Colonic gene expression upon Salmonella infection and dietary treatment

To increase our knowledge of the effects of Fructo oligosaccharides (FOS) on Salmonella infection in fats, a controlle rat infection study was performed. Two groups of 12 rats were adapted for 14 days to a cellulose diet and one group of 12 rats to a FOS diet. One cellulose-fed group and the FOS-fed group were infected with Salmonella. Two days post infection mRNA was collected from the mucosa of the colon and changes in gene expression were assessed using an Agilent rat whole genome microarray (G4131A Agilent Technologies). Results indicate that Salmonella affects colonic mucosal gene expression, which is further enhanded by dietary FOS. Keywords: Dietary infection study, colon mucosa, Rat In the present study, large-scale gene expression analysis was performed to reveal whether Salmonella induced changes of colonic mucosal gene expression in rats. Furthermore, we compared the colonic gene expression changes of infected rats fed a diet supplemented with Fructo oligosaccharides (FOS) or cellulose as control. Two groups of Wistar rats (n=12) were adapted for 14 days to a cellulose diet and one group (n=12) to a FOS diet. One cellulose-fed group and the FOS-fed group were infected with Salmonella. RNA was isolated from colonic mucosal scrapings. mRNA samples of 12 rats per group were pooled. Each group-sample was hybridised in duplicate on Agilent rat whole genome microarrays containing 44290 60-mer spots.