Wild Mouse Gut Microbiota Promotes Host Fitness and Improves Disease Resistance
By Stephan P. Rosshart, Brian G. Vassallo, Davide Angeletti, D. Hutchinson, Andrew P. Morgan, K. Takeda, H. Hickman, J. McCulloch, Jonathan H. Badger, N. Ajami and 4 more. Cell, 2017
698 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Summary Laboratory mice, while paramount for understanding basic biological phenomena, are limited in modeling complex diseases of humans and other free-living mammals. Because the microbiome is a major factor in mammalian physiology, we aimed to identify a naturally evolved reference microbiome to better recapitulate physiological phenomena relevant in the natural world outside the laboratory. Among 21 distinct mouse populations worldwide we identified a closely related wild relative to standard laboratory mouse strains. Its bacterial gut microbiome differed significantly from its laboratory mouse counterpart, and was transferred to and maintained in laboratory mice over several generations. Laboratory mice reconstituted with natural microbiota exhibited reduced inflammation and increased survival following influenza virus infection, and improved resistance against mutagen/inflammation-induced colorectal tumorigenesis. By demonstrating the host fitness-promoting traits of natural microbiota, our findings should enable the discovery of protective mechanisms relevant in the natural world and improve the modeling of complex diseases of free-living mammals.
Subfields: Biological Psychiatry, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/971d75066e7c165889a4411b0e93542a176fb6ba
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Citations in the corpus
- Bifidobacteria-mediated immune system imprinting early in life (2020, background): “The comparison between human newborns and young mice colonized with a more natural gut microbiome will be informative and likely more similar in this regard as shown for other immune system processes (Rosshart et al., 2017).”
- Interaction between microbiota and immunity in health and disease (2020, background): “Indeed, a recent study has shown that the gut microbiota in wild mice can better recapitulate the natural phenotypes in humans, as laboratory mice receiving wild microbiota exhibit less susceptibility to influenza virus infection and colitis-induced tumorigenesis, which is associated with less infil”