Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada.
The Jackson Laboratory, 600 Main Street, Bar Harbor, ME, 04609, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jun 17;12(1):10179. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-14095-z.
Exposing a male rat to an obesogenic high-fat diet (HFD) influences attractiveness to potential female mates, the subsequent interaction of female mates with infant offspring, and the development of stress-related behavioral and neural responses in offspring. To examine the stomach and fecal microbiome's potential roles, fecal samples from 44 offspring and stomach samples from offspring and their fathers were collected and bacterial community composition was studied by 16 small subunit ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) gene sequencing. Paternal diet (control, high-fat), maternal housing conditions (standard or semi-naturalistic housing), and maternal care (quality of nursing and other maternal behaviors) affected the within-subjects alpha-diversity of the offspring stomach and fecal microbiomes. We provide evidence from beta-diversity analyses that paternal diet and maternal behavior induced community-wide shifts to the adult offspring gut microbiome. Additionally, we show that paternal HFD significantly altered the adult offspring Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio, an indicator of obesogenic potential in the gut microbiome. Additional machine-learning analyses indicated that microbial species driving these differences converged on Bifidobacterium pseudolongum. These results suggest that differences in early-life care induced by paternal diet and maternal care significantly influence the microbiota composition of offspring through the microbiota-gut-brain axis, having implications for adult stress reactivity.
雄性大鼠暴露于致肥胖高脂肪饮食（HFD）会影响其对潜在雌性配偶的吸引力、雌性配偶随后与幼崽的互动以及幼崽应激相关行为和神经反应的发展。为了研究胃和粪便微生物组的潜在作用，从 44 只后代的粪便样本和后代及其父亲的胃样本中收集了细菌群落组成，并通过 16 小亚基核糖体 RNA（16S rRNA）基因测序研究了细菌群落组成。父代饮食（对照、高脂肪）、母代饲养条件（标准或半自然饲养）和母代护理（哺乳质量和其他母性行为）影响了后代胃和粪便微生物组的个体内α多样性。我们从β多样性分析中提供了证据，表明父代饮食和母性行为导致成年后代肠道微生物组的全社区转移。此外，我们表明 HFD 显著改变了成年后代厚壁菌门到拟杆菌门的比例，这是肠道微生物组致肥胖潜力的一个指标。额外的机器学习分析表明，导致这些差异的微生物物种集中在假长双歧杆菌上。这些结果表明，父代饮食和母代护理引起的早期生活护理差异通过微生物群-肠道-大脑轴显著影响后代的微生物群落组成，对成年应激反应有影响。
