Specificity of polysaccharide use in intestinal Bacteroides species determines diet-induced microbiota alterations

By E. Sonnenburg, Hongjun Zheng, P. Joglekar, S. Higginbottom, S. Firbank, D. N. Bolam, Justin L. Sonnenburg. Cell, 2010

734 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The intestinal microbiota impacts many facets of human health and is associated with human diseases. Diet impacts microbiota composition, yet mechanisms that link dietary changes to microbiota alterations remain ill-defined. Here we elucidate the basis of Bacteroides proliferation in response to fructans, a class of fructose-based dietary polysaccharides. Structural and genetic analysis disclosed a fructose-binding, hybrid-two-component signaling sensor that controls the fructan utilization locus in Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. Gene content of this locus differs among Bacteroides species and dictates the specificity and breadth of utilizable fructans. BT1760, an extracellular β2-6 endo-fructanase, distinguishes B. thetaiotaomicron genetically and functionally, and enables the use of the β2-6-linked fructan levan. The genetic and functional differences between Bacteroides species are predictive of in vivo competitiveness in the presence of dietary fructans. Genes that differentiate function serve as potential biomarkers in microbiomic datasets to enable rational manipulation of the microbiota via diet.

Subfields: Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Molecular Biology, Nutrition and Dietetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c242046e87a7818763158b7e432ffd840b37284f

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Citations in the corpus

From Animalcules to an Ecosystem: Application of Ecological Concepts to the Human Microbiome (2012, background): “Studies show that different Bacteroides species exhibit corresponding changes in population size with the availability of specific substrates (Sonnenburg et al. 2010), and one study of two Lactobacillus strains in the mouse gut showed that resource specialization can allow for www.annualreviews.org…”
Gut microbiota: Role in pathogen colonization, immune responses, and inflammatory disease (2017, background): “community structure at species level, but the obligate anaerobic Clostridia and Bacteroidia still maintain their dominance over facultative anaerobic Enterobacteriaceae in the healthy gut (168-171).”
Gut Bacteroides species in health and disease (2021, background): “This, in turn, impacts the localization of these bacterial species and also gives them an extra nutritional source.(19) As such, mucin glycans have been predicted to be key players in the selection and thriving of bacterial communities across the gut bacteriome.”
Unravelling the effects of the environment and host genotype on the gut microbiome (2011, background): “differ in their ability to use specific substrates such as inulin, and these differences can predict the outcomes of competitive interactions between the specie”
A systematic analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters in the human microbiome reveals a common family of antibiotics (2014, background): “Sonnenburg et al. (2010) and Larsbrink et al. (2014) have dissected the function of gene clusters from Bacteroides that catabolize fructans and xyloglucans, respectively.”
Phycosphere bacterial diversity in green algae reveals an apparent similarity across habitats (2015, background): “Most genera of Bacteoidetes phylumhost PULs specific to each polysaccharides and are switched on in the presence of respective polysaccharides [26].”
Gut microbiome, obesity, and metabolic dysfunction. (2011, background): “are predictive how these bacteria utilize fructans, a class of fructose-based polysaccharides (46).”
Starving our Microbial Self: The Deleterious Consequences of a Diet Deficient in Microbiota-Accessible Carbohydrates (2014, positive): “Highly controlled experiments in mice have shown that the quantity and type of carbohydrates that feed the microbiota alter simplified and complex microbial communities (Faith et al., 2011; Kashyap et al., 2013a; Sonnenburg et al., 2010; Turnbaugh et al., 2009b).”
Environmental and Gut Bacteroidetes: The Food Connection (2011, background): “This clearly showed that diet selects species composition in the animal intestine (Sonnenburg et al., 2010).”