The composition of the gut microbiota shapes the colon mucus barrier

By Hedvig E. Jakobsson, A. M. Rodríguez-Piñeiro, A. Schütte, A. Ermund, P. Boysen, M. Bemark, Felix Sommer, F. Bäckhed, G. Hansson, M. Johansson. EMBO Reports, 2014

616 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two C57BL/6 mice colonies maintained in two rooms of the same specific pathogen‐free (SPF) facility were found to have different gut microbiota and a mucus phenotype that was specific for each colony. The thickness and growth of the colon mucus were similar in the two colonies. However, one colony had mucus that was impenetrable to bacteria or beads the size of bacteria—which is comparable to what we observed in free‐living wild mice—whereas the other colony had an inner mucus layer penetrable to bacteria and beads. The different properties of the mucus depended on the microbiota, as they were transmissible by transfer of caecal microbiota to germ‐free mice. Mice with an impenetrable mucus layer had increased amounts of Erysipelotrichi, whereas mice with a penetrable mucus layer had higher levels of Proteobacteria and TM7 bacteria in the distal colon mucus. Thus, our study shows that bacteria and their community structure affect mucus barrier properties in ways that can have implications for health and disease. It also highlights that genetically identical animals housed in the same facility can have rather distinct microbiotas and barrier structures.

Subfields: Endocrinology, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/22a7d4d4ae7a9c5fca4de41b88ef366b1153905b

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Citations in the corpus

Gut microbiota, intestinal permeability, and systemic inflammation: a narrative review (2023, background): “They suggested that some bacteria, such as Ery-sipelotrichi class, Allobaculum can induce a non-penetrable inner mucus, while other phyla, like TM7 and Proteobacteria have opposite effects [12].”
Brain-Gut-Microbiota Axis in Alzheimer’s Disease (2019, background): “The microbiota composition determines mucus layer properties influencing its permeability.(53) The abundance of mucindegrading bacteria Akkermansia muciniphila improves the gut barrier function, reduces obesity and systemic inflammation.”
Intestinal barrier and gut microbiota: Shaping our immune responses throughout life (2017, background): “Also, they identified that mice with more impenetrable mucus layer had increased amounts of Erysipelotrichi, whereas mice with a penetrable mucus layer had higher concentrations of Proteobacteria and candidate division TM7 bacteria in the distal colon mucus.(89) It is still unclear how microbial com”
The intestinal barrier: a fundamental role in health and disease (2017, background): “The composition of the mucus layer can affect the microbiota in the gut, while the microbiota also determine the properties of the mucus gel [11].”
Bifidobacteria or fiber protect against diet-induced microbiota-mediated colonic mucus deterioration (2017, background): “Recent evidence has demonstrated that the intestinal microbiota can influence the properties of the colonic mucus layer (Earle et al., 2015; Jakobsson et al., 2015).”