State Key Laboratory of Livestock and Poultry Breeding, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Animal Breeding and Nutrition, Institute of Animal Science, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
BGI-Qingdao, BGI-Shenzhen, Qingdao, China.
Front Immunol. 2021 Sep 10;12:700603. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.700603. eCollection 2021.
Increasing studies show that gut microbiota play a central role in immunity, although the impact of the microbiota on mediation of thymic T cells throughout life is not well understood. Chickens have been shown to be a valuable model for studying basic immunology. Here, we show that changes in the gut microbiota are associated with the development of thymic T cells in young chickens. Our results showed that T-cell numbers in newborn chicks sharply increased from day 0 and peaked at day 49. Interestingly, the α-diversity score pattern of change in gut microbiota also increased after day 0 and continued to increase until day 49. We found that early antibiotic treatment resulted in a dramatic reduction in gut alpha diversity: principal component analysis (PCA) showed that antibiotic treatment resulted in a different cluster from the controls on days 9 and 49. In the antibiotic-treated chickens, we identified eight significantly different ( < 0.05) microbes at the phylum level and 14 significantly different ( < 0.05) microbes at the genus level, compared with the controls. Importantly, we found that antibiotic treatment led to a decreased percentage and number of T cells in the thymus when measured at days 9 and 49, as evaluated by flow cytometry. Collectively, our data suggest that intestinal microbiota may be involved in the regulation of T cells in birds, presenting the possibility that interventions that actively modify the gut microbiota in early life may accelerate the maturation of humoral immunity, with resulting anti-inflammatory effects against different pathogens.
越来越多的研究表明，肠道微生物群在免疫中发挥着核心作用，尽管微生物群对胸腺 T 细胞在整个生命周期中的介导作用还不太清楚。鸡已被证明是研究基础免疫学的有价值的模型。在这里，我们表明肠道微生物群的变化与幼鸡胸腺 T 细胞的发育有关。我们的结果表明，新生雏鸡的 T 细胞数量从第 0 天急剧增加，并在第 49 天达到峰值。有趣的是，肠道微生物群变化的 α 多样性评分模式也在第 0 天后增加，并持续增加到第 49 天。我们发现早期抗生素治疗导致肠道 α 多样性显著减少：主成分分析（PCA）表明，抗生素治疗在第 9 天和第 49 天与对照组产生不同的聚类。在接受抗生素治疗的鸡中，与对照组相比，我们在门水平上鉴定出 8 个显著不同（<0.05）的微生物，在属水平上鉴定出 14 个显著不同（<0.05）的微生物。重要的是，我们发现，通过流式细胞术检测，在第 9 天和第 49 天，抗生素治疗导致胸腺中 T 细胞的百分比和数量减少。总的来说，我们的数据表明肠道微生物群可能参与鸟类 T 细胞的调节，这表明在生命早期积极改变肠道微生物群的干预措施可能会加速体液免疫的成熟，并对不同的病原体产生抗炎作用。
