利用线虫研究多不饱和脂肪酸对肠道菌群的调节作用

Intestinal microbes are important to maintenance human health. People can obtain healthier intestinal microbes by modulating daily diets. Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans)　is charaterized with short lifespan, easy to culture and feeding on bacteria. It has been used to study probiotics and pathengenics. In the paper, genome analysis was performed using the second generation sequencing to analyze the composition of microflora introduced to C.elegans and the differences of the diversity and composition of intestinal microbes caused by n-3PUFAs and n-6PUFAs. Furthermore, lifespan of C.elegans was used as an indicator to detect the influences of intestinal microbes modulated by n-3 or n-6PUFAs has on the host's life-history traits. The result showed that major bacterial groups of intestinal microbes from mice could be introduced into C.elegans. There were differences in the diversity and composition in microflora between n-3PUFAs and n-6PUFAs groups. C.elegans feeding on microflora from mice with n-3PUFAs-rich diets tended to live longer than the others. In the paper, C.elegans provided a fantastic opportunity to study the interactions between bacteria and the hosts. This will help to establish a rapid and efficient screening model for food components related to the modulation of intestinal microbes as well as a physiological model to explore potential impacts of the intestinal microbes under modulation.