Dietary fiber chemical structure determined gut microbiota dynamics.

Precision modulation of gut microbiota requires elucidation of the relation between dietary fiber intake and gut microbe dynamics. However, current studies on this aspect are few due to many technical limitations. Here, we used to minimize the complicated host-microbial factors and to find the relation between dietary fiber chemical structures and gut microbiota dynamics. The  polysaccharide (sP) structure was elucidated and used as the complex dietary fiber against the simple fiber inulin. In vitro bacterial growth and genome analysis indicated that sP supports bacterial growth better than inulin, while in vivo gut microbiota analysis of fed with sP showed that microbiota richness increased significantly compared with those fed with inulin. It is concluded that the more complex the dietary fiber chemical structure, the more gut bacteria growth it supports. Together with the community bacterial interactions that alter their abundances in vivo, these factors regulate gut microbiota synergistically.