Mucin glycan foraging in the human gut microbiome

By L. Tailford, E. Crost, D. Kavanaugh, N. Juge. Frontiers in Genetics, 2015

778 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The availability of host and dietary carbohydrates in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract plays a key role in shaping the structure-function of the microbiota. In particular, some gut bacteria have the ability to forage on glycans provided by the mucus layer covering the GI tract. The O-glycan structures present in mucin are diverse and complex, consisting predominantly of core 1-4 mucin-type O-glycans containing α- and β- linked N-acetyl-galactosamine, galactose and N-acetyl-glucosamine. These core structures are further elongated and frequently modified by fucose and sialic acid sugar residues via α1,2/3/4 and α2,3/6 linkages, respectively. The ability to metabolize these mucin O-linked oligosaccharides is likely to be a key factor in determining which bacterial species colonize the mucosal surface. Due to their proximity to the immune system, mucin-degrading bacteria are in a prime location to influence the host response. However, despite the growing number of bacterial genome sequences available from mucin degraders, our knowledge on the structural requirements for mucin degradation by gut bacteria remains fragmented. This is largely due to the limited number of functionally characterized enzymes and the lack of studies correlating the specificity of these enzymes with the ability of the strain to degrade and utilize mucin and mucin glycans. This review focuses on recent findings unraveling the molecular strategies used by mucin-degrading bacteria to utilize host glycans, adapt to the mucosal environment, and influence human health.

Subfields: Food Science, Molecular Biology, Nutrition and Dietetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e9e0767a80364e0e898665051bb25051a146ecf0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Food Science

In Molecular Biology

In Nutrition and Dietetics

Citations in the corpus

Indoleacrylic Acid Produced by Commensal Peptostreptococcus Species Suppresses Inflammation. (2017, background): “Previous studies onmucus utilization byB. thetaiotaomicron and A. muciniphila have suggested that mucus utilization is reserved for a subset of the intestinal microbiota (Derrien et al., 2004; Sonnenburg et al., 2005; Tailford et al., 2015a).”
The First Microbial Colonizers of the Human Gut: Composition, Activities, and Health Implications of the Infant Gut Microbiota (2017, background): “The main glycan components of these glycoproteins are N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine, fucose, and galactose, and mucins are frequently covered by sialic acid and/or sulfate groups (369).”
Lipotoxicity and the gut-liver axis in NASH pathogenesis. (2018, background): “demonstrated to represent the main pathobiont bacteria expressing endotoxins associated with the highest degree of liver injury in a model of HFD and fibrosis [104] and, together with Verrucomicrobia, are considered mucus-degrading bacteria finally promoting bacterial translocation [105, 106].”
Gut Bacteroides species in health and disease (2021, background): “Mucins primarily play protective and lubricative roles, but they also facilitate microbial tropism by presenting glycans to bacterial residents of the gut including Bacteroides.(18) This, in turn, impacts the localization of these bacterial species and also gives them an extra nutritional source.”
Factors affecting the composition of the gut microbiota, and its modulation (2019, background): “Utilisation of mucin by gut microbiota is depending on glycoside hydrolases and polysaccharide lyases which are encoded by their genes (Tailford et al., 2015).”