore, we studied the effects of Avp gene deletion on gut microbiota. Since Avp gene expression is sexually different, we also examined how Avp deletion affects sex differences in gut microbiota. Males and females show modest but differentiated shifts in taxa abundance across 3 separate Avp deletion genotypes: wildtype (WT), heterozygous (Het) and AVP-deficient Brattleboro (KO) rats. For each sex, we found examples of taxa that have been shown to modulate anxiety behavior, in a manner that correlates with anxiety behavior observed in homozygous knockout Brattleboro rats. One prominent example is Lactobacillus, which has been reported to be anxiolytic: Lactobacillus was found to increase in abundance in inverse proportion to increasing gene dosage (most abundant in KO rats). This genotype effect of Lactobacillus abundance was not found when females were analyzed independently. Therefore, Avp deletion appears to affect microbiota composition in a sexually differentiated manner.
布里托洛大鼠携带精氨酸加压素（AVP）基因的自发缺失。除了尿崩症，这些大鼠还表现出低水平的焦虑和抑郁行为。最近关于肠道-大脑轴的研究表明，肠道微生物群可以影响焦虑行为。因此，我们研究了 AVP 基因缺失对肠道微生物群的影响。由于 AVP 基因表达存在性别差异，我们还研究了 AVP 缺失如何影响肠道微生物群的性别差异。雄性和雌性在 3 种不同的 AVP 缺失基因型（野生型（WT）、杂合型（Het）和 AVP 缺陷型布里托洛大鼠（KO））中表现出适度但不同的分类群丰度变化。对于每一种性别，我们都发现了一些已经被证明可以调节焦虑行为的分类群，其方式与在纯合性 AVP 缺陷型布里托洛大鼠中观察到的焦虑行为相关。一个突出的例子是乳杆菌，它已被报道具有抗焦虑作用：乳杆菌的丰度呈剂量依赖性增加（在 KO 大鼠中最丰富）。当单独分析雌性时，没有发现乳杆菌丰度的这种基因型效应。因此，AVP 缺失似乎以性别分化的方式影响微生物群组成。
