Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA.
Department of Geography and the Environment, Villanova University, Radnor, PA, USA.
Commun Biol. 2021 Mar 5;4(1):281. doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-01820-z.
As an active interface between the host and their diet, the gut microbiota influences host metabolic adaptation; however, the contributions of fungi have been overlooked. Here, we investigate whether variations in gut mycobiome abundance and composition correlate with key features of host metabolism. We obtained animals from four commercial sources in parallel to test if differing starting mycobiomes can shape host adaptation in response to processed diets. We show that the gut mycobiome of healthy mice is shaped by the environment, including diet, and significantly correlates with metabolic outcomes. We demonstrate that exposure to processed diet leads to persistent differences in fungal communities that significantly associate with differential deposition of body mass in male mice compared to mice fed standardized diet. Fat deposition in the liver, transcriptional adaptation of metabolically active tissues and serum metabolic biomarker levels are linked with alterations in fungal community diversity and composition. Specifically, variation in fungi from the genera Thermomyces and Saccharomyces most strongly associate with metabolic disturbance and weight gain. These data suggest that host-microbe metabolic interactions may be influenced by variability in the mycobiome. This work highlights the potential significance of the gut mycobiome in health and has implications for human and experimental metabolic studies.
作为宿主与其饮食之间的活跃界面，肠道微生物群影响宿主的代谢适应；然而，真菌的贡献却被忽视了。在这里，我们研究了肠道真菌群落丰度和组成的变化是否与宿主代谢的关键特征相关。我们从四个商业来源平行获得动物，以测试不同的起始真菌群落是否可以塑造宿主对加工饮食的适应。我们表明，健康小鼠的肠道真菌群受环境（包括饮食）的影响，并与代谢结果显著相关。我们证明，暴露于加工饮食会导致真菌群落的持久差异，与雄性小鼠与喂食标准饮食的小鼠相比，体重的差异沉积显著相关。肝脏脂肪沉积、代谢活跃组织的转录适应性和血清代谢生物标志物水平与真菌群落多样性和组成的改变有关。具体来说，来自 Thermomyces 和 Saccharomyces 属的真菌的变异与代谢紊乱和体重增加关系最密切。这些数据表明，宿主-微生物代谢相互作用可能受到真菌群落变异性的影响。这项工作强调了肠道真菌群在健康中的潜在重要性，并对人类和实验代谢研究具有影响。
