Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
Nat Med. 2019 Jul;25(7):1104-1109. doi: 10.1038/s41591-019-0485-4. Epub 2019 Jun 24.
The human gut microbiome is linked to many states of human health and disease. The metabolic repertoire of the gut microbiome is vast, but the health implications of these bacterial pathways are poorly understood. In this study, we identify a link between members of the genus Veillonella and exercise performance. We observed an increase in Veillonella relative abundance in marathon runners postmarathon and isolated a strain of Veillonella atypica from stool samples. Inoculation of this strain into mice significantly increased exhaustive treadmill run time. Veillonella utilize lactate as their sole carbon source, which prompted us to perform a shotgun metagenomic analysis in a cohort of elite athletes, finding that every gene in a major pathway metabolizing lactate to propionate is at higher relative abundance postexercise. Using C-labeled lactate in mice, we demonstrate that serum lactate crosses the epithelial barrier into the lumen of the gut. We also show that intrarectal instillation of propionate is sufficient to reproduce the increased treadmill run time performance observed with V. atypica gavage. Taken together, these studies reveal that V. atypica improves run time via its metabolic conversion of exercise-induced lactate into propionate, thereby identifying a natural, microbiome-encoded enzymatic process that enhances athletic performance.
人类肠道微生物组与许多健康和疾病状态有关。肠道微生物组的代谢谱非常广泛，但这些细菌途径对健康的影响还了解甚少。在这项研究中，我们发现了韦荣氏球菌属成员与运动表现之间的联系。我们观察到马拉松运动员在马拉松赛后韦荣氏球菌相对丰度增加，并从粪便样本中分离出一株韦荣氏球菌。将该菌株接种到小鼠中，可显著延长小鼠的跑步机耗尽时间。韦荣氏球菌将乳酸作为其唯一的碳源，这促使我们对一组精英运动员进行了鸟枪法宏基因组分析，发现从乳酸到丙酸的主要代谢途径中的每个基因在运动后相对丰度都更高。在小鼠中使用 C 标记的乳酸，我们证明血清乳酸穿过上皮屏障进入肠道腔。我们还表明，直肠内灌注丙酸足以重现通过韦荣氏球菌灌胃观察到的跑步机跑步时间延长。综上所述，这些研究表明，韦荣氏球菌通过将运动引起的乳酸代谢为丙酸来提高跑步时间，从而确定了一种天然的、由微生物组编码的酶促过程，可增强运动表现。
