Laboratory of Aquatic Biology, Department of Biology, University of Leuven-Campus Kulak, E. Sabbelaan 53, 8500 Kortrijk, Belgium.
Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Droevendaalsesteeg 10, 6700 AB Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Genes (Basel). 2021 Jan 7;12(1):70. doi: 10.3390/genes12010070.
Recently, it has been shown that the community of gut microorganisms plays a crucial role in host performance with respect to parasite tolerance. Knowledge, however, is lacking on the role of the gut microbiome in mediating host tolerance after parasite re-exposure, especially considering multiple parasite infections. We here aimed to fill this knowledge gap by studying the role of the gut microbiome on tolerance in upon multiple parasite species re-exposure. Additionally, we investigated the role of the host genotype in the interaction between the gut microbiome and the host phenotypic performance. A microbiome transplant experiment was performed in which three germ-free genotypes were exposed to a gut microbial inoculum and a parasite community treatment. The gut microbiome inocula were pre-exposed to the same parasite communities or a control treatment. performance was monitored, and amplicon sequencing was performed to characterize the gut microbial community. Our experimental results showed that the gut microbiome plays no role in tolerance upon parasite re-exposure. We did, however, find a main effect of the gut microbiome on body size reflecting parasite specific responses. Our results also showed that it is rather the genotype, and not the gut microbiome, that affected parasite-induced host mortality. Additionally, we found a role of the genotype in structuring the gut microbial community, both in alpha diversity as in the microbial composition.
最近的研究表明，肠道微生物群落对于宿主对寄生虫耐受性具有至关重要的作用。然而，对于肠道微生物组在介导寄生虫再次暴露后宿主耐受性方面的作用，尤其是考虑到多种寄生虫感染的情况，我们的了解还很有限。在这里，我们旨在通过研究肠道微生物组在多种寄生虫物种再次暴露后对耐受性的作用来填补这一知识空白。此外，我们还研究了宿主基因型在肠道微生物组与宿主表型表现之间相互作用中的作用。进行了一项微生物组移植实验，其中三个无菌 基因型暴露于肠道微生物接种物和寄生虫群落处理中。肠道微生物接种物预先暴露于相同的寄生虫群落或对照处理中。监测了 的表现，并进行了扩增子测序以表征肠道微生物群落。我们的实验结果表明，肠道微生物组在寄生虫再次暴露时对 耐受性没有作用。然而，我们确实发现肠道微生物组对 体型有主要影响，反映了寄生虫的特定反应。我们的结果还表明，是 基因型而不是肠道微生物组影响了寄生虫引起的宿主死亡率。此外，我们发现基因型在构建肠道微生物群落方面发挥了作用，无论是在 alpha 多样性还是在微生物组成方面。
