Vol.66 No.1 January 2018
Current Topics of the Gut Microbiota and its Host
Benno Laboratory, RIKEN Innovation Center, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama, Japan
Abstract
As a first step towards the practical application of gut microbiota composition (GMC) analysis, we used terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the GMC in 3,220 Japanese adults (16-92 years old) to examine the associations between the GMC and 26 personal and lifestyle characteristics, including age, gender, BMI, dietary habits, and other habits. The 3,220 gut microbial communities were divided into 8 clusters (1-8) based on their operational taxonomic units (OTUs). For all of the clusters, significant correlations were observed between the clusters and personal and lifestyle characteristics, as revealed by the chi-square test and odds ratio analysis. Interestingly, each cluster also had correlations with other personal and lifestyle characteristics besides gender, age, and BMI, such as defecation, frequency of eating vegetables, and smoking habits. In conclusion, we demonstrated multiple associations between the GMC and personal and lifestyle characteristics. Moreover, the role of the influence of the GMC on age and obesity was also reviewed.
Recent studies have suggested that the GMC influences gut-brain communication. We analyzed the cerebral metabolites of germ-free (GF) mice and conventionalized (CV) mice, which were inoculated with a suspension of feces obtained from specific pathogen-free mice, using capillary electrophoresis with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (CE-TOFMS). CE-TOFMS identified 196 metabolites from the cerebral metabolites in both GF and CV mice. The concentrations of 38 metabolites differed significantly (p < 0.05) between GF and CV mice.
Received
October 3, 2017
Accepted
October 12, 2017
Jpn. J. Chemother. 66 (1): 129-138, 2018
