TY - JOUR
T1 - Diet affects arctic ground squirrel gut microbial metatranscriptome independent of community structure
AU - Hatton, Jasmine J.
AU - Stevenson, Timothy J.
AU - Buck, C. Loren
AU - Duddleston, Khrystyne N.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding was provided by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers P20GM103395 and 1R15GM098938-01, the National Science Foundation under Award DBI No. 1263415, and by The University of Alaska Anchorage Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship and The Alaska Heart Institute. We thank H.V. Carey for providing the SCFA extraction protocol, W.J. Radloff of the US Dairy Forage Research Center for technical assistance and use of instrumentation for SCFA analysis, M.D. Dillon and B. Brigs for assistance with the QIIME 1.6.0, AlienTrimmer and MG-RAST software and C. Cayabyab and S. Cain for assistance with animal care and sampling. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NIH or NSF. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2017/4/1
Y1 - 2017/4/1
N2 - We examined the effect of diet on pre-hibernation fattening and the gut microbiota of captive arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii). We measured body composition across time and gut microbiota density, diversity and function prior to and after five-weeks on control, high-fat, low-fat (18%, 40% and 10% energy from fat, respectively), or restricted calorie (50% of control) diets. Squirrels fattened at the same rate and to the same degree on all diets. Additionally, we found no differences in gut microbiota diversity or short chain fatty acid production across time or with diet. Analysis of the gut microbial transcriptome indicated differences in community function among diet groups, but not across time, and revealed shifts in the relative contribution of function at a taxonomic level. Our results demonstrate that pre-hibernation fattening of arctic ground squirrels is robust to changes in diet and is accomplished by more than increased food intake. Although our analyses did not uncover a definitive link between host fattening and the gut microbiota, and suggest the squirrels may possess a gut microbial community structure that is unresponsive to dietary changes, studies manipulating diet earlier in the active season may yet uncover a relationship between host diet, fattening and gut microbiota.
AB - We examined the effect of diet on pre-hibernation fattening and the gut microbiota of captive arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii). We measured body composition across time and gut microbiota density, diversity and function prior to and after five-weeks on control, high-fat, low-fat (18%, 40% and 10% energy from fat, respectively), or restricted calorie (50% of control) diets. Squirrels fattened at the same rate and to the same degree on all diets. Additionally, we found no differences in gut microbiota diversity or short chain fatty acid production across time or with diet. Analysis of the gut microbial transcriptome indicated differences in community function among diet groups, but not across time, and revealed shifts in the relative contribution of function at a taxonomic level. Our results demonstrate that pre-hibernation fattening of arctic ground squirrels is robust to changes in diet and is accomplished by more than increased food intake. Although our analyses did not uncover a definitive link between host fattening and the gut microbiota, and suggest the squirrels may possess a gut microbial community structure that is unresponsive to dietary changes, studies manipulating diet earlier in the active season may yet uncover a relationship between host diet, fattening and gut microbiota.
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U2 - 10.1111/1462-2920.13712
DO - 10.1111/1462-2920.13712
M3 - Article
C2 - 28251799
AN - SCOPUS:85016958073
SN - 1462-2912
VL - 19
SP - 1518
EP - 1535
JO - Environmental Microbiology
JF - Environmental Microbiology
IS - 4
ER -