Gut Microbiota and Health: Understanding the Role of Diet

Abstract

Gut microbiota plays a major role in regulating the host metabolism and immune system. However, the structure of microbiome population is altered constantly by diverse factors including diet and environment. In particular, the gut microbiome dynamics is influenced by diet composition and their associated metabolites. Many studies in the recent past reported on diet induced dysbiosis in the gut microbiome, the modulating ratio between Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes plays a central role in maintaining the microbiome diversity in the gut and their abundance regulates obese conditions. Although there are several reports on gut microbial dysbiosis (Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes) at phylum level but only few of them highlight at the genera level. In the present study, we focused more on the impact of cafeteria diet (CAF) with respect to the gut microbiome richness at the genera level in SD rats. Three weeks old Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were fed with normal chow diet and cafeteria diet (CAF). After 10 weeks, serum, tissue samples (small intestine and cecum), cecum fecal and fecal pellet were collected. Biochemical analysis from serum, Gene expression analysis of pro-inflammatory markers from tissues and microbiome analysis from fecal samples were analysed. CAF diet fed rat in the present study developed obesity with increased body weight, few of them developed the resistance to weight gain (WGR) and these animal shows significantly increased abundance of Bacteriodetes-Prevotella compared to obese animals. This study suggests that detailed research needed to address the contribution of microbiota abundance at the genera level. We further explored the influence of diet induced microbiota changes on immune response. Further studies on these lines targeting the microbiota changes in the gut at the genera level is warranted to gain more knowledge.