TY - JOUR
T1 - Glycan foraging in vivo by an intestine-adapted bacterial symbiont
AU - Sonnenburg, Justin L.
AU - Xu, Jian
AU - Leip, Douglas D.
AU - Chen, Chien Huan
AU - Westover, Benjamin P.
AU - Weatherford, Jeremy
AU - Buhler, Jeremy D.
AU - Gordon, Jeffrey I.
PY - 2005/3/25
Y1 - 2005/3/25
N2 - Germ-free mice were maintained on polysaccharide-rich or simple-sugar diets and colonized for 10 days with an organism also found in human guts, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, followed by whole-genome transcriptional profiling of bacteria and mass spectrometry of cecal glycans. We found that these bacteria assembled on food particles and mucus, selectively induced outer-membrane polysaccharide-binding proteins and glycoside hydrolases, prioritized the consumption of liberated hexose sugars, and revealed a capacity to turn to host mucus glycans when polysaccharides were absent from the diet. This flexible foraging behavior should contribute to ecosystem stability and functional diversity.
AB - Germ-free mice were maintained on polysaccharide-rich or simple-sugar diets and colonized for 10 days with an organism also found in human guts, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, followed by whole-genome transcriptional profiling of bacteria and mass spectrometry of cecal glycans. We found that these bacteria assembled on food particles and mucus, selectively induced outer-membrane polysaccharide-binding proteins and glycoside hydrolases, prioritized the consumption of liberated hexose sugars, and revealed a capacity to turn to host mucus glycans when polysaccharides were absent from the diet. This flexible foraging behavior should contribute to ecosystem stability and functional diversity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=15544376418&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1126/science.1109051
DO - 10.1126/science.1109051
M3 - Article
C2 - 15790854
AN - SCOPUS:15544376418
SN - 0036-8075
VL - 307
SP - 1955
EP - 1959
JO - Science
JF - Science
IS - 5717
ER -