Diet-induced extinction in the gut microbiota compounds over generations

By E. Sonnenburg, S. Smits, Mikhail Tikhonov, S. Higginbottom, Ned S. Wingreen, Justin L. Sonnenburg. Nature, 2016

1,128 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that have fundamental roles in many aspects of human biology, including immune function and metabolism. The reduced diversity of the gut microbiota in Western populations compared to that in populations living traditional lifestyles presents the question of which factors have driven microbiota change during modernization. Microbiota-accessible carbohydrates (MACs) found in dietary fibre have a crucial involvement in shaping this microbial ecosystem, and are notably reduced in the Western diet (high in fat and simple carbohydrates, low in fibre) compared with a more traditional diet. Here we show that changes in the microbiota of mice consuming a low-MAC diet and harbouring a human microbiota are largely reversible within a single generation. However, over several generations, a low-MAC diet results in a progressive loss of diversity, which is not recoverable after the reintroduction of dietary MACs. To restore the microbiota to its original state requires the administration of missing taxa in combination with dietary MAC consumption. Our data illustrate that taxa driven to low abundance when dietary MACs are scarce are inefficiently transferred to the next generation, and are at increased risk of becoming extinct within an isolated population. As more diseases are linked to the Western microbiota and the microbiota is targeted therapeutically, microbiota reprogramming may need to involve strategies that incorporate dietary MACs as well as taxa not currently present in the Western gut.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/da9c9baa662469ad9b98faed8154c318628542c9

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Citations in the corpus

The gut microbiome: Relationships with disease and opportunities for therapy (2018, background): “The influence of diet on microbiota composition and function is well established (David et al., 2014; Desai et al., 2016; Sonnenburg et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2016; Kamiya et al., 2018).”
U.S. immigration westernizes the human gut microbiome (2018, background): “These include loss of microbiota carbohydrate degradation function following removal of dietary fiber (Sonnenburg et al., 2016) and intergenerational loss of diversity following antibiotic perturbation (Schulfer et al.”
From Dietary Fiber to Host Physiology: Short-Chain Fatty Acids as Key Bacterial Metabolites. (2016, positive): “In contrast, long-term intake of high-fat and high-sucrose diet can lead to the extinction of several taxa of the gut microbiota (Sonnenburg et al., 2016).”
Gut Microbiota-Targeted Diets Modulate Human Immune Status (2020, positive): “, 2015), (ii) the necessity of dietary fiber plus administered microbes to restore diversity to the gut microbiota in a mouse model (Sonnenburg et al., 2016), and (iii) the loss of strains and their associated glycan degrading capacity observed in U.”
Bifidobacteria or fiber protect against diet-induced microbiota-mediated colonic mucus deterioration (2017, background): “…M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript Diet rapidly affects gut microbiota composition and mice fed a fiber-deficient diet over several generations exhibit a progressive loss in distinct taxa and microbial diversity (Cotillard et al., 2013; David et al., 2014; Sonnenburg et al., 2016).”
Gut Microbiota and Short Chain Fatty Acids: Implications in Glucose Homeostasis (2022, background): “Soluble fiber, resistant to digestion by the host, represent the microbiotaaccessible carbohydrates (MACs) [21].”
Effect of Diet on the Gut Microbiota: Rethinking Intervention Duration (2019, background): “An inter-generational decrease in fibre has been shown to lead to a reduction or extinction of these fibre-degrading bacteria in a mouse model [103].”