Escherichia coli limits Salmonella Typhimurium infections after diet-shifts and fat-mediated microbiota perturbation in mice.

An unperturbed microbiota blocks Salmonella gut colonization, the essential first step of the infection. In spite of this colonization resistance, Salmonella diarrhea remains prevalent in humans. Thus, unknown factors may promote infections. To explore the role of fat, we supplemented mice on maintenance diet with fat, oleic acid, a common fatty acid and major fat-degradation product and compared the microbiota composition of the different mice using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.