1 research outputs found
Gut Microbiome Perturbations Induced by Bacterial Infection Affect Arsenic Biotransformation
Exposure
to arsenic affects large human populations worldwide and
has been associated with a long list of human diseases, including
skin, bladder, lung, and liver cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular
disorders. In addition, there are large individual differences in
susceptibility to arsenic-induced diseases, which are frequently associated
with different patterns of arsenic metabolism. Several underlying
mechanisms, such as genetic polymorphisms and epigenetics, have been
proposed, as these factors closely impact the individuals’
capacity to metabolize arsenic. In this context, the role of the gut
microbiome in directly metabolizing arsenic and triggering systemic
responses in diverse organs raises the possibility that perturbations
of the gut microbial communities affect the spectrum of metabolized
arsenic species and subsequent toxicological effects. In this study,
we used an animal model with an altered gut microbiome induced by
bacterial infection, 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and inductively coupled
plasma mass spectrometry-based arsenic speciation to examine the effect
of gut microbiome perturbations on the biotransformation of arsenic.
Metagenomics sequencing revealed that bacterial infection significantly
perturbed the gut microbiome composition in C57BL/6 mice, which in
turn resulted in altered spectra of arsenic metabolites in urine,
with inorganic arsenic species and methylated and thiolated arsenic
being perturbed. These data clearly illustrated that gut microbiome
phenotypes significantly affected arsenic metabolic reactions, including
reduction, methylation, and thiolation. These findings improve our
understanding of how infectious diseases and environmental exposure
interact and may also provide novel insight regarding the gut microbiome
composition as a new risk factor of individual susceptibility to environmental
chemicals