Department of Environmental Sciences, Zoology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique (UMR5174), Centre National Pour la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Nationale de Formation Agronomique, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France.
Mol Ecol. 2023 Jun;32(11):3014-3024. doi: 10.1111/mec.16901. Epub 2023 Mar 10.
Recent studies have highlighted associations between diseases and host microbiota. It remains extremely challenging - especially under natural conditions - to clarify whether host microbiota promote future infections, or whether changes in host microbiota result from infections. Nonetheless, deciphering between these two processes is essential for highlighting the role of microbes in disease progression. We longitudinally surveyed, in the wild, the microbiota of individual fish hosts (Leuciscus burdigalensis) both before and after infection by a crustacean ectoparasite (Tracheliastes polycolpus). We found a striking association between parasite infection and the host microbiota composition restricted to the fins the parasite anchored. We clearly demonstrated that infections by the parasite induced a shift in (and did not result from) the host fin microbiota. Furthermore during infection, the microbiota of infected fins got similar to the microbiota of the adult stage, and the free-living infective stage of the parasite with a predominance of the Burkholderiaceae bacteria family. This suggests that some Burkholderiaceae bacteria are involved in a coinfection process and possibly facilitate T. polycolpus infection. In this study, we reveal novel mechanistic insights for understanding the role of the microbiota in host-parasite interactions, which has implications for predicting the progression of diseases in natural host populations.
最近的研究强调了疾病与宿主微生物群之间的关联。在自然条件下，阐明宿主微生物群是否促进未来的感染，或者宿主微生物群的变化是否是由感染引起的，仍然极具挑战性。然而，区分这两个过程对于强调微生物在疾病进展中的作用至关重要。我们在野外对个体鱼类宿主（Leuciscus burdigalensis）进行了纵向调查，在感染甲壳类外寄生虫（Tracheliastes polycolpus）之前和之后都对其进行了调查。我们发现寄生虫感染与宿主微生物群组成之间存在显著关联，这种关联仅限于寄生虫附着的鳍部。我们清楚地表明，寄生虫感染诱导了（而不是由）宿主鳍部微生物群的变化。此外，在感染期间，受感染鳍部的微生物群变得类似于寄生虫的成虫阶段和自由生活的感染阶段，优势细菌家族为伯克霍尔德氏菌科。这表明一些伯克霍尔德氏菌科细菌参与了共感染过程，并可能促进 T. polycolpus 的感染。在这项研究中，我们揭示了理解微生物群在宿主-寄生虫相互作用中的作用的新机制见解，这对于预测自然宿主群体中疾病的进展具有重要意义。
